If you’ve never written a development plan before, you might be thinking: Where do I start? Last week, we laid out the elements of a good plan, so now let’s dig into the most important part: finding your development focus. Your development focus is the personal change you need to make in order to achieve your goal and project your career. It’s what motivates you. Personal change is hard, so it has to be worth it. (And if you’re a leader, you can use this with your team too!)
Personal Change and the Importance of Choosing a Development Focus
Personal change is about transformation. It’s growing your mindset or your approach to get to a different outcome. It’s taking responsibility and figuring out what you need to do to better meet your own needs. And making this change or transformation will have a positive effect on your relationships, work and life!
For example, let’s say you’re looking for more career achievement and you want to be promoted into a higher-level leadership role, but you’re not known for taking charge and speaking up. Your personal change could be working on being more confident, being bolder and saying what you think. If you start working on that personal change, you’ll be one step closer to reaching your goal. And the motivation is intrinsic because you’re working toward your own goal.
Personal change can’t necessarily be measured with numbers or time. But by taking action and doing a little self-discovery, it’s a change that can make a huge difference in how you show up and what you’re able to achieve.
Zeroing in on a development focus gives you clarity and direction about how to take the next step in your career. When you make a specific plan around it, you’re more likely to actually take the steps to move yourself forward.
Take a Moment to Self-Reflect
To get you started on the self-discovery process, here are a list of questions to consider. Take some time to reflect and think about these questions by writing in your journal or wherever you like to brainstorm. With a little thought put in, this exercise should lead you toward the personal change goal that makes sense for you.
Remember: Personal change is not calendar based. It might take you a month to see progress, or it could take a year. Or your circumstances could shift, and you need to choose a different development focus. Be sure to come back to your plan and adjust when things change and as you make progress.
What a Development Focus Is
To create the most personal change, the development focus you choose will enhance your effectiveness, satisfaction and career progression. It will grow you and connect you to the needs you desire most. It’s important to who you want to be and how you want to show up.
What a Development Focus is NOT
A development focus should NOT be a new skill or technical knowledge. While those tools are useful in other ways, personal change is broader and more transformative. You’re not fixing something that’s broken, you’re growing what is already great. Achievement goals, objectives and KPIs are what you must DO, not how you GROW.
The 9 Winning Action StrategiesTM
When we coach clients on personal change, we use our proprietary 9 Winning Action Strategies. These are 9 great options to choose for personal change. Note: They are NOT to be confused with competencies! These strategies guide your growth and help you meet your needs in a bigger way. If you’re feeling stuck about what to choose, see if any of these inspire you. Think about which one could meet your needs and could use a little work.
Why You Might Choose Each Winning Action Strategy
Be Essential: You want to make a difference and add significant value.
Push Yourself: You want to get outside your comfort zone to do and achieve more.
Exercise Confidence: You want to reach your full potential by taking chances and trying new things that grow your capability.
Build a Fan Base: You want to have a system of people who support and champion you.
Practice Regular Self-Reflection: You want to grow your self-awareness to improve your behavior, circumstances or yourself!
Give Back: You want to maximize your contribution to the greater good by valuing the success of the whole over yourself.
Negotiate for Success: You want to have better relationships and achieve greater results – after all, everything in life is negotiated!
Always, Always Have a Plan: You want to bring attention, structure, organization and discipline to your work and life.
Understand the Game: You want to successfully navigate and interact with all parts of your organization.
Applying the Winning Action Strategies
Here’s an example of the Winning Action Strategies in action:
Build a Fan Base
Expanding your network and support system could increase your visibility and demonstrate your value. To reach your goals, it’s extremely helpful when you have people to advocate for you.
Understand the Game
If navigating office politics has been a challenge, your focus might be on understanding the dynamics and power structures in your organization. Knowing who the players are and what makes them tick can give you a leg up when it comes to how to make the next move.
Identifying your development focus is a great first step to crafting a meaningful development plan. Next week we’ll be diving into how to figure out the actions that will make the plan come to life!
With GrowWise, our virtual career development program, you’re not alone on this journey. Designed to make personal growth accessible and engaging, GrowWise supports you every step of the way, from self-discovery to achieving your career aspirations. Take the guesswork out of career development and empower your people to grow! Reach out for a demo.