The Guru Nation Blog

Sample Professional Development Plans

Guru Cathy Dixon-Kheir explains in her segment, “Take Charge of Your Career in Turbulent Times” that the best sample professional development plans one can use to guide them in making career decisions are career self assessments. Rather than model your plans on a template created for someone else, there are several questions to guide you that instead cater to your strengths and aspirations in order to create a sample professional development plan. Career paths are complicated. In the words of guru Nancy Widmann: “Build Your Career on a Lattice, Not on a Ladder” - that is to say, thinking of your professional development as a series of simple tiers is an antiquated and flawed plan for advancement. The career path best suited to your success may require steps to the side, or even slightly downward in preparation for an even greater leap forward.

So, the first question to ask yourself in creating your professional development plan is, “what do I want personally and professionally?” This may sound obvious, but the majority of people have not taken charge of their careers by asking these questions and are missing out on opportunities to advance, falling too comfortably into a professional routine. The next question to ask: “In which ways do the two align and in which ways do they conflict?” The sooner you can reconcile any divergence, the clearer your professional development plans become. And most importantly, “what are my strengths?”

It is essential to remember for this last question, that the question does not refer solely to your strengths in your current job or last job (if you’re one of the many, many feeling the bite of hard economic times.) It is also important when creating sample professional development plans not to allow your title to limit your assessment of your potential. An executive assistant may have managerial aptitudes.

The last step in the creation of your now very personal, no longer sample, professional development plans is to “know your network.” It’s an indisputable truth of the professional world; while hard work and skill lead to success, networking gets you in the door. Without a personal touch, you are only a resume, no matter how well qualified, amongst a pile of other well qualified resumes. Not only does networking provide the personal touch that sets you apart, it is also a critical means of discovering avenues for advancement that would never have come to your attention without a strong network. So take stock of your network, grow it, and this is critical: keep good record of your connections or all your efforts can be very literally lost.