Personal Development
It’s thought that only 10% of career development comes through formal courses,
conferences and training. The rest comes from experience (70%) and exposure (20%).
The learning activities described in this section will give you a flavour of the most
effective non-classroom based ways to develop your professional abilities.
Taking on additional responsibilities
Job shadowing
Whether it’s taking on a challenging new
If there’s someone who has a particular skill
project or assignment, or picking up an area
or set of knowledge that you admire, you could
that you haven’t worked on before, this is with
consider shadowing them. Job shadowing is
a doubt the most effective way to develop your
essentially spending time observing them doing
skills.Perhaps there’s an area of work that you
their work, watching, listening and learning
have an interest in, or something you know
what the job is about and what is involved in a
you need experience in before you’re ready
typical day.
to take the next career step. If it’s not part of
your job now, consider how you could build it
in – then speak with your manager.
Secondments
A secondment involves a temporary move to
Acting up or covering for a
colleague
This means learning how to do some or all of
another department or company for a period
another person’s job. It could be to cover for
or two years. If you’re interested, speak with
leave or to ensure that more than one person in
your manager then arrange to meet with HR to
the organisation knows about a particular
follow up.
of time, usually from several months to one
project or process. Giving another person’s job
a go is also a great way to test whether you
Reading/desk research
have a longer-term interest in those areas.
Highly underrated as a learning activity, there
are some incredibly powerful and truly
inspirational resources out there. For some
360° Feedback
ideas including books, papers, articles,
A powerful tool for raising self-awareness
webinars, websites and podcasts see the
and helping you select the areas of personal
Kantar Development and Resource Guide.
development to work on. Our 360° tool is based
on the Kantar leadership model and is regularly
used in the business.
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