Individual Development

Individual Development Plan

Use form below to map your career development by matching your skills, interests, and values with your opportunities for growth.  Remember to include both functional skills and leadership skills in your plan.

Strengths:  Strengths are the skills, knowledge and experiences you will continue to leverage.        

• What are your top three strengths?  

1. Able to work with people
2. Perseverance to work on my goals
3. Diverse experience of working in India and the US

• How will you use your strengths to further your performance and career?

1. Working with people helps me to maintain relationships and conflict management in teams
2. Perseverance to work on my goals keep me focused especially on the individual project that I take on.
3. Diverse experience of working in two countries help me bring in different perspective in sustainability work area.

Opportunities:  Focus first on gaps in your current role, then consider long-term gaps.  

• What are your top three development opportunities?

1. Communication especially writing skills
2. Cultural difference
3. Procrastinating nature

• What are the key gaps in your skills, knowledge or experiences that you need to address to attain your short and/or long term career goals?

1. Writing skills are important as I realize being a graduate student and moving into sustainability work force, helps to convince, persuade with writing.
2. Cultural knowledge in long term to work with NGO’s, government local communities
3. Procrastinating nature affects the speed of my work.

Development Goals (focus on in the short-term):

• Describe 2-3 development goals, along with the specific actions you will take to meet them. Include on-the-job activities (70%), learning from others (20%), and formal training opportunities (10%). Goals should be reflective of your strengths and opportunities, as related to your career aspirations.
• Include both leadership and functional skills in your plan—the What and the How.
• Make sure your objectives are S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound) and ask:  How will you know that you’ve been successful?  Who will give you feedback and how often?

1.  Working on my communication plan – I have already been a member for Toastmasters International which helps with speaking, listening and organizational skills. I will keep working on the manual and achieve 5 goals from it in the next year. This will help me with my school projects directly as I will be doing my applied project in next semester.
2. Working with the project – I am hoping to learn the culture and blend in more while I meet more people and learn from them during next 5 months.
3. I am also planning to take coursera training online in specific areas such as changing habits to get the work done and manage it well. This I am planning to work on during my winter break.

Career steps:

• What changes to your current role or other job changes make sense relative to your development gaps, time in current role, potential opportunities and long-term goals?

I am not working right now. I do not have an answer to this question at this point. I am making changes already by going to school, focusing on things that are important.