12

Put It in Writing

Prepare a Leadership Development Plan

THE FAMILIAR PHRASE, “What gets measured gets done” is an old business mantra that means that when you set goals and hold people accountable, work stands a better chance of getting accomplished. It also happens to represent the best way to add new leadership skills. If you’re really committed to development, you should document your goals and objectives in a Leadership Development Plan (LDP). The LDP is just what it sounds like: a formal, written plan of the steps to take to develop yourself as a leader. Typically, this one-page document lists your specific development objectives as well as the behaviors you’re committed to adding, enhancing, or stopping. If you want to hold yourself accountable for development, put your learning objectives in writing and share the LDP with your boss, your peers, and your team. Tell them what you’re working on; give them copies of the LDP and ask them to hold you accountable for the behavior change. Once you put yourself out there, you’re committed—and that’s a good thing when you’re developing yourself as a leader.

Create a Simple and Elegant LDP

Let’s face it, most of us are apprehensive of change. Change is often difficult, and it requires extra work. You have to adapt, make adjustments; you have to evolve. Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps involves change, and it isn’t going to happen on its own. You must identify the changes you want to make and commit yourself to making them happen. The LDP is designed to help you meet both of these challenges (see Figure 4).

Start by articulating your overall leadership development goal at the top of the page. Make this goal aspirational, yet achieve-able. This is the statement that best describes what you’re trying to “turn yourself into” as a leader. Next, identify up to three critical development objectives and add these to the left column. These should reflect the major areas of improvement that you discovered throughout Part One of this book. Be sure to restrict yourself to no more than three things to work on at any one time; any more can be distracting and you won’t make significant progress on any of them. Write clear objectives, using active verbs and specific language about what you intend to improve. The objectives should be so clear that your grandmother could understand what you’re trying to work on (even if she doesn’t really know what you do for a living!).

Plan for Attitude and Behavior Change

Next, for each development objective, record the specific thoughts or behaviors you want to add, enhance, or stop. Break your development plan down into two categories: attitude and behaviors. In the second column, capture any attitude adjustments you need to make to really drive progress in this area. Frankly, sometimes the root of the problem is a bad attitude or lack of intent. Your bad (or absent) behaviors may flow from how you feel about certain situations or people. For example, if you don’t like your boss, chances are your outlook or attitude is what needs to be adjusted (e.g., accepting that you don’t have to be friends, acknowledging that your boss is working a different agenda, admitting that maybe your boss is right, etc.). Maybe you panic about speaking in public; in that case, your fears are probably holding you back from making any behavioral progress. You get the idea. Write your “action items” as bullets, and try to document ways and ideas for thinking differently. Reach down for the good stuff here—don’t be shy or reserved. If you know you really need to adjust your outlook in order to change, admit what you need to work on, and put it in writing. Because you will be sharing your LDP with others, write these clearly but carefully—use positive language that expresses your desired behavior. If your initial thought is, “Stop being defensive around the boss,” you might instead write: “Keep an open mind when exchanging feedback with others.” If an area of opportunity is to “get along better with my peers,” write “look for opportunities to involve or engage my teammates on a regular basis.” Think of these items as refining or adopting a new mindset; it’s hard to execute new behaviors if you’re still thinking about the situation or person in the same old way. Attitude and intent precede behavior—don’t neglect this area of development.

Then move to the final column and document what you really want to start doing differently. Strive to identify behaviors that others are sure to notice (these might include demonstrating new skills, increasing the things you do well, eliminating bad habits, etc.). These items should be mini action plans; they should describe measurable behaviors. Be very descriptive (and prescriptive). For example, if your development objective involves being completely present in meetings, one of your behaviors might be: “Leave my BlackBerry in the office when attending my team’s staff meeting.” This is a behavior change that others will certainly notice. In fact, your peers, direct reports, or manager should be able to easily recognize what you’re working on and track your progress against each one of these items. For both the attitude and behavior columns, think quality, not quantity. For each development objective, record no more than two to four actionable items per column.

Finally, at the bottom of your LDP, document your key behavior enablers. This is a handy way to remember the two or three critical behaviors that drive everything on the page. For example, “getting out of my office” is an enabling behavior that can jump-start several different development opportunities, such as spending more time with your team, listening more effectively, learning about the business, spending time with internal clients, and so forth. You might repeat items you captured above; that’s OK. The key behavior enablers are the absolute “must-dos” of your Leadership Development Plan.

For the past several years, I have created an LDP in late December for the coming year. I find that I’m in a reflective mood around the holidays, and I enjoy the process of documenting my learning and development objectives for the new year. Sometimes I even use the dual categories of attitude and behaviors to make adjustments in my personal life, and I often find my most successful development happens when I set challenging goals for myself in the attitude column (attitude really does set up behavior; it’s all part of the ongoing maturation process).

If it’s true that what gets measured gets done, then adapt that phrase for your development and say: “What gets documented gets done.” Are you serious about working on your leadership skills? Well, here’s your chance to write it down and share it with the world. Of course, you still have to execute the plan. But if you put in the time to create a robust development plan, you will have a terrific roadmap and monitoring tool as you make the commitment to change.

Bootstrap Takeaways

Prepare a Leadership Development Plan

1. Document your plans for development and change.

2. Be bold—strive to create plans that you’ll execute. Use the LDP to stretch yourself.

3. Share your LDP with others—don’t be shy. Others need to know what you’re working on in order to support you, and you’ll be more likely to succeed if you put yourself out there.