Your personal development plan, we are now getting into my most favorite topic when it comes to corporate career and to work. And you think I'm kidding or exaggerating, or that I'm too different? Well, let me tell you, if you want to accelerate your career, you better start adopting the belief that your personal development plan is the most important activity you must focus on at work, learning every day, becoming better working on the feedback you're getting, and increasing your skills and behaviors. This is what is going to get you to the next level faster and quicker than anything. Remember the three key pillars of success? Focus on the what?

Focus on how you deliver and focus on developing yourself and learning every day. So how do you do that? How do you work on your personal development plan? First of all, I would encourage you to go and consult your HR team, because I am pretty sure that there is already an existing processes in place in your company or environment. Yeah. So sit down with HR or with your manager and ask them what's the personal development process in this company.

They call it IDP, PDP doesn't really matter. And you usually get great tools, great materials from HR from your manager, that will help you structure your personal development and implemented in a consistent manner. The real problem is not the process, the real problem is not the tools. The real problem is the importance that people give to the PDP even your manager may not be fully excited about this, you know, and you will have time in your career where your manager will not believe in personal development and will be quite against spending lots of time on it. That's okay. Because remember, you are in charge of your career, not your manager.

So it doesn't really matter what he or she thinks. Because for you, it's important and you've decided that you will spend time on it. That's what's important in HR and senior leadership will always encourage you to do so. Believe me, find the right sponsors, find the people who are successful in your company, and who believe in personal development, and make sure that they know you share this love and this passion with them. They will support you and they will help you to be successful. So how do you do a PDP you've got your processes, you've got your tool, I don't want to repeat or contradict whatever your HR business partner or colleague will tell you.

That's not my point. I will just introduced a few guidelines, either for those who don't have a process in their HR team. For those who are just seeking for a different way to do this as enriching their existing process, so, I personally use a matrix level of first of all the three key key pillars of success. So what how in personal development, and I combine this with the way human beings learn, the way human being beings learn is actually by doing by watching others. And through theory. Imagine that you want to drive a car.

In order to drive a car, you can read the manual about all the equipment and their use and what's this button for, and what's this pedal for and there is a steering wheel, and you can get that you can watch somebody else driving and you can see how they do to shift the gear to turn, where they Luke, and how they sit. You can look at all they do and learn from this too. And finally, you can learn by practicing by doing it yourself. So, you learn by doing you learn by watching others and you learn through series theory, sorry. So, the ratio between those is the following 70% of what you learn is by doing 20% is through others, and 10% is through Siri. So make sure in your personal development plan, that you have 70% 20% and 10% types of activities in each of your learning focus areas.

Then what I do is identify 123 skills that I want to develop, agree with my manager that those are the skills I should really develop, and I focus on them with a 70 2010 action plan. Where do I get my competencies from on you know, the things I want to focus on as my personal development but very simple I use longer who has a list of 67 skills or competencies. I encourage you to check the book called FYI, for your improvement. If you want further details on those competencies, it's things like managing measuring work, communication skills, written skills, coordinating, facilitating meetings, directing others decision quality, this type of things. Yeah. So really, at each level in your career, you will have to develop further some set of skills.

What are the skills that you need to develop where you are right now that will prepare you best for your next role? Look for the feedback you're getting. Ask your manager, ask your peers and get from them the type of skills that you can improve so that your results, the what and the how are tremendously improved. So I hope this makes sense. In summary, my personal development plan looks like what, how, and PDP. And for each, I have a column for how I'm going to do this by 70% of doing, how I'm going to learn through others, and how I'm going to learn through theories.

Theories can be books, trainings, articles, online trainings, this type of things. And from others, I would look for role models, mentors, people who do this in a brilliant way within the organization, or even outside, and how can I learn from them by spending time with them. So that's your personal development plan. You can use HR, you can use my principles. Really, again, I'm saying it because it's so important. The point is not about the process or about the tools.

You can use whatever tool or process you like, as long as you make it a priority for yourself and that you invest sideral amount of time and efforts in growing. And for that, look for feedback. remain open and take whatever feedback you get from people around you, and work on it. And ask yourself, How can I grow? How can I be a bit better, more rounded professional? How can I increase my performance?

How can I change my How? How do they perceive me? What did they think of me? and What impact did I have with this person or in that meeting? This is the key questions that will help you grow and progress faster. Remember, three key pillars of success, your what your how and you PDP, you take three boxes, you making progress in your career faster than anyone, by the way, work with your peers.

I didn't mention it enough. But when I was at the beginning of my career, I used to sit down with my peers and we would study personal devices. We would look at each other's personal development plans, we would review our competencies and learn them by heart, we would prepare and do mock interviews. And we would give each other feedback constantly hear us later, when I look back into this, we know this peer in particular, we both got promoted several times. Yeah. And this work we did together and power that so much.

So look at your peers and think why they're, maybe today you could think Well, there's going to be one position of manager and we are going to be competitors for that position. But if you think in the wider scheme of things, it is much more valuable to work together with your peers grow together, and expand your skills as much as possible, because opportunities will arise with abundance, whether it's in that company or another. And you should never feel like there is a scarcity in that you should protect yourself from your peers. Not work with them. So open up, find a few individuals that you trust particularly and offer them to work on personal development together. It's much more fun.

You're going to make more progress and again, is going to give great visibility because you're now acting as a role model and that will make a lot of noise.