How to Create a Career Development Plan

A career development plan gives you a way to think beyond your next job or promotion and decide how you want to develop over time. It can help you identify what you want from your career, where you need to grow, and what actions you can take now to move in that direction.

Many career development plans start by asking where you want to be in three or five years, what skills you need to develop, and what goals you want to accomplish before you've evaluated your current situation or whether the direction you're considering makes sense for you.

By mid-career, you have years of experience to draw from along with more factors that can influence your decisions. Compensation, flexibility, family responsibilities, organizational stability, your existing reputation and relationships, and how much change you're willing to make can all affect what you want next and what you're able to pursue, so your career development plan needs to account for those circumstances rather than focusing only on where you want to go.

What is a career development plan?

A career development plan is a working document that connects your career direction with the development and actions that can help you move toward it. Depending on your goals, that could include building skills, gaining experience, strengthening professional relationships, increasing your visibility, exploring different types of work, or preparing for a future role.

You may also hear terms such as professional development plan or individual development plan (IDP). Organizations sometimes use these plans as part of formal employee development. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for example, describes an individual development plan as a tool for identifying career development goals and the means for achieving them through training, assignments, mentoring, reading, conferences, and other learning opportunities.

When you're creating a career development plan for yourself, it can extend beyond what your current employer needs from you. Your organization may want to develop you for a particular role or skill set, while your longer-term interests could eventually take you somewhere else, which means your plan may need to consider both.

Start by evaluating where you are now

Before deciding what you need to develop, consider what is happening in your role and organization, how your career has developed so far, and what is happening outside your company that could affect your options.

Someone working in a stable organization with a clear path for advancement may reasonably focus on internal visibility, relationships, leadership experience, and the skills required for the next level. If that same person were working through repeated layoffs, leadership turnover, budget cuts, or restructuring, some of those development priorities might need to change even if the long-term career goal stayed the same.

Personal circumstances can affect the plan in similar ways. Significant travel, an intensive degree program, or a major compensation change may help you reach one goal while creating challenges elsewhere in your life, so you need to consider what you're willing and able to take on alongside the potential career benefit.

In Control Your Career, I call this evaluation Realistic Reality, the first stage of the process because your personal circumstances, career situation, and external environment all influence which options make sense at a particular point in time. Looking at those factors first gives you a more useful starting point for deciding what belongs in your development plan.

Get clear on what you want more of and less of

You don't need to know exactly where you want to be five years from now to start planning your development because your existing career gives you plenty of information about what you want to continue, change, or explore.

Think about the work you've enjoyed, the responsibilities you want to expand, the environments where you've performed well, and the experiences you don't want to repeat. You may want more autonomy, strategic work, creative problem-solving, leadership responsibility, flexibility, or collaboration while wanting less administrative work, people management, travel, ambiguity, or constant reactivity.

Looking at those patterns can help you identify a direction even when you can't name a specific future position and allows you to think about career development more broadly than moving up. A promotion could be part of your plan, but so could a lateral move into another function, deeper expertise, greater influence in your current role, an industry change, or skills that expand your future choices.

Once you have a better sense of what you want your work to look like, you can make more informed decisions about what you need to develop.

Define the larger career outcome

Your current circumstances and what you've learned about your preferences can help you identify the larger outcome you're working toward. That could be a specific position, such as becoming a director, or a broader direction such as moving into another function, becoming more competitive for senior-level individual contributor roles, transitioning into management, developing an area of expertise, or preparing for a career change.

Whatever you choose gives the development plan direction, but some career outcomes depend heavily on circumstances and decisions you don't control. “I want to become a director by the end of next year,” for example, sounds specific and measurable, but a director position has to exist, the organization has to be willing and able to fill it, decision-makers have to consider you qualified, and you ultimately have to be selected.

You can pursue that outcome while building your development plan around the areas where you have more influence.

Identify what you need to develop

With a direction in mind, consider what someone prepared for that type of work would need to demonstrate and compare that with what you've already developed. Depending on the goal, you may need to consider:

• Technical or functional skills
• Communication or leadership skills
• Experience managing larger or more complex work
• Cross-functional relationships
• Visibility with decision-makers
• Evidence of specific results
• Industry or organizational knowledge
• Experience influencing without formal authority
• A stronger professional network

There will always be another skill you could learn, certification you could earn, or trend you could follow, so focus on development that addresses a known gap, improves your current work, or supports the direction you're pursuing.

The same evaluation can help when a particular skill is receiving a lot of attention in your industry. Before investing significant time or money, look at how you would use the skill and whether it connects to your current work or future direction because something can be valuable in the broader market without being the most useful development priority for you.

