Professional Development Check-Up

#1 – Do you have a written professional development plan?

#2 – Do you update it at least annually?

#3 – Does your plan include specific measurable learning goals that you are committed to achieving during the coming year?

#4 – Does your plan include developmental opportunities that you are actually looking forward to?

#5 – Do you have a method of regularly collecting feedback from your peers, direct reports, and supervisor to get other perspectives on your performance?

If you can answer YES to these five questions, bravo!  If not, it is time to get to work. 

I could make a much longer list, but this five question check-up covers 95% of what you should be thinking about if you are serious about making sure that you are consistently developing yourself for higher performance.

Take the initiative in creating your professional development plan.  Don’t rely on formal organization processes – especially if you are a CEO.

And if I could add a sixth question it would be:  “Do you have an executive coach?”  I know that expense is involved, but more and more professionals – at all levels – are retaining executive coaches.  Just make sure you do your research and interview potential coaches carefully.  These days anyone can call themselves a coach, but may not have the background and experience you need.

Make sure to keep yourself sharp through continued professional development and you will make even more of a Mission Impact!

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

Teach to Learn

How can you develop your natural talents to make you an even higher performer?

A few blogs ago I went on and on about the idea that we can achieve exceptional personal performance by further developing our natural talents – even when we are already very good at something.

People ask me – how can I do this?  How do I get even better at something I am already very good at?  There are the usual responses like reading more books and taking more classes, etc.  But if you really want to master a subject area or a skill, try teaching it to others.

Teaching others on a topic that you are very good at is a win – win – win.

Win #1:  You get to contribute to the development of others and that feels great.

Win #2:  By requiring yourself to teach others, you will find the need to dig deeper into the hows and whys of what you do.  The questions that people ask you will force you to understand the topic area even more completely.  They will ask questions you had not thought of.

Win #3:  Teaching will be an exhilarating experience for you!  You will be great at it.  Your natural passion and talent will shine through.

This does not have to be a “formal class” for you to teach.  Volunteer to teach something to your co-workers – maybe even over a brown bag lunch.  Find out if local associations or clubs need guest speakers on various topics.  There are lots of venues where you can share your wisdom.

I find that I learn a ton while teaching nonprofit executives in my consulting work and teaching the very talented graduates students in Strategy courses at the University of Maryland.  I am sure you will find the same to be true for you!

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

Strategy vs. GSD

I have a good friend who recently posted this quote from Southwest Airlines Founder, Herb Kelleher, on Facebook:  “We Have a Strategic Plan: It’s Called Doing Things.”

This is funny.  But if you know anything about Herb – it is also tongue in cheek.  His brilliant strategy for Southwest has produced record-breaking profits for the airline for decades.  So, he surely has had strategy – but he is also saying that hard work is required to be successful.  I couldn’t agree more.  In fact, a couple buddies and I used to call ourselves the GSD Club for “Get Stuff Done” (okay, maybe we used a different “S” word). 

Getting Stuff Done is attractive as a mantra.  But doing stuff without a strategy about where you are going and how the stuff you are doing is going to get you there could end up being a waste of time – or worse.   As systems thinking sage, Dr. Russ Ackoff, liked to say “The righter you do the wrong thing. the wronger you become.”  If you are working harder every day at the wrong strategy then you could be doing more harm than good.  You maybe would be better off staying at home.

Sometimes we get so busy with GSD that we don’t stop to revisit strategy, our assumptions about our strategy, and whether changes in the environment have rendered our strategy obsolete.  When is the last time you revisited your strategy?  Maybe it is time for a check-up or even a totally new strategy development cycle.  If it has been more than five years since you established your strategy then the answer to that is almost certainly “yes.”

Take some time away from focusing only on GSD and look to the future with a fresh vision, new set of goals, and a strategy for how you will get there.  This will assure that you are maximizing your Mission Impact – and that’s the reason we GSD in the first place.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.