Personal development is key to nurturing and utilizing talent in work. There are a seemingly infinite number of initiatives that can lead to success of a company and indivisual fullfillment and satisfaction. As employees (or manager) at this company, we're not just set to meetup with the company's expectations and/or goals, but to grow, learn and improve with the process, not just in IT activities but also in daily habits. In light of that, employee personal development should not be taken lightly.
As New York Times best-selling author, John C. Maxwell once wrote:
Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to seperate themselves from the pack, it's almost always due to personal growth.
As far as personal development is concerned, it'll be addressed from these three angles.
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Vision
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Plan
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Motivation
Purpose is when one knows and understand what he/she was born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it. In order to enhance our growth in the company as a team and also individually, we've got to have some sense of vision. The entails questions like
- What am I aiming at?
- What can I do?
- How do I get there?
- What am I becoming with time?
As a result we need to have a cooperate vision and AIM at reaching our decided objective.
The first way to create a culture of personal development is to create a vision. To help create a vision, it is important that our leaders (here @Adipster) understand what employees goals are (probably through a one-to-one discussion, via slack). Upon knowing the employee's goals (which include what they're aiming at, skillset, career path etc), our leaders can intergrate the goals of the company, and work together to map out a career path. It's also important that the framework of the vision aligns with the organization's direction to help us Adipster employee on their journey. This will keep the company objectives met, while keeping employees more active and motivated to do the work consistently and with motivation.
If we're able to see an outline of our growth in this company, we're more likely to be engaged with a clear unerstanding of our purpose within the company.
A second way to create a culture of personal development is to find ways to put the strategic vision into action. Once we've mapped out a plan (as a team), the next step is putting it into action. Study has shown that career development improves how employees view their future at an organization, 43% of employees says they'd remain with their employeer because of development opportunities; of those without it, only 7% felt the same way. One of the effective ways I've found, is to provide necessary resources and training (access to course that'll help us beta-testers be more effective at our work) that'll make us more effective. Provision of autonomy, resources and tools to grow (like courses to learn etc) is vital for Personal Development.
Third way will be to do regular check-ups on each employee (@Adipster) personal development (skillset is focus the here). Knowing how far we're going on our personal development plan, which could be seen through tracking course we're taking to build skill set, contributions to opensource projects (likely ours), number of shots on project, even some of personal projects (employee will have to give choose on this, if he/she will). Having regular meetings (or talks) on personal development, will keep employees focuced and concious of goals and expectations.
A personal development plan helps one to structure our thinking. We constantly plan and think in our head, but very often we miss important details and we don't creat a realistic strategy to realize that plan.
A personal development plan is a process that consists of defining what is important to you, what you want to achieve, what strengths you already have that help to achieve your goals, and what you need to improve and develoop with time. Propose plan here is rather subjective than factual or it being 'best'.
What is important to you? Which new skills do you want to get? Which achievements would make you happier. The first step is to define goals that are really important to you. As a beta-tester, chances are you'll be introduced to various aspects of computing. You'll have to define what your goals is, if there's going to be some meaningful development. One of the best strategies is to write it down and referrence it regularly.
Out of all goals you wrote down, which one is the most important? This is your key goals, which will be your focus. Since, you'll be working with a team of software engineers, example key goals could be, better communication skills, leadership, improvement in a particular programming language etc. The point here is that, the key goal should reflect on overall improvement of the team as a whole.
If we're going to achieve anything reasonable and be developed personally, we're going to have to set deadlines on the projects (opensource) that'll be working on. This gives members a sense of purpose and responsibility. It also help tracks how far one (or team) is performing, what difficulties is one (or team) facing, what better strategies to introduce.
Since we're not Jacks of all trades, each and everyone on the team needs to know his/her strengths in order to be effective. If a person is good with a particular programming language and weak in a particular one, this should be known not just by the person in question but also by the team members, so as to have a mental picture of what to expect from the colleague and how to better assign tasks and reponsibilities with activities.
Again we're beta-testers, new technologies pop-up here and there, we've got to be up to date with latest technology trends and skills. This will increase our productive not just from work view point but also as we pursue our own personal goals and plans. This can also be a great way to update our CV, resumes and LinkedIn profiles.
Now that everything has written down (hopefully) and a deadline is set, it's time to take some action in achieving the goals. If we're going to achieve a big goal, there will be many actions we'll need to take.
We're human beings and we're not omnipotent nor omniscient. Along this journey we're going to get stuck or find difficulties. We should know when to get support. It could be from a technical angle or any other, but we shouldn't just sit around hoping things will get better, we're going to need to seek help from a colleague (or any other person).
The best motivator to stay persistent in achieving goals is your own progress. Even if it is a little progress, it still something. It is important to recognize that you're moving forward and to write down things that you're doing well. This is were the leaders on the team can really be of great impact. There should be an overall progress measurement metric, this could be, number of objectives met, how long objectives were met etc. The whole point is we'll need to measure how far we've come and how far we'll need to go.
In order to develop ourselves (both in IT and in our personal endeavours), working on a group project will definitely propel our development. This project in question could rang from static web application, dynamic web application, desktop application or even core system application. The main point of interest here is that, the skills use to accomplish project should encompass every sofware engineer @Adipster exploitable skillset. These project should be well plan and tailored to make each individual enhance his/her skillset.