My Personal Leadership Development Plan

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He/She is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan. A leader must have in their toolbox a focus on maintaining relationships and entertaining networking opportunities; as well as, facilitating innovation, creativity, managing change and embracing collaboration.

This personal development plan (PDP) includes inferences to leading others, refining the mission when appropriate, promoting innovation and creativity in the process; all the while providing continuous communication. A leader cannot simply determine the team’s destination, but provide guidance, education, support change and show respect during the voyage. To be able to achieve results, the leader has to be able to set priorities and help team members select the most important tasks.

These goals and developmental occasions that follow will be realistic and include achievable activities, which will include soliciting feedback on the same. This is not a wish list, but a pragmatic and operational document, with full accountability and follow-through, being my responsibility. The visibility of the PDP will represent quantifiable evidence that leadership development is being driven and is occurring.

Strengths

Identification of strengths are critical in the creation of the PDP, as they can often be enriched and leveraged to address development needs. The short list of my personal strengths includes personal and professional competency, accountability and change management, on-going professional development (through life-long learning) and advocacy for team members. The short list of professional strengths includes intellectual horsepower, high level of commitment and drive, (i.e. tireless), not change-averse, develops strong followership and has innate ability to influence at corporate and Board levels. I do not typically allow problems to escalate, nor do I allow failures to devalue the efforts or recognition required for the attempt. Do a course correction and continue the endeavor; and never neglect expressing gratitude to those who assisted in the achievement of any success. One of the major components of authentic leadership is that strengths develop over a lifetime.

My Personal Leadership Development Plan Opportunities

Becoming a great leader is a day-to-day process that is a culmination of my on-going education, workplace experiences, life experiences and my perspectives and values.

Three important competencies (facilitating team innovation, creativity and collaboration) are the areas I want to focus on in the PDP. Obtaining additional skill sets in these areas are critical to my preparation for an expanded Human Resources role within my organization. Stretch assignments embedded into the PDP will force me to perform, learn, and they will contribute to impacting and influencing my leadership skill set. Both individual learning and organizational support will also be placed into the PDP. The following outlines the development actions required to address my developmental needs:

1. Complete MSL course entitled ‘Leading Innovation and Change Through Cross-Sector Collaboration’.
2. Solicit input from healthcare senior leaders regarding organization’s goals and tie-back to workforce strategy and initiatives.
3. Conduct strategic planning meetings with both Innovation and Strategic Accelerations Teams to better understand their departmental goals and actionable items for the fiscal year.
4. Obtain a peer mentor from the Performance Leadership Council and attend monthly Council meetings with the same. Move from behind the scenes into a more front-facing role with research ideas for this group of senior leaders.
5. Complete readings associated with implementing innovation and building organizational creativity in the workplace. Consult with external coach for recommendations.
6. Draft and deliver a plan for educating other HR staff on their role in collaborating to meet the healthcare organization’s fiscal year goals. As a corporate department, it is often too difficult for staff level employees to understand their impact in what appears on the surface to be ‘clinical’ goals.
7. Lead upcoming performance management change initiative; scope is impact to all healthcare staff; utilizing characteristics of good change agents – courage, strategy, intent, creativity and completeness. This will include a post-evaluation and an outline of lessons learned.

Each of the afore-mentioned development actions will be assigned a start date and a targeted completion date. In addition, measures of success will be aligned to each developmental action (i.e. coaching, assignments to developmental jobs, in-place experiences, self-study, etc.).

Inherent in each of these recommended actions will be the perspective that past experience is not always the best basis for developing the future leader. My intent as a developing leader is to be the catalyst for new ideas, always engage with fellow team members in discussions and experiential exercises and remain committed to implementing actions plans for business change and subsequent success. PDP success will require that the Plan be front and center at all times. Check offs for those completed items will provide a sense of accomplishment. A reflection of lessons learned will provide insight into – what I did, what should I incorporate into my leadership toolbox, what should I reject and most importantly, what did I learn about myself?

Conclusion

The central value proposition of personal leadership effectiveness is to clearly define your goals, measure your improvements over time and adapt to changing circumstances (Tucker, 2018). A PDP will provide the guide rails to achieving cumulative success as a leader and innovator.