Professional Development Examples
Leading up to this point, we’ve looked at several answers to Why is Professional Development Important? and we’ve worked through several key things we each need to consider as we set our Professional Development Goals. While that should serve as a reasonable foundation that we can build on as we’re intentional about growing professionally, there’s no reason we should feel like we’re alone in the process! Having strong examples to follow can help the process go much more smoothly…
Let’s face it, no two people will follow the exact same journey when it comes to their professional development. We all have different experiences we’re building on and it’s extremely rare for any of us to have the same long term goals - especially when we’ve invested the time and energy necessary to gain the kind of specificity my friend challenged me to get like I referenced previously. But regardless of where we’re coming from or where we’re heading, there’s still no need to start from scratch.
In complete transparency, I understand how tough it can be when we start a new role with more and different responsibilities than we’ve ever had. Just keeping our heads above water with those new tasks can be a huge challenge even without taking anything else on. It can often feel like the best option is to get in a rhythm before we add one more thing to our plate. But choosing to wait until we have more time can be a recipe for failure, especially when so many of those new responsibilities require us to do things we’ve never done before!
While it doesn’t always feel like it, there’s a high likelihood that we’re not the first person to ever be in that specific scenario. One of the things that’s helped me the most when I’ve been in a position like this has been to look for folks who have had similar experiences and learn all I can from them. In many cases, some of them are people we interact with on a daily basis and all we need to do is start asking them questions. I really believe we can learn something from every person we interact with, even if it’s what NOT TO DO, but the best examples I’ve ever had were the people who had not only been in similar situations but the ones who had been intentional about continuous professional development as they worked through those similar situations. Even though our approach may vary a bit from theirs, studying what they did can give us so much perspective on what types of professional development resources can give us the most value and how we can manage our time as we work to keep all of our plates spinning.
As we identify the best examples we have access to on a regular basis, we can begin studying their successes and failures with hopes of streamlining our own path forward. And when we’re asking these folks questions about their journey, we begin building relationships that can provide us with something even more powerful in our professional development journey so let’s dig into that now then we’ll circle back to those resources that can often seem overwhelming...
Who Keeps You In Line?
That’s an interesting question, huh… Who keeps you in line? If you know me well, you know at least one person who’s done that for me over the last twenty-plus years has been my darling bride! And that’s often been more than a full time job for her… But thankfully, she hasn’t had to do it all on her own the entire time.
I opened here by sharing how important I believe it is for each of us to identify the people around us who can serve as living, breathing professional development examples that we can study to make our own journey smoother and more effective. And while that certainly provides us with a solid starting point as we move into each new role throughout our career progression, simply observing and asking a question here and there won’t likely always be enough to help us really separate ourselves from the masses. That’s where the value of strong mentorship comes into play; more specifically, having access to people who are farther along on their journey that we can look to for guidance and to help hold us accountable to continue pushing forward even when things get tough…
I do joke a bit about Cindy keeping me in line, but I’m very serious in saying that she truly has been someone I’ve been able to be accountable to for more than two decades; not because she’s mean and makes me toe the line, but because we’re a team and I want to be sure I’m always doing my fair share. That said, I’ve also been blessed with numerous other people during that time who I’ve been able to look to for mentorship in various areas of my life and career - and I’ve been able to develop relationships with a few of them who would also hold me accountable to following through on the action steps I defined to grow professionally (and personally) so that I would keep pressing on during those tough times.
Let’s be honest here, it’s always easier to stick with what we know than it is to press forward or take on new responsibility. If we only look at the people around us for examples of what they’ve done to grow professionally, there will be times where we consider throwing in the towel because it feels like we’re facing obstacles that they couldn’t have possibly had to deal with. But when we invest the time to build stronger relationships and allow someone to mentor us through that professional development process, we have the opportunity to see the full picture and we may actually end up with someone who’s willing to challenge us to stay accountable even when we don’t want to be!
Regardless of where we’re each at in our professional development journey, there will always be times where we stay more consistent or we do that one extra thing when we’re accountable to someone else than we would if we were only doing it for ourselves.This kind of accountability has been so helpful for me that we’ve built it into every session we provide for clients in-person and virtually, as well as through all of our digital resources. If the folks we serve identify the action steps they can take AND they share those steps with someone they’re willing to be accountable to, the odds of achieving the results they’re after are significantly greater.
