Creating an Annual Development Plan
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Click here to view and download an Annual Development Plan Template.
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As we wind up the fourth quarter of the calendar year, we’ll be exploring three essential tools connected to our 2021 walk through the Team Member Experience Path.
We have found a majority of organizations utilize the Annual Performance Review process as a means and method of growing and developing Team Members. However, we believe the Annual Performance Review process falls woefully short of, and is an ineffective means of, truly demonstrating caring, investing in the well-being of each Team Member, and increasing and enhancing their level of engagement and effectiveness. As Leader Managers, we tend to focus on what we know best, and what Leader Managers generally know best is subject matter expertise! The Annual Development Plan in alignment with 1-1 coaching is a tool and process that helps shift the focus from subject matter expertise to a focus on personal and professional growth and development.
During the final quarter of 2021 we will be connecting three key components of an individual’s Team Member experience:
How to create an Annual Development Plan (October)
Solving the Compensation Equation (November)
Meaningful Development and Performance Management Goal Setting (December)
First, let’s differentiate between Performance Management and Development Planning as both are critical and vital to ensuring the effectiveness of any Team Member. Managing performance includes training that supports subject matter expertise such as technical training. Developing people focuses on coaching the personal and professional growth and development of your Team Member. Now, as Simon Sinek likes to refer to them, it’s “technical/subject matter expertise skills” and “human skills.” When synthesized successfully, optimum engagement and effectiveness usually result. Very simply, effective Leader Managers coach behavior and manage performance. Both vital, both impactful, both important – not an either/or conversation, but a both/and reality.
In our practice we help Leader Managers focus on creating a formal, disciplined, consistent mechanism to ensure people development is institutionalized similar to the daily, weekly, monthly focus on managing and measuring results and activity in the normal course of operations. For example, you may have a Leader Manager that reports to you that you feel lacks initiative. When thinking through missed project deadlines you realize your colleague lacks attention to detail and does not ask for clarity when they get stuck at a certain point in an assignment. You may be frustrated when your expectations are not met and when towards the end of the project you learn a key constituency group was missed early on in the communication process.
The steps to holding a monthly 1-1 development meeting begins simply with a conversation that can be outlined as follows:
Ask your colleague how they would like to grow and develop in the next 12 months. They may share statements such as: become more patient, develop the courage to set boundaries, become more resourceful, become more of a strategic thinker or learn to “lead up.” The answers to this question will become their Coaching Objectives.
Identify 2 or 3 specific characteristics and skills connected to their Coaching Objectives that will form the basis of their Annual Development Plan. Name and record the characteristics and skills:
Sample Characteristics - Courage, Patience, Initiative
Sample Skills - Delegation, Coaching, Problem Solving
When Steps 1 and 2 are complete, spend time brainstorming creative ways to identify and record quarterly Vocational, Educational, Life and or Reading/Listening action steps that can be implemented to achieve your colleagues’ Development Goals:
Vocational – Lead a cross functional team project or collaboration group
Educational – Enroll in a learning opportunity – Project Management Professional certification
Life – Volunteer for a civic or community organization
Reading/Listening – Think Again, (Adam Grant) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, (Steven Covey) or Radical Candor, (Kim Scott)
When the plan is mutually established, schedule monthly 1-1 Meetings lasting 45 minutes to 1 hour to intentionally discuss your colleagues’ efforts, challenges, successes, insights, and feedback into their learning, growth, and development journey. When 1-1 Development Coaching is implemented effectively, we have found levels of Team Member engagement, satisfaction, intentionality, and performance increase in meaningful and measurable ways.
We’ve also found that if a Team Member resists the 1-1 Coaching process or exhibits a desire not to engage for some reason, it can expose a lack of role fit, a disinterest in the company or in some cases, an inappropriate values fit with the organization.
It is the Leader Manager’s responsibility to ensure environments are created where each Team Member can be and become the most effective version of themselves. Successfully integrating performance management with personal and professional growth and development coaching can lead to rich and rewarding workplace experiences. We encourage you to begin 2022 with a renewed purpose and focus on helping others be and become the most effective versions of themselves!
READING
21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
John Maxwell
2022 Managing From The Inside Out Dates
Winter 2022
February 2, 9, 16, 23
March 2, 9, 16
Spring 2022
May 4, 11, 18, 25
June 1, 8, 15
Fall 2022
October 5, 12, 19, 26
November 2, 9, 16
Classes are held weekly and in person from 8:30-11:30 A.M. in Lancaster at the Cork Factory Hotel. To view and download the 2022 flier with additional session information, please click here.
Register today to engage in professional growth and development as a Leader Manager and join us for Managing From The Inside Out! Simply email Katie Williamson at katie@lauraschanz.com to reserve a seat for yourself or a Team Member. The 2022 Registration Fee is $1,195.