Competence development doesn’t always mean class room trainings. There is variety of ways to develop oneself. Webinars and blogs have taken a big share of training in the IT sector. It’s easy and cheap way to gain your skills. Attending to events and exhibitions is another.

Skills and know-how evolves also by doing, using good old trial and error method. Create your own side project, write a study, or teach others on the subject. You will need to tackle the problems, get into the backgrounds and face the questions. All those makes you think and learn more of the matter.

How to plan your competence development

1. Find why you want to develop yourself

Why should I develop myself? I am know-it all and best of the best! Well in that case you’re maybe not in the target group. But for the rest of us developing oneself does not only develop our strengths, but also boosts our self confidence and improves our self-awareness.

Working within the IT industry tends to have a “natural” desire to be even better that we already are. There is always a skill or know-how we want to be better at and I want to keep my CV up to date with latest skills and know-hows.

2. Decide what you want to develop

What is the know-how or specific skill you want or need to develop? How do you know what to develop? Is it something you always have wanted to master? Is it an area you want to go in the future? Or is it a weakness you want to strengthen?

It can be a technical skill or a presentation skill, to overcome a fear of being front of people. Do you need to dive into modern project management skills? It can be also to strengthen a spoken language to communicate better or about to learn better sleeping habits. Anything you recognize being obstacle of you becoming better version of yourself.

There are a number of ways to understand what your talents and skills are. Asking friends/family/colleagues to name your talents, or by simply answering questions like: “what activities make you lose track of time?”, “what got you excited as a child”, “what do you like most in your job”, “which talents attributed to your biggest achievements”, et cetera.

Get feedback. If you don’t know where to begin or what your hidden qualities or skills are, ask feedback from your peers and customer. Read more on feedback from The art of giving feedback -blog post.

3. Set specific goals

When you know what you want to develop, set specific goals to yourself. You can also set goals first and then see what needs to be developed to get there. Is it an increase of a rating in the feedback form? Is it the moment you did well in front of people? Is is when you can do a small talk with the new language?

Self Assessment. It’s good to analyze your own skill levels too to which you set your targets too.

4. Make a plan

To achieve something you need a plan. What is it you plan to do to achieve the set goals? Is there a timeframe you want to achieve the goal? Is it a certain level of know-how and what steps you should take to get there. You don’t eat an elephant at once, but rather by piece by piece. And plan isn’t really a plan if you haven’t written it down. By writing it down you commit to it.

Use coach. You don’t need to plan your development path by yourself. You can ask your friends and peers or you can ask for a coach to help you out. Coach is no teacher, nor is it your superior. The coach helps you to figure out what are the right goals for you and how to get there and achieve your goal.

5. Track your progress

How do you know if you have improved? Is the level you are is sufficient enough for the level you targeted? How can I know I’ve succeeded You have set your goals and made a plan how to get there. You also need to follow-up your progress.

It’s easy to fire up the development plan and the forget about it. Like new years resolution. Sure I will go to the gym and I did so for a while. But then I lost interest. It stopped being fun. I didn’t see enough progress in my self and didn’t see the value of all this.

That’s when we need to trust your plan. If you did good planning you marked enough intermediate points to check your progress and that way don’t loose the interest.

Use coach. Using coach here is an advantage. Like the personal trainer in the gym the coach follows-up with you your development progress, motivates you to keep going and guides you to the right direction. You can always re-plan, but don’t re-set your goals — at least if they were totally overestimated or clearly underestimated.