... Many of us are guilty of saying 'yes' a lot at work; things sound great, we want to help, we can see how amazing something could be with our contribution. Our team (and many others) are incredibly guilty of saying yes at work, ending up with more work than we can ever possibly manage to complete, and then looking like we haven't put in any effort because we're trying to do too much.
Whilst Ned Potter's post 'Five Questions to ask yourself before you say yes' focuses specifically on professional development, in particular giving talks and presentations, the same advice can equally well be applied to other types of professional development and work-based scenarios. Definitely worth a read.
Showing posts with label CPD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CPD. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 May 2015
Friday, 6 February 2015
A (further) quick update: Reviewing my Personal Development Plan
After mulling it over yesterday, I decided that I did want to write a Review of my action plan from 2012. Somehow not doing it just didn't feel quite right. Looking at the action plans from 2012, the obvious one to review was the 3 year action plan covering Jan 2012 - Dec 2014. And so I went ahead and wrote a Review!
I was pleasantly surprised to note that I had basically achieved all the professional competencies listed - including securing a promotion, which at the time seemed like a pretty ambitious goal. I'm pretty sure that was mostly just down to luck (and a bit of badgering on my part for an additional role at a higher level in our team I guess).
The goals I struggled with a little more were the personal attributes - I have totally failed to keep my language skills up-to-date, or acquire a First Aid at Work certificate. These are both things that, for the time being, just aren't top priorities. Work don't currently need an additional First Aider, and in terms of updating my language skills, much as I would love to do this, something at home just had to give!
Finally, there was one last thing that was bothering me. I am aware (and every time I check this blog I become more aware) that I essentially have two personal development plans on the go. The one I've been referring to in this and my previous post, and the one I update in November.
Now, these plans do something quite different - the one I update in November lists specific actions that I want to complete at work (such as running a '23 Things for Research Support' activity work, or implementing a data repository solution), and comes out of the cpd23 course I did back in 2011. The January plan is much more general, stating where I would like to be professionally in 1, 3 our 5 years time (what job I would like to be doing, how good I want to be at certain elements of that job). So I don't think having both is necessarily a bad thing - but I did want to acknowledge that both existed, and when I would review and update them. With that in mind, I've written an updated list of the tasks I will carry out annually for my continuing professional development below (the initial list appeared on my post entitled Recording continuing professional development (CPD) for Revalidation).
January
1) Write a Review of my 1, 3 or 5 year action plan (depending on what is most appropriate)
2) Update my development plan (my 1-year, 3-year and 5-year action plans, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this)
3) Update my CV
September
4) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base)
5) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
November
6) Update my CPD23 Personal Development Plan
I was pleasantly surprised to note that I had basically achieved all the professional competencies listed - including securing a promotion, which at the time seemed like a pretty ambitious goal. I'm pretty sure that was mostly just down to luck (and a bit of badgering on my part for an additional role at a higher level in our team I guess).
The goals I struggled with a little more were the personal attributes - I have totally failed to keep my language skills up-to-date, or acquire a First Aid at Work certificate. These are both things that, for the time being, just aren't top priorities. Work don't currently need an additional First Aider, and in terms of updating my language skills, much as I would love to do this, something at home just had to give!
Finally, there was one last thing that was bothering me. I am aware (and every time I check this blog I become more aware) that I essentially have two personal development plans on the go. The one I've been referring to in this and my previous post, and the one I update in November.
Now, these plans do something quite different - the one I update in November lists specific actions that I want to complete at work (such as running a '23 Things for Research Support' activity work, or implementing a data repository solution), and comes out of the cpd23 course I did back in 2011. The January plan is much more general, stating where I would like to be professionally in 1, 3 our 5 years time (what job I would like to be doing, how good I want to be at certain elements of that job). So I don't think having both is necessarily a bad thing - but I did want to acknowledge that both existed, and when I would review and update them. With that in mind, I've written an updated list of the tasks I will carry out annually for my continuing professional development below (the initial list appeared on my post entitled Recording continuing professional development (CPD) for Revalidation).
January
1) Write a Review of my 1, 3 or 5 year action plan (depending on what is most appropriate)
2) Update my development plan (my 1-year, 3-year and 5-year action plans, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this)
3) Update my CV
September
4) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base)
5) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
November
6) Update my CPD23 Personal Development Plan
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Development plan and CV update
In my last post, I mentioned my awareness of the fact that I hadn't yet managed to update my CV or write a development plan for the coming years, even though I was due to do it in January. Well, in a fit of enthusiasm (or perhaps boredom - I've been on maternity leave for 3 weeks now, and no baby yet...) I finally spent this morning updating everything.
