Reaching Your Development Goals

McCauley, Martineau

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781604917307
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

After a formal feedback experience individuals are often enthusiastic about pursuing their development goals but then hesitate because they do not know where to begin. This guidebook shows three strategies that are necessary in any intentional effort to grow: seek challenging assignments, seek training for targeted skills, and seek developmental relationships. Practical advice is given on how to choose the right assignments, identify specific skills that need improving, and establish relationships that will provide ongoing support and encouragement.

How to Reach Your Goals

We know from research and practice that those who commit to pursuing goals immediately following a feedback experience are much more likely to capitalize on their strengths and set a productive path for growth. There are three strategies that need to be fully utilized in any intentional effort to learn, grow, and change:

1. Seek challenging assignments. You will need to practice the skills and behaviors required to reach your goal—and practice them in situations that matter. You are most likely to find these opportunities for real-time practice in the challenges in your current job or in new assignments you seek out.

2. Seek training for targeted skills. You can benefit from formal training in specific areas clearly linked to your development goals. In fact, this is one of the best times to consider a training program—you will be motivated to apply what you learn in the program because it will bring you closer to your development goals.

3. Seek developmental relationships. You increase your chances of reaching your goals if you don’t try to do it alone. You will need to identify people whom you can learn with and through—and enlist their help.

Seek Challenging Assignments

Think about how you have learned much of what has made you successful thus far in your career. If you are like most people, you have learned a great deal from your actual work experiences—from such things as tackling a business problem or managing difficult employees or taking on responsibilities for which you were ill-prepared. Many of these challenging assignments were not planned. They happened, you had to figure out what to do, and you learned from the experience.

When you set a development goal, it makes sense to seek out challenging assignments that will force you to work toward your goal. This is a potent development strategy because it:

• Allows you to practice the skills and behaviors you are trying to improve. You learn by doing, seeing what works and what doesn’t, trying it again.

• Motivates you to improve. If you don’t improve the skills and behaviors you’ve targeted, you’ll likely not do well in the assignment. It will be obvious to you and others that you aren’t reaching your development goals.

What kind of assignment will help you work on your development goals? The first thing to do is decide if your goal is to:

• Develop a new leadership competency—one that you haven’t had the need or opportunity to develop thus far in your career.

• Expand a capacity you have already started developing—you have learned the basics and now want to expand and refine your abilities.

• Overcome a weakness—something you are not doing well in your current job.

If your goal is to develop an untested competency or expand an existing one, you’ll need to seek out new assignments to provide the opportunity to practice needed skills and behaviors. If your goal is to overcome a weakness, the needed developmental challenges are probably already part of your current job.

Seeking new challenges. New challenges help develop new leadership competencies. Changing jobs is one way to get new challenges. But there are less disruptive ways. You can add responsibilities to your current job or take on temporary assignments inside or outside your organization.

In the table Using New Challenges for Development, we have listed three examples of development goals, and for each we have listed potential new jobs, new tasks or responsibilities, and temporary assignments that could help an individual work toward the goal. For each individual and each development goal, there are many potential assignments that could provide the challenges needed for continued development. You must decide what new challenges will address your develop...