Development Friday: Developing a Professional Development Plan (PDP)

Development Friday: Developing a Professional Development Plan (PDP)

Reflecting

Taking time to write and reflect on your career can increase your self-awareness and help you organize and synthesize your thoughts. Set aside regular amounts of time to journal. You will need to make your PDP a priority.


Gaining Self-Awareness

A professional development plan is a concept that emphasizes gathering input from many sources. First, you will need to do some self-analysis on aspects of work that give you satisfaction and aspects that do not bring satisfaction. A suggestion would be to continue to use your PDP book to write about other events and to analyze those to learn more about what elements you would want to include and emphasize in your career. You may want to write about work you’ve done in the community or volunteer work or other jobs you’ve he
ld in the past in order to look for nuggets of information about the important areas that future jobs should include in order to bring you satisfaction.


Seeking Outside Input

Work to gain more information from others in order to have the full picture about yourself. Talk to your supervisor, your mentor or coach at work, your peers or staff at work to gain information. Each PDP should be uniquely tailored to the needs of the individual and the organization. You might identify extensive skill training; or might emphasize a more
academic approach. There is no set pattern—the term “individual” is basic to the concept—especially as it applies to your willingness and capacity to learn and grow.


Developing Action Steps

How can you get from where you are to where you’d like to be? How can you improve your satisfaction with your career? First, determine something you would like to change in the very short term. Then list concrete steps you can take to move yourself toward that change.
Here are some examples of action steps:
— Update my résumé
— Ask for new assignments in my current job
— Rotation to a different project/job
— Seek a mentor(s)—volunteer for a task force or process action/re-engineering team
— Obtain on-the-job guidance from someone who is more expert in a specific area
— Attend seminars/conferences (on site and off site)
— Enroll in university courses
— Attend commercial/contracted courses
— Experience self-paced learning (books , videos, computer-based instruction)
— Pursue an academic degree or certification program
— Conduct informational interviews
— Move to a new job within my division
— Move to a new job within the college or university
— Join a discussion group on topics I want to learn more about


Setting Longer Term Goals

After you have begun to test out new areas you want to explore, work with input from your supervisor and coach/mentor to set goals which cover the bigger picture for the ne
xt three years.

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