What’s personal development planning?

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Personal development planning involves setting goals and objectives for individual progress in various aspects of life, resulting in a personal or professional development plan. It is used in formal and informal settings, including human resource management, education, and self-help.

Personal development planning is the process of setting goals and objectives to achieve individual milestones in life. Planning can pertain to career, education, self-improvement or any other aspect of advancement. The process typically results in a personal or professional development plan (PDP), also known as an individual development plan (PDD).

There are many contexts in which a formal plan is developed to drive individual progress. In primary schools, pupils have individual educational plans to structure teaching according to their particular needs. Social workers use IDPs as part of the case management process to help clients create a path to stability and well-being. In an everyday context, personal development planning is a tool most frequently used by employers, life coaches, and by individuals in self-help settings.

Human resource management is perhaps the most structured use of personal development planning. Managers in this business area are responsible for maximizing the company’s human capital. One of the best practices for ensuring that a company’s workforce is meaningfully fulfilled and consistently expanding skills is to develop a PDP for each worker. This plan identifies the individual’s goals and ambitions and where he sees himself in the company in the coming years. Then he engages in activities such as educational achievements and training that will enable the worker to achieve his goals.

The PDP can be used as an assessment tool in a human resource environment, benefiting both employer and employee. For example, teachers often undergo formal personal development planning early in their careers, which identifies what they need to do to be credentialed in certain disciplines and permanently licensed. When a teacher is reviewed each year, the PDP is used by supervisors to track progress towards goals. A professor typically has a limited amount of time to earn certain credentials, and the PDP helps keep your overall goals on track.

Personal development planning is also used by individuals in less formal settings. Whenever a person wants to change the direction of their life or make strides in areas that were previously out of focus, writing a PDP is usually one of the suggested activities. Motivational seminars and self-help books often require a person to write down goals and objectives by time period and chart the steps needed to reach those ends. It is a process of predicting where a person wants to end up and filling in the functional blanks. In many ways, personal development planning is like writing a business plan for an individual’s life.

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