6 Creating a personal development plan
Research suggests that creating a plan will make it more likely that you achieve your goals.
So you’ll finish each week of this course by identifying opportunities to practice and further develop your communication skills. You will be able to follow a structured process called personal development planning.
To find out more, watch this video on personal development planning produced by the Open University’s Careers and Employability team:
Transcript: Video 5
The video explains the five main steps of personal development planning, which are:
- identifying an area of development
- planning what to develop
- taking action
- recording achievements
- reviewing what has been learned.
Activity 6 Personal development planning
Download and save this Personal development planning table [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . You can use this table to plan your long, medium and short-term goals.
Choose a goal that reflects what you have learned about this week and work through the table. For example, you might want to think about an aspect of miscommunication that you’d like to avoid in the future.
Long term goal: Avoid miscommunication
| Short and medium term | Action required | Constraints | Resources – who or what can help me? | Target dates for action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Make sure I always consider the perspective of the person I’m communicating with | Ask others for their view before I present my own | Forgetting to do it in the heat of the moment | I could ask a trusted colleague to observe my approach in meetings etc. and give me feedback | Start on Monday with this new approach |
You will be using this approach to goal setting each week throughout the course.
Discussion
This is an ongoing process, and one which may help you to identify other skills that you wish to improve or develop as you progress through the course.
Next week you will have the opportunity to understand goal setting in more detail. Each week thereafter you will review your progress and identify whether you wish to add any more to your plan.