The Personal Development Plan, also known as POP for short, is gaining ground. Not only in higher professional education or university courses, but also in the labor market. It happens more and more often that as an employee you have to create a POP that serves as an instrument for a performance or assessment interview. What exactly is a POP and how do you write a good POP?
Personal development plan
The Personal Development Plan or by some people also called Personal Development Plan can be abbreviated as POP. From now on there will also be talk about a POP. What is it actually? It is a difficult concept to define because it has different roles. A PDP occurs within a training course, but can also relate to a job.
First of all, the first meaning in the context of a training course will be discussed. Courses, and in particular HBO and university courses, consider it important that the student can work self-directed and can draw up a plan to achieve a final goal. Writing a PDP provides direction to a learning process and forces the student to think about what he or she wants to learn. Perhaps even more important is how he or she wants to do this. Steps must be taken to achieve goals. There are a number of questions that can help provide this direction. What steps need to be taken to achieve the ultimate goal? What do you need for this? When will you carry out the steps? When has the goal been achieved? In fact, you write an extensive plan of action.
Then the meaning of the POP in relation to a job. In that situation, a POP is mainly an agreement between employee and employer with regard to the development of the employee; a kind of development contract. The employee looks at what he or she wants to learn or achieve and the employer, if possible, provides time and money to achieve this. It is important that as an employee you think about yourself in relation to your work and what you would like to achieve in the future. As an employee, you may have certain ambitions that you pursue, such as growing into a higher position. Through a POP you can gain insight into what you want to achieve and what you need from your employer. A PDP is of value to an employer because an employer wants employees who want to continue developing; this shows motivation. For this reason, employers generally also invest in it.
Parts of a POP
Although a POP can have two functions as explained above, the line is the same. To make it clear how a POP works, the red line will be shown below.
- The expectations from the organization towards the employee in the current situation and the future
- Functioning at work
- Ambitions
- Short term goals
- Long term goals
It is clear that you have to think about yourself. There are some questions that can help you with this:
- What am I good at? In other words: where do my strengths lie?
- What do I like to do?
- What type of person am I?
- Do I also use this in my current job?
- What is my personal vision?
- What could I do to perform my role better?
- In which direction do I want to develop further?
- What are my ambitions? (what do I want to have achieved in five or ten years?)
- What would I still need to learn for this?
Set goals
Setting goals plays an essential role in writing an IDP. This way you map out a route with things you want to achieve or work on. To ensure that these goals do not remain empty words that are nice on paper but are actually achieved, you can choose a specific approach. This is, for example, the SMART method. These letters stand for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. By including each part in the formulation of your goal, you will get a well-developed and clear goal that you can work well with.
For more information about drawing up learning objectives according to the SMART method, see: Formulating learning objectives according to the SMART method
Recommended reading
If you are interested in delving further into literature regarding POP, the following titles are recommended:
- Leest, Sharon van & Buchel, Yolanda (2004). Create your own POP, workbook for personal development. The Hague: Academic Service.
- Grit, Guit & van der Sijde (2004). Competency management. Wolters Noordhoff. Intended for students in higher education. Assignments and exercises to independently draw up a POP.
- Buschgens, Christine & Verdonk, Eva Lotte (2003). The POPping game, From intention to action: formulate your own personal development plan. Zaltbommel: Theme.