Sticky Learning Lunches #13: Create Your Own Personal Development Plan

Understand the 5 simple steps to create your personal development plan in Part 2 of this PDP series.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Amazing, right? We are just giving it a couple more minutes or minutes for the people to carry on arriving. People are still entering the room, which is good. Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday. Given the UK the weather has taken a slight change, so it's a little bit cooler and it's rainy instead of sunny. On a scale of one 10, before we get started, on a scale of one 10, how are you feeling?

Nathan Simmonds:

One being terrible, 10 being phenomenal. Whereabouts are you right now? Mindset, mentally right now in what you're doing, where you are right now in existence on, on what's going on. Getting a good spread of numbers. Got some ups and downs, a lot of people hitting eights out there. There's a nine. Fully focused and energized and ready. Thank you very much.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, about a six weather cold work. Really busy, still working in the office. I'm feeling you on that. Although I'm working from home, that shift and whether that shift in temperature really brought my, my, uh, my mindset down a little bit today. Wherever you are on that scale, I will get, I'm just receiving a comment. Comment in there. Wherever you are on that scale, what can you do right now that is gonna take you one step higher, that's gonna take you to the next number?

Nathan Simmonds:

What's the one thing you can do right now that's gonna make you do that? Is it now to re oxygenate yourself? Is it stand up and stretch? Is it to give you, give me your full attention and see where this is gonna help you go in the next 20 to 30 minutes. What's that one thing that you can do to get, increase that energy you've got right now? Brush to my hair. Nice. Focus on myself at this time. Yeah, absolutely. Finish off one thing. Absolutely not. Take the feedback too personally.

Personal growth is key to success

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Feedback's a wonderful thing. It's a gift. There is no such thing as good or bad feedback. There is only ever feedback. The um, a thing is neither good or bad. It's the thinking that makes it so I paraphrase. There would always be something in there worth taking out. There'll always be something worth grabbing onto and going, okay, what actually do I need to do with that? How can that help me move forward? So it's important we do this. Uh, brush my hair is one of them.

Nathan Simmonds:

Before I go into any online meetings, before I even get into these, you know what the one thing that I do that just helps me to get really focused, brush my teeth. I know it sounds crazy. I brush 'em in the morning. I brush 'em in the evening. But before this, I think because I'm not physically in a room and I'm con I'm, I become hyper conscious of myself and maybe I've had a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or whatever, just brushing my teeth helps me get focused, helps me get more engaged in what I'm doing and then just feel fresher helps me deliver this content we are in.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's get set up for success. Enough of the chitchat. Make sure you've got a drink handy. Let's make sure you've got herbal drinks, you've got water, making sure you're staying hydrated, even with the drop in temperature. You've got a fresh piece of paper, you've got a fresh notepad. No distractions on there, no other pieces of work at the top. You're gonna write keepers.

Nathan Simmonds:

Keepers are those things that you want to remember, that you want to read back through so that you can reignite your thinking so you can come up with new ideas as a result of going back through those doodles and those notes and those bullet points that you take from today's session. The goal, as always, is to get more than three. So anything that I say or any questions that people ask me and I'm sharing ideas and concepts, is to write down more than three keepers so that we can keep that momentum of thought going.

Nathan Simmonds:

That's what we do here at Sticky Learning. Let's get into this. Welcome to today's session. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. Continuing. This is part two of the PDP planning. You know, personal development planning. This is about the structure. My name is Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter, the Home of Sticky Learning. We are the provider of leadership development and soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

I do with these sessions is to give you 20 minutes of learning, 10 minutes of q and a, focused on helping you be the best possible version of you in the work that you do right now and for when you return back to the workplace. Um, face-to-face. Are we already? Yes, I'm hoping that is the answer. I'm hoping you all said a positive affirmed. Yes. Today we are continuing to look at PDP is gonna be predominantly about structure is the first thing we wanna look at.

Nathan Simmonds:

This is gonna be the first step to our structure. Hello on. Let's come back out of that. I'm gonna step out that for two seconds. The question that I've got for you all, and this is a big question and again I'm gonna say this again. HR and I have some challenges when I use this language. It's important we understand this. Do you have an exit strategy? What is your exit strategy for the project you're working on for the job that you are in for the career that you are moving in or out of?

Nathan Simmonds:

What is your strategy in order to make that happen? Now it's important. We've got some yeses coming up already. It's important that we understand that we start putting these strategies in place. What is it? Um, strategy without tactics is the long road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Sue, I can't remember what year he wrote that, but it was, um, potentially before Christ was born.

Nathan Simmonds:

So it's important that we understand that we have a strategy and we are employing the tactics to make those two elements work together. And having an exit strategy means that you can maintain that momentum and that curve on the way out of going on, on the way to going where you need to be.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we just had the comment come in Nova, I now, I'm now aware that I need to invest time into it. Absolutely. 'cause otherwise we don't know what's going on. The structure is the strategy that's gonna make that happen. So the first thing we wanna look at is how are we gonna make the strategy, sorry, how do I make the structure? The first step of this is to have an OAG, which is what we're gonna talk about today. Overarching

Nathan Simmonds:

Goal whenever I work with someone, uh, as a coach or as a trainer, is we always want to create an overarching goal. The overarching goal is the goal that you can see the furthest point out. It is the, um, the biggest, um, accomplishment, um, point you wanna be working to. So this could be three years from now. It could be five years from now. It could be 10, 20, 30, 40 depending on, on how you've cultivated your goal setting thinking and your approach to these things.

Nathan Simmonds:

It will be the goal that has, you know, it is the furthest out. And what this will do is when I'm coaching people, this will be the point that we are working to, this here will be the umbrella for everything we we're working on it inside those conversations, inside those sessions, the other actions that we start to work on and and um, review and develop will all sit underneath this umbrella helping us to move to that point there.

Nathan Simmonds:

That fateful question that we get asked when we're in an interview though, where do you see yourself in five years time? And we have the cliche answers and they've probably come up. Um, where do I see myself in five years time doing your job? 'cause it makes me sound, um, positive for an enthusiastic and, and all those things.

Nathan Simmonds:

The problem is with that question, well the problem is with answering that question is we don't get asked it enough and we don't ask ourselves that question enough and actually to, and to sit in it and find that answer and to work out where we want to go and what we want to do. And as a result of that, when we do get asked it, we get stumped. And the answer we often get is, I dunno. And we have to go away and ruminate on it and, and come up with ideas and it becomes difficult.

Nathan Simmonds:

So the first part of the structure is, is you want an overarching goal. Pole time. I think let's have a look at this big question for you all today. In line with the exit strategy. When did you start planning for your next job? We're gonna open the poll up quickly for this because I wanna get some ideas of, of when you started to do this. Have a look. So the polls open. When did you start planning for your next job?

Nathan Simmonds:

12 months plus we've got a lot of people saying 12 months plus one month. So when we start looking at and as these ask coming, when we start looking at the overarching goal, it makes it much easier to start planning what the next job's gonna be. What the next step is. What promotion do I need to be working on or department do I need to be angling to in order to make this a reality? When we can see that we can start to work out the steps. 'cause you can map forward an engineer backwards. Ah, just being reminded I'm not on full screen apologies. Thank you for the reminder, Andy appreciated.

Nathan Simmonds:

So when we have the overarching goal, we can understand what the steps are that are gonna make us get there. And then we can start planning out, well actually what's the next job that I need to be in? What's the next promotion or what I need to to work on that's gonna make that happen?