I actually found the task really enjoyable - as long as I'm in the right frame of mind, I find thinking about my future career goals quite aspirational. It also reminds me that, for the most part, I love what I do!
I began by writing a personal development plan (or PDP) stating what I would like to achieve generally. This included things like increasing my understanding of research support, improving my staff management skills and seeing one of my Chartership mentees successfully Charter. For each goal, I wrote two or three ways in which I hoped to achieve it. All of this is pretty similar to the performance and development review (PDR) I do at work every year, which I could use. However, I like to make this one a bit more personal and include things that I might, sometimes, choose not to mention at work!
Once I had written the PDP I wrote a basic 1-year, 3-year and 5-year action plan. The 1-year plan is a little odd this year because I know I'll be on maternity leave, so the list is relatively short. However, it doesn't mean I can't do things like keep in touch with my team at work and continue to mentor Chartership candidates. From past experience I know that I want to maintain an awareness of what is happening at work and in my general area of expertise - I really missed having so few work links for a full year last time, and don't want to repeat that experience. But my personal situation does mean that, in contrast to previous years, my 3-year and 5-year plans are more in-depth.
The next two tasks were writing a Personal Statement and updating my CV. These two took a bit of work, as my job changed in November, so there was a fair bit to say and update. But it is great to have an up-to-date CV, so I know that, if I need it (not that I have any plans to swap jobs in the near future), it's there and ready to go!
Finally, I even put a little bit of thought into what will need updating next year. I didn't bother to write a review of my previous action plans this year because they were so out-of-date (I will admit that the last time I wrote an action plan was January 2012, when my job was very different. It has taken me a couple of years to get used to life with children, and find time for things like this). However, I plan to write a review next year. As I have also changed the system I use for recording my continuing professional development since revalidating, I will start to include my training logs from January 2015 (when I have some)!
All this did take a while to put together (about 3 hours in total), but I really believe that it is worth the time if you can find a spare morning or afternoon. It really does give you some focus, and it's a great way to figure out what YOU want to achieve in the next few years (rather than your employer/ your husband/ your dog informing you). The great thing is that it's personal to you, so if you don't achieve it or change your mind, it doesn't matter! And even if all you do is update your CV, how much less work is that if/ when you apply for a new job?
I actually found the task really enjoyable - as long as I'm in the right frame of mind, I find thinking about my future career goals quite aspirational. It also reminds me that, for the most part, I love what I do!
I began by writing a personal development plan (or PDP) stating what I would like to achieve generally. This included things like increasing my understanding of research support, improving my staff management skills and seeing one of my Chartership mentees successfully Charter. For each goal, I wrote two or three ways in which I hoped to achieve it. All of this is pretty similar to the performance and development review (PDR) I do at work every year, which I could use. However, I like to make this one a bit more personal and include things that I might, sometimes, choose not to mention at work!
Once I had written the PDP I wrote a basic 1-year, 3-year and 5-year action plan. The 1-year plan is a little odd this year because I know I'll be on maternity leave, so the list is relatively short. However, it doesn't mean I can't do things like keep in touch with my team at work and continue to mentor Chartership candidates. From past experience I know that I want to maintain an awareness of what is happening at work and in my general area of expertise - I really missed having so few work links for a full year last time, and don't want to repeat that experience. But my personal situation does mean that, in contrast to previous years, my 3-year and 5-year plans are more in-depth.
The next two tasks were writing a Personal Statement and updating my CV. These two took a bit of work, as my job changed in November, so there was a fair bit to say and update. But it is great to have an up-to-date CV, so I know that, if I need it (not that I have any plans to swap jobs in the near future), it's there and ready to go!
Finally, I even put a little bit of thought into what will need updating next year. I didn't bother to write a review of my previous action plans this year because they were so out-of-date (I will admit that the last time I wrote an action plan was January 2012, when my job was very different. It has taken me a couple of years to get used to life with children, and find time for things like this). However, I plan to write a review next year. As I have also changed the system I use for recording my continuing professional development since revalidating, I will start to include my training logs from January 2015 (when I have some)!
All this did take a while to put together (about 3 hours in total), but I really believe that it is worth the time if you can find a spare morning or afternoon. It really does give you some focus, and it's a great way to figure out what YOU want to achieve in the next few years (rather than your employer/ your husband/ your dog informing you). The great thing is that it's personal to you, so if you don't achieve it or change your mind, it doesn't matter! And even if all you do is update your CV, how much less work is that if/ when you apply for a new job?
