Personal Development

Your personal development strategy begins and ends with you. You need to make the time to develop your skills in order to stay up to date. Otherwise you could be left behind in today’s ever-evolving business world.

Benchmark your skills

You should benchmark your skills at least once a year. To do this properly, you need to be very honest with yourself. What skills and capabilities are required of good people in your role and in your industry? Are your skills and competencies up to date and sought after? If not, maybe you need to update some areas of your skill set.

Create a plan

Creating a personal development plan helps to structure your thinking. Your plan should start with a definition of what is important to you and should outline what you want to achieve, the areas where you need to improve and the reasons why you need to improve these.

Make time and space for personal development

Make your own development a priority. This requires time so start by allocating an hour, twice a week, in your schedule. If the office is too busy, find a quiet space or meeting room where you can focus on achieving your personal development objectives.

Learn from others

Experience is often the best teacher. You don’t have enough time to make all the mistakes yourself and learn from them so you might as well learn from the mistakes of others. It may be useful to think about business people or even celebrities that you respect and look up to. Try to identify some of the skills that they possess and consider how you could go about acquiring those skills. For example, if you want to learn to present like Steve Jobs, maybe you need to sign up to a presentation skills course.