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Aim
You have been encouraging your team to take responsibility for drafting their own personal development plans for some time now. But, typically, you find that they really don’t know where to start and they either come with a blank sheet, or an exhaustive list of interesting courses they have identified. Use this short development session with your team if they need some coaching.
Team Session Outline
This informal team training session comprises three separate activities, and will take approximately 1¾ hours to complete.
Team session activities and learning objectives
- Introduction – introduce your organization’s personal development plan, and allow team members to identify and select appropriate development methods for their needs
- Identifying Your Training Needs – understand how to draft learning objectives to meet development needs
- Selecting Development Methods – recognize preferred learning styles and use this to find the most suitable training/development methods
- Review – reassert key learning points and agree the actions to be taken in advance of the performance agreement meetings
Preparation
Decide how your team will gain the most benefit from this exercise. You can run it as a one-off session or merge it with the other related team sessions over a longer period. Either way, ensure it is timed so that your team can apply the skills learned immediately after the session.
One month before…
- confirm details of the team session with your team members and distribute an outline program and learning objectives
Two weeks before…
- copy appropriate supply of materials (if appropriate, customize the suggested resources and/or design your own slides to tailor and reinforce key messages you believe are important)
- book any necessary equipment and refreshments
- if you have a team development plan, distribute copies to individual team members (if not, consider listing some priorities for the team as a suggested draft)
On the day…
- set aside at least half an hour to prepare the room and create a fun learning environment
- set up and test the equipment and prepare any other visuals such as flipcharts
- put coloring pens and notepaper around the room to encourage everyone to make their own notes, illustrations and learning maps
- bring along any necessary handouts and copies of your organization’s personal development plan template
Resources
- The ‘Methods of Development’ exercise (which you can download, below)
- Your organization’s personal development plan documentation/ template
- flipchart and pens
- ‘Preparing My Personal Development Plan’ top tips
- Your own training and development policy, if appropriate
- ‘Learning Styles’ questionnaire from the Developing People topic
Time Plan
09.30 – 10.00 Introduction
10.00 – 10.30 Identifying Your Training Needs
10.30 – 11.00 Selecting Development Methods
11.00 – 11.10 Review
Team Session Activities
Introduction (30 minutes)
- Briefly outline the program, timings and format.
- Introduce the format of your organization’s personal development plan.
- Run the short introductory exercise, ‘Methods of Development’ to introduce the team to the wide variety of development methods. This should take 20 minutes.
Identifying Your Training Needs (30 minutes)
- Distribute copies of the top tips on ‘Preparing My Personal Development Plan’ and talk them through how to draft a learning objective.
- Illustrate this with a worked example on the flipchart.
- Now ask your team to individually select one relevant personal development need and draft a learning objective. Once they are happy with their draft, ask them to write it on the flipchart.
- Ask team members to critique each other's learning objectives. Have they been specific enough in identifying the training gap? Has the standard required been made clear? Amend the objectives as the team revise them.
Selecting Development Methods (30 minutes)
- Introduce the Leading Thinkers Honey and Mumford and their work on Learning Styles.
- Ask your team to complete a 'Learning Styles' questionnaire.
- Alternatively, you might simply ask them to reflect on what their preferred learning style would be.
- Remind them of the large variety of development methods identified earlier in the session and ask them to select three possible methods of development that would help them achieve their learning objective.
- Discuss the results.
Review (10 minutes)
- Remind the team of the objectives for the session and encourage feedback to gauge to what degree they have been met.
- Remind the team of the key actions they need to take between now and their performance agreement meeting.
- Reviewing what has been learned is vital for memory retention. Reinforce key messages and achievements.
Team Session Follow-Up
If this team session is run in the month leading up to personal development planning, then the learning should be applied almost immediately. Even so, individual team members will almost certainly need coaching to ensure the training gap identified is precise and the learning objective is SMART. Encourage team members to form learning pairs to share and refine their Personal development plans with each other in the lead up to the performance agreement meetings.
Be prepared to probe around the learning objectives they have identified to ensure they are clear about the difference between what they are good at and what they would like to get better at. Remember to think creatively around the development methods and do not underestimate the value of in-house coaching between team members and team development sessions.
Encourage individuals to refer to, review and adjust their plans regularly, and to take personal responsibility for ensuring that any planned activity takes place.
In the future, when team members are revising their development plan, you might only need to email them the ‘Preparing My Personal Development Plan’ top tips.
