How to Prepare a Leadership Development Plan

Becoming an effective, inspiring leader takes persistence and dedication. And your personal leadership journey will be as individual as you are. Much depends on your own experience and talents, but there are strategies and processes you can follow that support your own situation.

This five-step Leadership Development Plan will help you to grow and learn as a leader. It explores how to:

1. define what great leadership looks like.
2. identify your development needs.
3. plan your actions and activities.
4. define what success looks like.
5. review and refine your plan.

Your Leadership Development Plan

Follow the instructions, below, and use the downloadable template to find out where you are now, where you want to go next, and to commit to the development journey ahead.

Step 1: What Does Great Leadership Look Like?

Let's try to define the skills, attributes and behaviors of great leaders in your organization.

Think about colleagues and how they work, collaborate, encourage, inspire, and get the best out of the people around them. Be specific about their leadership qualities. For example, do they:

• communicate a clear, compelling vision.
• demonstrate a strategic mindset.
• embrace innovation and digital or AI technologies.
• motivate, encourage and inspire.
• manage change effectively.
• display emotional and cultural intelligence (especially for global, remote-first teams).
• show creative problem-solving skills.
• possess good people management, inclusive leadership, and communication skills.
• have a commitment to sustainability and ESG goals.
• embrace remote or hybrid ways of working.

You can make the list very broad at first, then hone it down to a shortlist of what’s important to be an effective leader in your organization.

Take Action: on your template, write your shortlisted choices in column 1: Skills/Behaviors/Attributes.

Step 2: Identify Your Development Needs

Take each skill, attribute or behavior and rate your current competency level. You could ask for input from colleagues, managers or clients, perhaps via a feedback questionnaire. They may highlight development needs that you’re unaware of or avoiding.

Be open-minded and think wider. For example, if you see problem solving as a great leadership trait, don’t limit ideas to immediate skills in this area. Think about adjacent skills and what you can do for different teams, like how you could nurture creativity in others.

Take Action: write your Development Needs in column 2, alongside the relevant skill, attribute or behavior.

Step 3: Plan Your Actions and Activities

So, how are you going to meet these development needs? To plan your actions and activities, ask for help and advice from your learning and development team or a mentor.

Break things down to specific actions. For example, to develop your strategic thinking, you might need a deeper understanding of competitors. Actions could be carrying out competitor and market analysis.

Take Action: write your actions in the Activities column and set a date for completion. You could also document the resources you might need and stakeholder involvement.

Step 4: Define What Success Looks Like

For each activity, detail a specific, clear and measurable success statement.

So, instead of, “Learn more about John Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Model,” which sounds vague, make the action more purposeful. For example, “Follow John Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Model to shape how you communicate the department restructure in Q4.”

Take Action: note down your Success Statements alongside each action or activity.

Step 5: Keep Going! Review and Refine Your Plan

Your leadership development plan is a work in progress. At monthly or quarterly intervals, take time to review progress toward your success statements and your leadership development in general. Ask yourself:

• Has the desired change taken place? How do I know? (You could ask your colleagues using a simple feedback form and consider giving them the option to make comments anonymously.)
• What’s worked well with my plan? What could have been better?
• What tools and techniques have helped me and might develop my skills in other areas? Are there any other approaches I could try for areas where I haven’t been successful?

Take Action: review, reflect and refine your plan by noting your Follow-Up Actions.