CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE KEY TO PERSONAL GROWTH
CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE KEY TO PERSONAL GROWTH
By NICHOLAS C. HILL(FIC FInstLM)
The process of personal skills, experience, and knowledge documentation and tracking is widely referred to as Continuing Professional Development or CPD.
The tracked and documented professional details in the CPD are those experiences and learning gained either informally or formally throughout an employee’s career, prior to actual training or employee development initiatives from an employer. This data is then employed by organisations to tailor-fit a training and development plan for a specific employee.
The Continuing Professional Development data is a helpful tool for professionals to self-manage, efficiently and continually, his or her development plan. It seeks to provide career-driven individuals an easy and convenient point of reference in relation to previously gained career insights, and ideally, use these reflections to fashion a defining and decisive personal career goal.
The CPD has a list of basic and essential components; it must be documented in an ongoing process, and it should be a self-motivated venture as opposed to mandated by one’s employer, among others.
CPD is the underlying philosophy of all of our management and leadership skills courses Birmingham, Exeter, Manchester, London, Newcastle and Glasgow.
CPD allows a professional to keep track of his or her career’s progress. Furthermore, it also becomes useful during instances when organisations require a detailed account of professional undertakings in order to grant membership of a professional body.
Aside from these obvious CPD benefits, here are other advantages to maintaining a Continuing Professional Development record:
- It offers an updated overview of one’s development in his or her profession
- CPD is a constant reminder of one’s professional achievements and career progress
- Allows professionals to maintain career focus, and paves the way for efficient conception of personal goals and objectives
- A Continuing Professional Development record provides essential insights in relation to a professional’s lacking or insubstantial skills, thus giving one a chance to address a self-recognised area for improvement
- Development requirements are easily ascertained
- Displays one’s professional merits to both employers and clients
- Career development or potential career shift is revealed through careful study of one’s Continuing Professional Development record.
To get started with a Continuing Professional Development record, a few considerations have to be made. For a more broad discussion, we recommend attending our leadership and management skills courses Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Exeter, Newcastle or London.
1. Present professional standing
This is the status of your career in the present day. Crucial considerations include your pivotal learning experiences over the last quarter or year. Reflect on all of the insights you have gained over this period, whether such insights were gained from formal training courses or from daily/routine office scenarios.
2. General career objective
After determining your present career standing, the next question to answer is, “where do you want your career to be directed?” This objective should be framed within a specific time of two, five, or ten years from present. Once you have plotted a long-term goal, this should then be reinforced with at least three short-term objectives, which you deem as essentials in moving forward to your career vision.
3. Action plan
It is not only important to have a goal but you need a plan too. Creating action steps to achieve your goals can be where a Continuing Professional Development initiative gets problematic. Consider further training and development courses as requisites to your career plan and recruit a mentor to guide you in your plans.
4. Progress review
This is the part when CPD comes in full practice. Progress, relative to your career goal, should be consistently tracked and documented. Your manager or HR personnel will usually book these progress reviews or appraisals on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. For those individuals that do not report to a manager, a hired mentor will provide a person with the necessary accountability to keep him or her on track.
Nicholas C. Hill is Managing Director and Principal Trainer for The Hill Consultancy Ltd, London, specialising in UK-wide public training courses in leadership and management development. Become a highly productive manager and influential leader today. Claim £100 off the list price on any two-day course. Promotional code: PASSION0213. Visit the website or call now to find out more or request a FREE consultation. T: 020 7993 9955 W: www.nicholashill.com