In recent weeks, I have been working with many clients on creating a personal and professional development plan, which will help them focus their time and efforts, and achieve improvements in some of the following areas that are critical to leadership and career effectiveness.
– how to increase productivity, and achieve more with less time, stress and struggle
– how to increase interpersonal effectiveness, which includes managing up, down and laterally, influencing others when they may or may not have direct authority, and generally getting the best from other people
– how to build a personal brand, and manage or shift other people’s perceptions of them
– how to manage a career, and gain advancement and satisfaction from their work.
You, too, can create a plan for yourself by following some simple steps.
The first step is heightening your AWARENESS.
Here are some questions to guide you:
- How would you rate yourself in each of the above areas? Can you give an example of where you would like to see improvements?
- What do you think are your greatest strengths? What are your typical tendencies when you are stressed or under pressure? If you want to dive deeper, there are many good, free online resources and self-assessments available. Please contact me if you’d like to know more.
- What do you believe are one or two things you could do to be more effective?
- Do you know what others think about you? How would they answer the same questions? Would you consider asking them or asking a third party to ask them and give you their perceptions and suggestions? Be ready to receive feedback with an open mind and a willingness to accept it as well-intentioned, whether you choose to act on it or not.
- What are your key business challenges and/or requirements of your current role? What are your career interests and aspirations in 2-5 years? What will need to be different for you to achieve them?
Why does any change or development process have to start with awareness?
– Because often we don’t know what we don’t know. We all have blind spots and gaps between our ideal selves and our actual selves. Gathering data about how others perceive us or what impact we have on them, may give us excellent information about different approaches we could try.
– Because once you have a heightened awareness from observing yourself with more objectivity, you start to pick up clues about the small shifts you could make that would make a big difference in all areas of your personal and professional life.
That is the simple start to developing your own capabilities as a leader, irrespective of your formal position in an organization.
Next time I’ll write about Steps 2 and 3: Deciding where to focus your ATTENTION and setting your INTENTION