Your Personal Development Plan

What is aPersonal Development Plan (PDP)?

A Personal Development Plan is a simple tool to identify and track the learning and development you may need in order to achieve your work goals and developmental aspirations. This can be anything from formal training, job shadowing, coaching, mentoring or anything else that’s helping you to develop your skills and capabilities.

While your RADAR discussions and form focus on managing your performance, the PDP is purely focussed on your future development needs. You should complete your PDP with your line manager.

Steps to creating a great PDP

  1. Start with the goal

Typical reasons to create a personal development plan may include:

  • You’re in a new job and want to get up to speed as quickly as possible
  • You’re struggling in your job and want to improve
  • You’d like to move to a new role, and want to equip yourself for that role
  • You’re good at what you do, and have no immediate aspirations to move, but just want to get even better.
  1. Identify what you want to learn, or get better at

Start by identifying the three most important competencies (skills, knowledge and behaviours) you want to work on in order to achieve your goal.

You might also want to identify your strengths. These can often be enhanced to address development needs.

  1. Identify development actions to address the needs

A few options could be:

  • Take on a challenging project/assignment within your current job
  • Learn from someone else (your manager, a coach, a subject matter expert or a role model.)
  • Learn about a topic: read up on a topic, take a course
  1. Assign dates, costs and responsibilities

A 2 way discussion between the individual and manager is important as it helps to have the feedback, involvement and support from the manager. The manager needs to approve any costs, and time out of the office. Whilst the individual will be responsible for most of their plan, the manager may have a few things they commit to doing to support their line report.

  1. Implement the plan, follow-up often, and reflect on what you’ve learned.
  • Keep your plan accessible at all times
  • Check of completed items
  • Think about what you did, what you read, what you learned – what were the lessons?
  • What did you learn about yourself?
  • How are you going to implement what you’ve learnt?
  • What else have you learnt that has helped you that wasn’t on your PDP initially?

Checklist for a Great Personal Development Plan

Robustness

  • Has the PDP been updated within the last 12 months?
  • Is the PDP complete?
  • Are the development actions challenging?
  • Are RADAR objectives linked with the PDP where applicable?

Variety

  • Are multiple types of formal and informal learning approaches integrated into the planned activities?
  • How much creativity is reflected in the planned actions?
  • Does the plan offer an opportunity to enhance strengths, as well as address deficiencies?
  • Have ‘other people’, coaches and/ or mentors been identified?
  • Are challenging projects represented?
  • Are there opportunities for development across value streams if appropriate?

Clarity

  • Does the plan include specific development needs? (i.e., leadership, communication, financial or planning skills are very broad.) The development opportunities should identify the specific skills, knowledge and/or behaviours that are to be acquired or enhanced.
  • Has a specific timeframe within which the development will be initiated and/ or completed been identified?
  • Are there concrete planned actions directly aligned to each identified development need?

Consistent with business needs and succession plans

  • Is the individual’s career plan consistent with succession plans?
  • Do development needs and planned actions support current and future business objectives?
  • Will planned actions prepare the individual for the future (succession) vs. too much focus on current role (depending on individual’s motivations)?