‘You cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. To that end each of us must work on our own improvement’
Marie Curie
Self-development is undoubtedly a lifelong and continual process. There are also theories that support the idea, that as human beings we have a desire to learn and understand more (For example, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 1970)
Having the right mind-set is important, such as self-awareness, a sense of direction, motivation and resilience.
This philosophy has many advantages to the individual such as learning new skills, pushing you potentially outside of your comfort zone, it develops your strengths; helping with both your current strengths and developing new ones, helps improve on your weaknesses, boosts your confidence and you learn new skills.
So your self-development can align with your professional, personal and learning lives.
There are several elements to managing your own self development, no matter which stage if the journey you are at.
- To start with, you must have a clear vision of where you want to go and what you want to achieve as outcomes from your self development
- You must have a personal development plan which covers what you want to achieve with SMART objectives; these objectives will continually evolve and can be categorized into short, medium and longer term
- You should keep a record of everything you do to aid your personal development
- Keep reviewing your personal development plan to ensure it is up to date and in line with where you are aiming for. For example, during a 121 or performance appraisal if you are working in an organisation. Where possible your development should align in with organisational goals so everyone gets some benefit- PDP’s can also be used to explore how much an employee has proactively done to learn and develop new skills
Self-development offers many significant benefits and there is plenty of insight that says it is more regularly embraced at a company and individual level.
It’s many advantages include;
- It can improve an employee’s engagement, skills and performance
- It can help achieve an upwardly mobile workforce and maximise the opportunities for promoting from within
- Increased productivity. This will help maximise your employees value to the organisation
- As employees will be constantly updating their skills this can also help organisations handle change more effectively
We can, therefore, readily see that self-development offers considerable benefits for employer and employee. It can help employees learn, grow, pursue their own career ambitions and their personal interests.
Personal development can help in all areas of your life and is undoubtedly an individual journey, one that needs to be prioritised, sustained and become lifelong.