Leadership development is a major initiative for many companies today. In a recent survey by global research and consulting firm Gartner, 57 percent of HR executives said growing their company’s current and future leadership pipeline is a top priority for 2020, including expanding decision-making responsibilities and going deeper into their organizations. The focus is on planning. .

Additionally, a report by the World Economic Forum states that leadership and social impact in the workplace will be one of the fastest growing skills by 2022, bridging the emerging skill gap to become lifelong learners for all workers related to the increasing trend.

For motivated professionals seeking to advance in their careers, creating a leadership development plan is key to staying ahead of the curve and meeting the demands of the job market. According to Harvard Business School professor Ethan Bernstein, the path to effective leadership is now much more fluid than it used to be.

As you chart your career path and look to maximize your professional influence and influence, here are five steps to creating a successful leadership development plan.

1. Evaluate Your Site Professionally

Planning your leadership development begins with understanding yourself and where you stand professionally. Assessing your strengths, weaknesses and trends in the workplace can help you identify areas of improvement and anticipate risks that may arise in your journey to become a more capable leader.

Bernstein says, “In the process of determining what you did before or may not make you successful moving forward, you increase your awareness that what you already know can help you successfully lead others in the future.” contributes to or reduces capacity.”

Completing an assessment can be a valuable way to reflect on your motivations and limitations and gain a more holistic view of your personal leadership style. Combining self-reflection with 360-degree assessment enables you to solicit feedback from your colleagues and peers, which can provide deeper insight into how others perceive you, thus a stronger sense of emotional intelligence. So that you can develop your leadership journey.

2. Set an Achievable Goal

Goal setting is an essential component of any leadership development plan.

“Just like anything else: If you don’t know where you’re going, you probably won’t get there,” Bernstein says. “It sounds overly simple, but it explains why goals are important.”

Learner leadership uses PACE to set goals and outline actions to achieve them. The first step in the process, Choose, focuses on defining and prioritizing a goal that you can pursue to increase your professional effectiveness. When setting this goal, it’s important to take an agile approach and keep both the short and long term in mind.

3. Join Leadership Training

Leadership training can benefit you no matter what stage of your career. In addition to the opportunity to acquire and practice the skills you need to empower employees and influence others, you are exposed to faculty and peers whom you can rely on for support, and from whom you can learn and grow. Huh.

According to Bernstein, honing your leadership abilities in a classroom setting is beneficial because it provides a low-risk environment for re-evaluating and adjusting goals when failures are experienced.

Bernstein says, “It helps to have a group of people – we call this your ‘inner circle’ – who have heard and embraced your leadership goals, and whose conversations have helped you figure out what How to proceed with them? Turn to them for challenge and shock, encouragement and courage.

4. Interact with your network

A professional network is one of the most valuable resources in any leader’s arsenal, so make it a point to grow your network. Throughout your leadership development journey, connect with like-minded colleagues and look for opportunities to not only put to work the knowledge you have gained, but to receive feedback on your progress.

This type of conversation is the core of the Leadership Principles for Online course. In leadership principles, learners practice providing each other with feedback through video upload exercises that allow them to assess their effectiveness in a variety of business scenarios.

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