As we continue our focus on development throughout the year, we’re delighted to hear stories from so many of you who are driving your own personal development.
This month we’re spotlighting an example of learning and development through the ambition of not just one individual but an entire team. The Accounting and Capital team share their inspiring journey on why their focus on development is an essential component to their agenda all the time.
Here’s their story…
Following the pandemic and all the stresses it brought and with the roll out of our Culture Essentials, we ensured we planned activities to embed them and begin to live them naturally day-by-day, recognising the value of global culture right from the start. The goal was and isn’t only to live our Culture Essentials, but to forge future planning in our world after the pandemic, to be more flexible, further prepared and get back to development being at the heart of our teams.
Where to start?
Initially we added workshops alongside our team meetings addressing topics which needed to be covered, pushing development as a wider team. These continue the focus and time set aside for development has enhanced greatly – also the power hours and Cove offerings have been key in supporting this. Not to mention supporting in all the wonderful relationships developed with people outside of our areas, helping build networks as we come together.
How to continue?
Many of our members regularly attend power hours and other sessions and then feed back to the team sharing their knowledge, often making them the basis for a workshop. They also look for other resources depending on their goal, leveraging others, learning outside of the business e.g. YouTube videos for excel, forums to ask questions and many other examples. The agenda is no longer driven top-down, it’s a natural sharing of information.
Making time for essential development
Meaningful conversations are always on the agenda, with constructive criticism leading the way to identifying development needs. Team meetings have become a more collaborative space where examples of Culture Essentials are shared each month in an informal setting and development is discussed as essential not optional.
Opportunities to keep learning
At the heart of all of this is the drive for improvement and the acceptance that development is key whether you’re striving for progression upward, sideways or within your role, learning should never stop and development should always be on the agenda. So, thank you Learning team for helping us navigate this and providing great material and opportunities for us to learn.
Our top ten tips for learning and development are:
- Make sure you set aside the time – make development a priority, book in for the courses you want to attend, block that time you want to focus on development. Also develop and importantly maintain an Independent development plan (IDP) to track and stay focused on your development.
- Plan what you need – gain clarity on what your objectives are, make them measurable, achievable but not too comfortable. Stretch yourself and challenge yourself.
- Learn from others – buddy up and share knowledge across areas and levels.
- Speak up and ask – don’t be afraid or embarrassed, a question isn’t stupid if you don’t know the answer.
- Press for constructive feedback – if you get positive feedback ask again for the constructive feedback as well. Look for feedback internally and externally to your area.
- When you’ve developed or are developing a skill, find the opportunities to demonstrate these as a next step to the learning.
- Leverage your strengths to work on weaknesses by using tools such as organisation games and puzzles or list your good and negative.
- Expand your networks – find out about other areas, meet people and talk, it will help identify possible future interests as well as build valuable relationships.
- Speak to your leaders and VP’s – it’s important they know what you want for your development to support you.
- Share your knowledge – your learning can go further and may encourage others to attend.
Share your development story
We’re passionate about developing our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals. If you have a personal development story you’d like to share to inspire our shoreside colleagues then we’d love to hear from you here.