Earlier I mentioned that identifying the right resources for professional development can be overwhelming. Having great examples to study and finding someone you can be accountable to set a great foundation for sure, but those two things can also serve us extremely well in sifting through the massive amount of potential resources so we can identify where we can get the most juice for our squeeze. Let’s wrap up by taking a look at how we can be strategic about all that...
Is the Juice Really Worth the Squeeze?
Once we’ve accepted the reality that ongoing professional development is actually critical to being successful in each new challenge we take on as well as maintaining success in even our current role, and we create clarity around what we need our professional development process to look like, we need to make sure we’re taking advantage of the resources that will serve us best as we chase our goals.
Following strong examples is a great start, and finding the right people to mentor us along the way plays a key role too, but we’ll still need to make sure we’re taking advantage of every other resource we can get our hands on if we truly want to separate ourselves from the pack! So how can we determine which resources will give us the most value? How can we make sure the juice really is worth the squeeze?
The sky's the limit for what we can accomplish, but the one restriction we all have in common is the number of hours we have access to in our day. And let’s be honest here, there’s no shortage at all for magic pills in the marketplace that promise to fix our exact problem… Don’t believe me? Just talk about an issue you’re facing with your cell phone nearby and watch the ads start popping up in your social media feed and in your spam folder! But regardless of what most of those promise, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s where all the time and energy we invested into developing absolute clarity around what we’re working to achieve begins to matter. If we’ve done that well, and we’ve built strong relationships with mentors we can trust, then we can really dial in on the professional development resources that give us the absolute best value for the time we invest into them.
Early on in our careers, there’s a strong chance that much of the development we need will be focused around the technical side of our profession. And while the need to continue honing our technical skills will never completely go away - especially with how fast any given field can change with a single new piece of technology - that will eventually become just a small part of the overall professional development we need to focus on. As we advance in our careers, we often find ourselves with more and more responsibility for the people around us. That’s where a whole different kind of professional development begins to matter; it’s often much more difficult to get the same kind of results through people as we were able to through a machine or a technical process!
Having clarity around our next goal as well as our long term goal, then being very transparent with the mentors we have in place can be critical in helping identify which resource will help us the most right now and which ones we should be considering that will serve us in each new scenario we face as we move forward. When Cindy and I built our Emerging Leader Development course several years ago, it was really intended for someone at a very specific point in the career. And although we’ve seen it serve people in many more stages of their careers that we initially pictured, we still knew it would have limitations since we could only squeeze a certain amount of juice from the six separate lessons it provides.
That drove us to launch our Leading At The Next Level program as a way to support the folks who completed the ELD course and wanted to go deeper into the tools they would need to lead their teams. Since then, we’ve even started offering Strategic Leadership Coaching as a way to work directly with someone to help them make sure the action steps they identify from any lesson we share gets them the most juice possible from every single squeeze they make!
No two people will have the exact same goals or need the exact same resources, that’s where clarity matters so much! But the one constant I’ve seen over and over for more than twenty years has been the need for developing the skills that help us work effectively with the individuals around us as we grow in whatever career path we’re on. I’ll close by challenging you to develop that clarity I’ve referenced several times for what your next goal needs to be, then get the ball rolling toward accomplishing it by being intentional about your ongoing professional development journey!
What's Leading At The Next Level All About?
Initially created as an ongoing resource for those who had completed our Emerging Leader Development course, this Leading At The Next Level program now offers several dozen lessons so individuals and organizations can be very intentional about creating strategic, ongoing personal and professional development plans. With topics ranging from strategic leadership development to effective workplace communication and improving employee engagement by building a strong organizational culture, you're sure to find a lesson that addresses nearly any challenge you're facing in your workplace today.
Disclaimer: This material is for educational use only. You alone are responsible for implementing the steps necessary to become an effective leader at each new level in your career. While we will share things that we've seen make an amazing impact in numerous organizations, we can't take action for you. By registering for this or any of our courses, you accept complete and total responsibility for taking action to apply what we share in your own role and for making a positive impact on each individual you lead!
