How to Make More Progress on Your Development Goals

You’ve set a development goal, but you just can’t seem to make the progress you want.

So, you beat yourself up. “I need to do better.”

This has gone on for years. You’ve tried lots of things, but after several years it’s still a struggle.

Why?

Meanwhile, at the organizational level, things aren’t going much better.

According to Gartner, only 1 in 4 HR leaders feel confident that their investments in manager development are paying off.

75% of leaders feel their organizations aren’t fully effective in providing development opportunities to equip them in today’s work environment.

What’s going on?

📢 We’re not paying enough attention to all the factors that must be present to facilitate development.

David Peterson, an executive coaching great who we lost to illness earlier this year, taught us to think of development as a pipeline.

When all parts of the pipeline are open, development flows and we make significant progress on our development goals.

If any part of the pipeline is blocked or constrained, we struggle to make progress.

This is a powerful metaphor, to ensure we’re creating the right conditions for development both for ourselves and our team members.

The Five Segments of the Development Pipeline*

1. Insight

To make progress on our development goals, we must have insight about what we need to work on.

What strengths do we need to better leverage? What weaknesses do we need to shore up?

2. Motivation

Our development goals must be really important to us.

They have to be big enough priorities that we’re willing to put forth the required time and effort and persist through challenges.

There has to be a big WIFM (What’s in it for Me) that will drive the focus and work needed to make significant progress.

3. Capabilities

We need to build the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to achieve our development goals.

There are many ways to do this - books, training, mentoring, etc.

We often focus our time and attention here while ignoring the other parts of the pipeline.

If your development efforts aren’t working, ask yourself if you’re focusing too much attention on capabilities while ignoring one or more of the other pipeline elements.

4. Real-World Practice

It’s not enough to learn new capabilities.

We need to practice them. It often makes sense to start practicing in an artificial setting, but eventually we need to apply our learning in the real-world.

Practice and measurement help us move from a state of conscious incompetence to conscious competence.

And eventually unconscious competence.

5. Accountability

To maximize our learning, we need to track our progress and experience positive and negative consequences.

Some people are great at holding themselves accountable.

Most of us, including myself, benefit from partnering with others who help hold us accountable. Managers, friends, mentors, and executive coaches can often play this role.

The right person will challenge you and help you be objective.

Reflection

• Think about your development efforts for yourself, your team, or your organization.

• Where are you struggling to make progress?

• Where might the Development Pipeline be constrained?

• How can you remove the constraint or block in the pipeline so that development can flow freely?

*I referenced the Development Pipeline with permission from 7 Paths Forward, LLC.

References

• Gartner: Manager’s Are Cracking - More Training Won’t Help

• David Peterson: People Are Complex and the World Is Messy: A Behavior-Based Approach to Executive Coaching

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