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Email ThisKeeping it short and simple today. Here are 3 keys to getting the most out of professional development opportunities:
- Seek out professional development opportunities based on your career goals. Set specific career goals for yourself and use these goals to guide the activities you participate in and when selecting my professional development opportunities. When setting your personal goals it may also be important for you to have a discussion with your supervisor. Many organizations already have a set plan for professional development and your supervisor will have a good idea of what you need to develop to be more effective in your position. It is important to reassess your goals, at least yearly. As changes happen in your career and life, make sure your professional development opportunities are aligned with your goals and your professional needs.
- Leave with at least one item to take action on. Every professional development experience is different, whether it’s a two day seminar or a two hour training or a webinar. No matter what the professional development opportunity is, make sure you walk away with at least one thing to do, and hold yourself accountable for doing it. This may be difficult for some training, maybe you thought it was going to be a training you would like and it ended up not pertaining to you at all. If this happens, find one thing out of the day that interested you, even if it was something from a conversation with another participant and not from the presenter. If you don’t have any take-away from the training write down one thing you wish the training included and seek an opportunity to learn about that, or just conduct research on it.
- Meet at least one person. It’s possible to have a tendency to walk into a training and walk out with never meeting anyone. This is a no-no. To work on this: if you feel uncomfortable talking to others you don’t know, push yourself, because you never know who you will meet. Make it a priority to get to know someone in the room more personally. Get their business card and remember their name. This will get easier and easier over time!
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3 Responses to “How to Make Corporate Training Actually Work for You”
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“Many organizations already have a set plan for professional development and your supervisor will have a good idea of what you need to develop to be more effective in your position”
Ha! (not laughing at Tera here, just at the corporate world in general)
Seriously, how many of you have found this to be true at YOUR company? Here in my office, I’m lucky if my manager actually knows what’s going on, much less has a clue of what I need to learn to prepare for the future.
When it comes to professional development, you’re on your own more often than not.
Hi Tera,
I’m glad you’re encouraging people to get the most out of their corporate training.
I’m going to have to agree with Scott about his experience in the corporate world. I flew out to Chicago (St. Charles) for my training and I was not impressed at all. We ran over basic things on excel, access, and all this leadership and puclic-speaking training. The funny thing is, my experience was completely different from my friends experience. She thought that the training was amazing!
What I realized is the attitude you bring into the training greatly affects what and how you learn. I knew from the beginning that I was going to leave the company very soon and that I was going to pursue my entrepreneurial venture. That’s why I got nothing out of it. My friend on the other hand plans on staying with the company for a very long time. So she got a lot out of it.
ATTITUDE one of the most important things out there.
Just my two cents
You’re right about attitude. There are always those days when you just don’t want to participate in training, or you have other circumstances in the way, ie. your leaving your job soon anyways. My hope is the three keys above will at least promote you to learn one thing, so it’s not totally useless.
And I think people have different situations with their employers offering professional development. I have it offered at my place of business, but I work at an educational institution. What other experiences have people had?