As a communicator, you’ve acquired a portfolio of skills and abilities that you use successfully in your current job or projects. However, the job or projects you are working on today may not be what you will be working on in five years. Most of us will have multiple jobs or specialties throughout our careers.
Given that you want to progress, challenge yourself professionally and achieve your goals, you must manage this portfolio to ensure it is current, practical and useful throughout your career. The following are six steps to help you direct your professional development.
1. Expand your base of knowledge.
The greater your level of knowledge and abilities, the more options you have. Avail yourself of new opportunities and career directions by acquiring multiple skills and playing multiple roles. While it’s important to be an effective generalist communicator, it’s equally important to develop at least one or two specialties for greater flexibility and leverage. You will limit your opportunities if you confine yourself to a single specialty or industry niche.
Find out what expertise and skills are in demand now—and what will be in demand in the future. Identify trends that are influencing the need for certain expertise. Study how the communication sector is evolving. Find out what work your colleagues are doing that interests you.
Try to acquire, every year, at least one new area of expertise that is important to your career.
2. Create a professional development plan.
To manage your career effectively, you need to manage your professional development.
This means identifying your current areas of expertise and ability, determining what you need to improve or expand, and developing an action plan to do so. The following chart can help you prioritize this process:
List your career goals for the next few years. To help you get started, refer to the business and personal goals you identified in Chapter : How Do I Create a Business Plan?
Identify the skills, knowledge and experience required to achieve these goals.
Identify the gaps between where you are now and where you want to go.
Determine the actions you must take to acquire or improve this expertise. At this point, it’s helpful to know and apply your learning style so you can create a plan that will appeal to you and be easier to follow. For example, if you learn best by reading, your action plan might include reading books on how to manage databases. If you learn better by doing, you might want to take a course on database management.
Set deadlines and add these to your time schedule or “to do” list.
If you are having difficulty creating this plan, you may find the assistance of a professional career counselor helpful. Ask your communication colleagues for recommendations.
Once you have created your professional development plan, be sure to evaluate your progress in achieving your goals on a regular basis. Most important, keep going.
3. Market your expertise.
When you develop new expertise, you should advise the people who can benefit from this. Inform your clients and colleagues, and communicate the ways in which your abilities can help to meet their needs.
4. Stay current.
You need to stay current not only with developments related to your areas of specialization and the field of communication, but also with the marketplace and the world generally. What’s happening near you and around you affects your business and your clients. You need to filter this information in the context of your career and the work you do for others.
Tune in. Look, listen, read, ask and talk about business, social, economic, religious, cultural and political developments.
5. Reward yourself.
Professional development is a personal pursuit, therefore you won’t be receiving accolades from others. The ability to derive satisfaction from your accomplishments is an important survival skill for consultants.
You need to nourish and reward yourself. Celebrate your own successes. When you reach a goal in your professional development plan, give yourself a pat on the back by doing something special for yourself.
6. Pursue new opportunities.
If you lose your primary clients tomorrow, you need to be able to replace them—fast.
You must be prepared for new challenges, people and situations.
Pursue opportunities that take you beyond your “comfort zone.” Stretch yourself to change, to try new areas of work. Don’t allow lack of experience to hold you back. Integrate new competencies into your professional development plan. Never stop learning.
This article is an excerpt from The Successful Communication Consultant by Corinne LaBossiere, ABC, APR, available from the IABC Knowledge Centre.