How To Grow Your Career Through Professional Development

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Professional development is more than just attending a yearly conference or sitting through a colleague’s presentation. Professional development applies to every individual within an agency, organization, or business, from CEOs to new hires. A professional development plan is an excellent way to monitor the progress of an individual’s goals and their advancement in their career. These professional development plans can be used by anybody in any field, career, or business. 

There are an infinite number of ways to promote professional development, and the main categories are listed below. Each type of professional development should be challenging, supported, and routinely assessed for  greatest  opportunity for success.

Parts of a Professional Development Plan

Challenge

Professional development should be challenging in order to expand a person's knowledge or skills, and should take them out of their comfort zone. Ideally, the challenge should teach an individual how to push the envelope and think outside the box to improve not only their skills but of those around them, and enhance their job performance.

Assess

Continuous assessment is critical to professional development. First, one must look at what the ideal candidate would look like for the position. This can apply to the owner of a company that wants to expand their operations to an employee that wants to achieve promotion or contentment with their position. Through challenges and assessments, an individual can expand to be the best possible version of themselves.

Support

Few goals are ever met without the support of others. This can come in many forms, such as, providing financial support for ongoing training or research, having a sounding board for working through difficult problems, others to share your successes with, or team members that provide support when there are failures.

Types of Professional Development

Continuing Education

Continuing education can be skill-based or knowledge-based.  Knowledge-based training often comes in the form of courses, degrees, and certificates,  where as skill-based education can be achieved through workshops and accreditations.

Continuing education can be formal, through a college, university, or through associations or organizations whose goal it is to share knowledge and expand opportunities through conferences. 

Continuing education can also be informal within a subset of individuals with similar backgrounds and goals. As one individual expands their skills and knowledge they can then show, demonstrate, and educate others around them. 

Continuing education often requires financial assistance, through an employer, loans, or grants.  Due to the difficulty of some educational programs, emotional support, time off, and support from a team is often necessary. Continuing education opportunities should be challenging to be worth the financial requirement, but not so challenging as to make routine job performance exhausting.

Participating in Organizations and Associations

As mentioned above, continuing education can be provided by organizations and associations. Becoming a member of one of these has many benefits, including availability of conferences, workshops, and meetings, opportunities to provide and attend  presentations.  these organizations and associations very often have available opportunities to serve on their board or is a Committee Member. Being a part of these groups also allows for further career development By getting to know and learning from other Professionals in the field.

Attending conferences and workshops is an educational opportunity for not just the attendee but for others that work alongside them. Is an opportunity to share knowledge that is learned. Progress can also be made by learning of new technology, opportunities for Grants, and networks for bringing in new Talent.

Organizations and associations may have criteria for continuing education and often have yearly dues. The support necessary would include Financial and the time available to participate in these groups. Participation should be within the scope of the individuals job performance. With the understanding it could enhance and expand their career opportunities as well as their resume.

Research

Conducting research and writing articles, papers, or text books on subjects enhances one's knowledge of a topic and then the knowledge can be shared with others.  Research is also an opportunity for developing or enhancing one's specialty in their field or to expand beyond their specialty. Research can often be time consuming and at times arduous, so support by a team or supervisor are important for accomplishing research goals.

Research may require grants for time, tools, equipment, and staffing, or may have no financial requirements whatsoever. The complexity of the research can vary significantly. it is therefore important to assess the benefits of such research to the organization and the individual. Support may not be financial, but more professional as the individual may require someone to be a sounding board or their cheerleader.

Enhance Personal Investment

Professional development helps to keep participants invested in their careers. Through continuing education and skill building an individual becomes more invested in the work and becomes invigorated by new knowledge and opportunities. Personal investment can be achieved through continued education and research or through an increase in job duties and responsibilities. This applies to all levels of an organization. Preparing a business for expansion can be rejuvenating for an owner or CEO. Increasing and employee's knowledge to set them up for success if promoted keeps an individual's interest. Having opportunities for advancement and being able to learn the skills necessary to meet those goals makes for more satisfied professionals.

Improving upon existing skills or asking for assistance with a project or assignment, not only gives a sense of camaraderie, but enhances personal investment. Providing skill-based challenges and relying on the individual’s knowledge to advance a business or department is beneficial for all involved.

Enhancing personal investment requires little in the way of financial investment.  It does however require continuous assessment and support from teammates and supervisors. Where as the financial load may be minimal, other supports systems are necessary to develop and enhance personal investment.