Turn career outcomes into goals you can influence

Once you've identified the areas you need to develop, turn them into goals that support the larger career outcome while giving you something concrete to work on.

If you're preparing for a promotion, your goals could include strengthening relationships across the organization, taking ownership of a project that demonstrates a missing competency, improving how you communicate with senior leaders, or documenting accomplishments that show your readiness for greater responsibility. If you're considering a career change, you may need to research the target field, talk with people doing the work, identify which of your current skills transfer, and gain experience in areas where you have legitimate gaps.

In both situations, the larger outcome still depends partly on other people. You can't guarantee that a promotion will become available or control when an employer will make an offer, but you can work on the experience, skills, relationships, and preparation that put you in a stronger position when an opportunity becomes available.

Choose development activities you can use

Formal education can be valuable when it addresses a specific requirement or gap, but professional development can also happen through projects, stretch assignments, mentoring, job shadowing, cross-functional work, professional associations, reading, conferences, feedback, and deliberate practice. OPM's guidance on individual development plans similarly includes developmental activities such as rotational assignments, shadowing, on-the-job training, self-study, and professional conferences.

What you choose should give you an opportunity to develop something relevant and put it into practice when possible. A presentation course may teach you useful techniques, but improving your presentation skills also requires opportunities to present, just as learning about leadership can help prepare you for management while experience gives you a chance to practice decision-making, delegation, communication, and accountability.

Decide what you will do next

For each development priority, identify an action you can take within a reasonable timeframe. If you want to strengthen cross-functional relationships, determine which relationships matter and how you'll begin building them. If you need more experience leading complex work, identify the types of assignments that would provide it and who you need to talk with about getting involved. If you're exploring a different career direction, decide what information you need before making a larger commitment.

You also need to be realistic about how much development you can actively work on at once because a plan covering ten skills, six networking goals, three certifications, a promotion, and a possible career change may look thorough but can be difficult to execute alongside an already demanding job. Prioritize the actions that are most relevant now, then add or adjust goals as you make progress.

Review and adjust your plan

Career development plans need to account for changes in both your priorities and your environment, which is why it's useful to review your progress regularly. Depending on the goals you're working toward, you might do a brief monthly check-in and a more substantial quarterly review to look at what you've completed, what you've learned, and what has changed.

You may discover that you don't enjoy an area of work as much as you expected, develop a new interest, or realize that a goal you set six months ago no longer matters. Leadership changes, reorganizations, budget cuts, new technology, hiring conditions, and unexpected opportunities can also affect what makes sense.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences describes individual development plans as “living documents” that should be reviewed and modified as circumstances and development progress change. Treating your plan that way allows you to maintain a direction while adjusting when new information changes what you want or what is possible.

What should a career development plan include?

There isn't one required format, particularly when you're creating the plan for yourself rather than completing an employer's formal process. At minimum, you should be able to answer these questions:

1. Where am I now?
   What is happening personally, professionally, organizationally, and externally that affects my career?
2. What do I want more of and less of?
   What have I learned about the work, responsibilities, environment, and conditions that fit me?
3. What larger outcome am I working toward?
   What direction do I want to explore or pursue?
4. What do I need to develop?
   Which skills, experiences, relationships, knowledge, or visibility would strengthen my ability to move in that direction?
5. What can I influence?
   Which actions can I take now rather than making progress dependent entirely on someone giving me a job, promotion, or opportunity?
6. How will I evaluate progress?
   What will I review monthly or quarterly, and what changes would cause me to adjust the plan?

You won't necessarily have a complete answer to every question the first time you create the plan because some decisions become easier once you've tried something, gathered more information, or had an experience that changes what you thought you wanted.

Use your career development plan to make better decisions

A career development plan gives you a reference point as your career and circumstances change, helping you decide whether an opportunity supports the direction you're pursuing, where to invest your development time, and when a goal needs to be reconsidered.

You may prepare for a promotion without knowing when an opening will appear, develop a skill that helps you now while creating more choices later, or eventually decide that the direction you originally planned no longer fits. You don't need to predict the next five years correctly for the plan to be useful because its purpose is to give you enough clarity about your current situation, direction, and next actions to make informed decisions as you go.

If you're having trouble deciding what to prioritize in your career right now, a Clarity Call can help you sort through your situation and determine what makes sense to focus on next. You'll complete a questionnaire before our 15-minute conversation so we can use the time to focus on your specific situation and identify the resources or support that may be most useful.

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