This may seem obvious but theres no point having a well developed PDP in place if you are not going to regularly monitor and review your progress on it.

“ The plan is reviewed annually by Manager “

I hear this a lot. The plan is yours and although set by you and your Manager it is your responsibility to take care of your own learning. Not sure how many times I say this but its true. Never sit back and wait for someone else to do it for you. They have their own development plans to think about. Take ownership of your learning and development.

Your PDP will have review dates within it, or at least it should do otherwise its just not SMART. You can use these but its also good practice to set a monthly review in with yourself and look at whether you are going to meet targets in the timeframe you set yourself.

Take for example a course you are taking that has maybe 3 or 4 modules and you have set yourself a target to complete 1 per month. You then don’t look at your plan for 6 months at which point you realise the deadline date has past and you haven’t achieved what you wanted.

You will note the title also takes feedback from other into consideration and although in my last post I create a variety of ways you can do this, I would also note that feedback does come to you regularly if you are alert to it.

“job well done” “thank you for your valuable input” “you’re really good at this”

Vs

“I feel you left that too late” “I need you to make better decisions” “there are errors in this report”

Real life feedback is streaming on a daily basis, don’t ignore it, it is valuable both good and bad it can help you think about what you are good at and where you are falling down. Ask others and yourself, “how could I have done that better?” “Why are those errors there?”

Have you ever had a team member who just wouldn’t take anyone’s advice on board, popped their head in the sand and refused to take criticism regardless of how constructive it was? Frustrating isn’t it?

Be the one who does listen and that them for their feedback both positive and negative. Be proactive in your own development and I assure your team will bend over backwards to help you progress.

If you are one of my students you will find yourself at the end of 300 ML9.

There are 2 options at this point depending on when you undertook your PDP in 2.4 of this unit.

If previously you never had a Personal / Professional Development Plan you will have created one which will be fresh and up to date. Its therefore not going to need much in terms of review and you may want to leave this unit for 3 months and come back to it.

However, if the feedback you obtained in 3.2 has made you re-think a few development needs then you could make some adjustments to your plan and resubmit it as a reviewed plan.

If you already had a development plan then this part is much easier, you will likely be ready for review and revisions and can do that now but bare in mind this is also about making amendments based on feedback from others so in your reflective account you need to note what those revisions were based on what feedback you received. Lets say your feedback from a range of sources all came back stating you needed to be more decisive. You could update your plan to add that you needed to learn some decision making techniques and then in your account write about this.

Learners undertaking the Level 3 or 4 in Management will find this posts assists your understanding of the below criteria

300 ML9 3.3 Review progress toward personal and professional objectives

300 ML9 3.4 Amend the personal and professional development plan in the light of feedback received from others