A Personal Development Plan Prevents Piss Poor Performance!

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A Personal Development Plan Prevents Piss Poor Performance!

A personal development plan is a key piece in the career puzzle. The rewards you receive are in proportion to the value you create. Investing in your personal development will increase the value you are able to produce and hence the rewards you will receive. By understanding this link and creating a plan you can craft the career you really want.

In many areas of life you are valuable just for because you are alive. For instance your family and friends are just happy to be in a relationship with you. However, the business context is not personal. There is a bottom line of profitability.

Business Basics

The first priority of most individuals and businesses is survival. In difficult situations, profit/loss is the equivalent of health/sickness. It either supports life or eventually leads to death.

In a company with clear values and a mission statement, decisions will be based on more than just financial concerns. Though the fact remains that if you are a source of sickness, a business needs to cut you out for its own health. Would you refuse treatment for a malignant tumour because you want to be nice?!

I recently worked in a venture with someone I liked on a personal level, but on a business level they were a nightmare. Volatile personal circumstances meant they did not reliably meet their commitments.

Although they did add some value to the business, they cost more in drained time and energy from the rest of the team when they broke their commitments. Completing or not completing your duties is how your suitability for your present position is judged.

If you are reading this website then you probably have a bigger vision for the future. How does more responsibility, flexibility or money sound? I would quite like all three!

Guest Speaker: Jim Rohn

Let me introduce a guest speaker: Jim Rohn, a leading business thinker and personal development speaker. In the following two videos he eloquently describes why having a personal development plan is crucial if you want to soar to success.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Key points from the videos:

To climb the career ladder all you have to do is work harder on yourself than on your job.
You don’t get paid for your time, you get paid for the value you create in that time.

There is a difference in reward between one hour of my time and one hour from a minimum-wage worker. This occurs because of the disparate value we can provide in the business context.

To earn greater rewards simply implement a personal development plan. Success begins within, so investing in yourself is the best thing you can do to nurture your long-term prospects.

When I decided to be my own boss, and work within personal development, I didn’t have the skills or knowledge necessary to provide value to clients. I had some limited marketing skills, and a hint of natural business sense.

I needed to invest in myself in order to become the type of person who achieves my career objectives. So I took formal training, volunteered my time, and did what I needed to add value to myself.

The training and experience I have gained through pursuing my career objectives enabled me to grow in ways I did not expect. Looking back to the starting point I can see that there were a lot of things that I did not know I did not know. It is this growth in skills, experience and knowledge that I did not know about which has made me dramatically more valuable.

Creating a Personal Development Plan

The following 6 steps and accompanying resources will guide you through creating a personal development plan to reach destination success:

1) Where do you want to go? Identifying your career objectives gives you a specific focus around which to create your plan.

2) Why is this important to you? Make sure you are pursuing your career objectives for the right reasons. Fulfilling Top Values = Top Careers.

3) Who do you need to be to achieve your goals? Who already has what you want and what can you learn from their example? A role-model or mentor can accelerate your personal development. By learning from their mistakes and successes, you can increase your own value.

4) Where are you today? It is only by seeing where you are today that you can make the best career choices. best career choices. Whatever your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs are, they are what you have to work with. Be honest, and maybe even seek some external feedback.

5) How to bridge the gap between today and who you need to be to achieve your career objectives? Make a list: What personal experience do you need? What training, knowledge or qualifications would be helpful? What books do you need to read? How can you start finding support for success?

6) What can you do to build this bridge to become the person who has achieved your career objectives? Yes it is time for your plan. How can you meet each of the criteria from step 5? When specifically you will do each of these?

Career success is intimately tied with the value you produce. Therefore the number one activity for achieving your goals is to invest in yourself. If you do not grow and become more valuable, then neither will your achievements. By creating a personal development plan you can prevent piss poor career performance!

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