Friday, 30 January 2015
Recording continuing professional development (CPD) progress
Back in October 2014 I wrote a post detailing how I would record my continuing professional development (CPD) in preparation for submitting my next Revalidation application in the autumn of 2015.
This follow-up post aims to reflect on how well that is going.
Firstly, having set up an iDoneThis account has really helped - those weekly Friday e-mail reminders to record any CPD done that week have forced me to spend some time (usually no more than half an hour on a Friday afternoon) looking back at what CPD I've done over the past week, recording it in a Word document and then e-mailing it to my iDoneThis account. In all honesty I don't really need to add it to the iDoneThis account - it's the e-mail from them that is needed to prompt me to write the thing in the first place. The Word document is clearer and easier to refer to, which is why I continue to use that. [NB: Having said all that, I've just discovered that I failed to transfer the file with my CPD activities from my work PC to my home PC. Being able to refer to iDoneThis on-line to check what CPD I have undertaken in the past few months was actually really helpful. So perhaps the extra e-mail is worth it after all].
I have also managed to, once a month, go through the activities I've listed weekly and add them to the CILIP VLE. This is up-to-date as of the end of December 2014, which I think is pretty impressive given that Christmas got in the way, and I headed off on maternity leave in mid January! I've managed to list between 2 and 6 activities per month since Sept 2014, when I began recording CPD activities for my next Revalidation. This is likely to peter out over the next few months (what with me now being on maternity leave), but I'm hopeful I can add a few activities to the list - like (hopefully) helping my first Chartership candidate to finally Charter!
The things I haven't done are those that I've suggested I'll do annually. I'm fully aware that about now I should be updating my CV and development plan for the coming years, and it is on the to-do-list, but quite honestly, it's not at the top. If I get to it before the imminent arrival of a certain somebody, great. If not, it will have to wait. I'm being pragmatic here because my to-do-list is quite long (if decreasing)!
Luckily, completing the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base) and submitting my Revalidation CPD log are September activities, so I've got a while before I have to worry about them too much. Hopefully by then life will have settled into enough of a routine so that I feel able to do both! If nothing else, I am keen to at least have submitted my Revalidation log - I think getting into a habit of doing it annually can only be a good thing.
PS Acronym reminder time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
PKSB: Professional Knowledge and Skills Base
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
This follow-up post aims to reflect on how well that is going.
Firstly, having set up an iDoneThis account has really helped - those weekly Friday e-mail reminders to record any CPD done that week have forced me to spend some time (usually no more than half an hour on a Friday afternoon) looking back at what CPD I've done over the past week, recording it in a Word document and then e-mailing it to my iDoneThis account. In all honesty I don't really need to add it to the iDoneThis account - it's the e-mail from them that is needed to prompt me to write the thing in the first place. The Word document is clearer and easier to refer to, which is why I continue to use that. [NB: Having said all that, I've just discovered that I failed to transfer the file with my CPD activities from my work PC to my home PC. Being able to refer to iDoneThis on-line to check what CPD I have undertaken in the past few months was actually really helpful. So perhaps the extra e-mail is worth it after all].
I have also managed to, once a month, go through the activities I've listed weekly and add them to the CILIP VLE. This is up-to-date as of the end of December 2014, which I think is pretty impressive given that Christmas got in the way, and I headed off on maternity leave in mid January! I've managed to list between 2 and 6 activities per month since Sept 2014, when I began recording CPD activities for my next Revalidation. This is likely to peter out over the next few months (what with me now being on maternity leave), but I'm hopeful I can add a few activities to the list - like (hopefully) helping my first Chartership candidate to finally Charter!
The things I haven't done are those that I've suggested I'll do annually. I'm fully aware that about now I should be updating my CV and development plan for the coming years, and it is on the to-do-list, but quite honestly, it's not at the top. If I get to it before the imminent arrival of a certain somebody, great. If not, it will have to wait. I'm being pragmatic here because my to-do-list is quite long (if decreasing)!
Luckily, completing the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base) and submitting my Revalidation CPD log are September activities, so I've got a while before I have to worry about them too much. Hopefully by then life will have settled into enough of a routine so that I feel able to do both! If nothing else, I am keen to at least have submitted my Revalidation log - I think getting into a habit of doing it annually can only be a good thing.
PS Acronym reminder time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
PKSB: Professional Knowledge and Skills Base
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
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