Why You Need a Professional Development Plan

Many people who are unhappy with their careers come to career development counseling looking for answers. They see other people getting ahead and loving their work, and they wonder why they feel so stuck and unsatisfied. They’re hoping a good career coach can help them figure out what they want and how to achieve it. I can tell you that the missing ingredient is never some mysterious quality that makes some people shinier and more successful than others — although I know it can look that way from the outside. More often, the difference is pretty basic: Some people are skilled at professional development planning, and others aren’t yet. 

In general, most of us don’t spend enough time planning our lives. We’re too frazzled by the endless to-do list we need to get through to ever zoom out and consider the big picture: Where do I want to be in ten years, and how exactly do I plan to get there? And, most important, how do the things I’m spending my time on every day fit into that plan?

If you don’t have an answer to those questions yet, this article is for you. I hope it inspires you to begin thinking about your own career vision and how you’ll bring it to fruition. Without a professional development plan, it’s too easy to wander from job to job, having your priorities set by someone else’s grand vision for their career, their business, and their life. You deserve the chance to design your own life around what matters most to you, based on your values and purpose. I hope this article will give you some ideas about where to begin. 

If you prefer to listen, I’ve also created an episode of the Love, Happiness, and Success podcast on this topic. It features my colleague Ronni M., a career coach and counselor on our team at Growing Self. She’s sharing her own career story, and the framework she uses to help people like you plan and create professional lives they love. You can find the episode on this page, Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 

What Is Professional Development?

Professional development is about more than putting in your time and holding a series of jobs until you reach your ultimate career goal. It’s really a personal growth process that helps you become the kind of person who can have the career you want to have. 

This work is deeper and more meaningful than the interview prep or resume writing that most people think about when they think about career coaching (although those can be important components). It involves expanding your capabilities by building new skills that will enhance every area of your life, not just your career. 

The best example of this kind of skill is emotional intelligence, which will have a huge impact on the trajectory of your professional life, as well as your personal life, and especially your relationships. Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of your own feelings, manage them effectively, understand the feelings of others, and respond to others in ways that strengthen your relationships. 

This all sounds basic enough, and you may be thinking, “Great, I’m already doing that all the time.” But everyone can benefit from stocking up on emotional intelligence. In fact, most people rate themselves much higher in EI than they prove to be on comprehensive emotional intelligence assessments (just like most people say that they’re “better than average” drivers). Emotional intelligence coaching can help you know where your EI stands now and where you have opportunities to grow. 

This work pays off, literally and figuratively — people with higher levels of emotional intelligence tend to excel in the workplace, while many people who are lower in EI hit career plateaus and can’t figure out how to get unstuck, despite having gobs of talent and admirable work ethics. Their more emotionally intelligent peers are better able to avoid excess stress and burnout, form positive working relationships, and be good leaders who can inspire teams to accomplish great things. That’s why emotional intelligence can be the key to financial success, as well as life satisfaction. In fact, emotionally intelligent people earn nearly $30,000 more per year than people who score lower in emotional intelligence, and many employers have started to prioritize this skill when making hiring and promotion decisions, even above technical abilities. 

As you construct your professional development plan, don’t just think about what job titles you need to hold or experiences you need to have. Think about how you need to develop as a person in order to accomplish the career goals you want to accomplish. Aside from emotional intelligence, your professional development goals may include things like conquering a habit of procrastination, or overcoming perfectionism, or dismantling any limiting beliefs that are holding you back. Wherever you’re trying to go, the secret to getting there is identifying your barriers, facing them head-on, and defeating them one-by-one. 

What Is a Professional Development Plan?

Once you have a big, ambitious vision for the future of your career, your next step is breaking it down into an actionable professional development plan that you can accomplish over years, one step at a time. 

Begin with the end in mind: Where do you want to be ten years from now? Maybe you want to make your living photographing wildlife on the Serengeti. Or lead a team of medical researchers contributing to life-saving breakthroughs. Maybe your career ambition is to work 20 hours a week while spending the rest of your time with your family — that’s fantastic! There are no wrong answers here. 

Next, think about what you need to do to get from where you are now to where you want to be five, ten, or fifteen years from now. It sounds basic, but so many of us never do this kind of career planning. There are obstacles standing in between you and where you want to be — what are they, and what’s your strategy for getting around them? These are your professional development goals, and overcoming them is your path to creating the career you want. 

Professional Development Goals Examples

If there’s a dream job you’d like to have, what experience do you need to have under your belt before you can do that job? What’s holding you back from getting that experience? The answer may be building certain skills so that you can get ahead at work. Or, maybe you need to change careers entirely. Start breaking your big plan down into smaller steps, and then breaking those steps down into substeps. 

Here are a few examples of professional development goals you may need to achieve in order to move forward: 

1. Building your emotional intelligence — The benefits of emotional intelligence are endless. Especially if you want to move from an “executing” role where you’re producing something, to a leadership role where you’re using soft skills to manage others, building your emotional intelligence with intention can be the key to moving forward. 

2. Becoming more organized — To accomplish complex goals that take careful planning and coordination, you need to be organized. Organization skills come easily for some people, but not for everyone. Becoming more organized can help you be more productive, less stressed, and can inspire confidence in the people you work with that you’ve got it all under control. 

3. Cultivating good working relationships — We all have different work styles, and some of us would prefer to keep our heads down and focus on getting stuff done. But having good connections with the people you’re working with can be an important part of getting ahead. If you need to grow in this area in order to succeed, spend some time thinking about ways you could expand and strengthen your professional network. 

4. Earning credentials or certifications — In many fields, having a bachelor’s degree is no longer enough to make you a truly competitive candidate. Completing additional courses, programs, or professional certifications can not only help you do your job at a higher level, it can show employers that you take your ongoing professional development seriously, giving you an edge over other candidates. 

5. Building your technical skills — Are there specific skills you need to learn before you can advance? Be proactive about learning them and you’ll be prepared to seize opportunities to step into roles with greater responsibility. 

Creating Your Professional Development Plan

Don’t get too hung up on creating the One Final Plan that you will follow to a T, because everyone’s career path involves some twists and turns. You will run into obstacles that you can’t predict from your current vantage point, and you’ll discover strengths inside of yourself that will lead you in new directions. 

You will also, in all likelihood, stumble on opportunities that you didn’t plan for, but that just feel right. It’s okay to create your professional development plan, and then radically revise it every year or so as you learn more about yourself and about what opportunities are available for you. That’s part of the fun of having a career; you never know exactly where it will take you. What matters is that, as your plan evolves, you’re being led by your own career values and priorities, rather than someone else’s. 

Support for Your Career Growth

It’s one thing to make a plan, and another thing to put it into action. 

A good career coach can help you get clear about your career goals and what you need to do to accomplish them, and then support you as you begin your journey. You’ll have someone to help you stay motivated, strategic, and focused as you build a career you love.

If you’d like to work with a career development expert on our team, I invite you to schedule a free consultation. 

With love, 

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

P.S. — If you’d like more articles and podcasts on building your career, check out our “professional growth” collection of articles and podcasts.

Music in this episode is by Best Fern with their song “Arrive.” You can support them and their work by visiting their Bandcamp page here: https://bestfern.bandcamp.com/. Under the circumstance of use of music, each portion of used music within this current episode fits under Section 107 of the Copyright Act, i.e., Fair Use. Please refer to copyright.gov if further questions are prompted.

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