Chapter 8: Navigating career growth
Develop your career development plan to grow in your career.
Setting a vision of where you want to be in a few years, the paths to get there, and the development needed, enables you to take intentional action. You can be strategic with your time and your energy. You can move towards where you want to be. You can have a journey that’s more fulfilling along the way.
See the details below and take at least 30 minutes to create or refresh your career development plan.
Career Development Plan:
It's time to dust off your career development plan and see where you’re at. If you don’t have a career development plan, create one.
Every career development plan should have six sections: Vision, Values, Assets, Career Path(s), Development Plan, and Actions.
Let me break it down.
1. 3-5 Year Career Vision: set the stage for what you want to do in the future. A brief statement.
2. Values: what are your top 3 values as the basis for your career decisions.
3. Your Assets: what are your current strengths, skills, experiences, knowledge, and network that you want to utilize in your future career.
4. Career Path(s): list three potential career paths and the potential roles over the next 5 years.
5. Development Plan: list the skills, experiences, knowledge, and network needed to achieve each of the career path options and an action that can help achieve it.
6. Actions: of the development plan options, what actions do you want to take over the next 1, 3, and 6 months.
Take some time to reflect and refresh your career development plan, thinking about the roles that are of interest to you now and how they align to your plan or not. What do you think about that?
Looking at this full picture will give you insights into what role you really want to pursue next, and the actions needed to develop for each career path.