Manage your career, your brand, and your development. 70% of learning comes from doing; 20% come...
1. "Informal" = Learn through Doing. The best professional development usually isn't from a course.
1.1. Special projects
1.1.1. Everything from projects with other teams to projects with other organizations.
1.1.1.1. How might you support UWNCA?
1.2. Volunteer
1.2.1. Maybe it's not a special project, maybe it's an ongoing volunteering role. Helping with a website, fundraising, social media, etc.
1.3. Expand current role
1.3.1. Your job can be shaped to increase your impact and your opportunity to professional development
1.4. Job rotation
1.4.1. Okay, this is a tough one to pull off but still worth exploring.
1.5. Post-course Action Plans
1.5.1. Just going to a course/conference is never enough. Put it into action and keep the learning going. Discuss the action plans w/ your supervisor.
1.6. Lead a meeting
1.6.1. But lead it right! Plan out a real meeting with a clear meeting purpose, objectives, and facilitation process to get there. Then facilitate the meeting, end on time, and walk out w/ objectives met - or learn how to get there next time.
1.7. Train others
1.7.1. When you train others, you've got to up your game. This makes for a great development opportunity.
1.8. Share/Present
1.8.1. For team
1.8.2. Brown Bags
1.8.3. Conference
1.8.4. Webinar
1.9. Create Content
1.9.1. Blog post
1.9.1.1. For 701, UWNCA, UWO, etc.
1.9.2. White paper
1.9.3. Presentation
1.10. Curate content
1.10.1. Owning, contributing, curating, etc. to a clear body of knowledge builds your brand as a content expert.
1.11. Reflect
1.11.1. Sitting back from an experience, a project, a course, etc. and asking questions like, "what am I learning?" "why does this matter?" "How can I make it matter more?"
1.12. Explore / Research
2. Social
2.1. Seek feedback
2.1.1. Create a safe space for others to provide you feedback. Truly, if the feedback is not sometimes uncomfortable for you, then it's not real feedback. The better you are at inviting, receiving, and acting on feedback, the stronger your professional brand can be.
2.2. Give feedback
2.2.1. Offer to provide developmental feedback to others. Developmental feedback needs to be helpful and that requires work on your part. That's why providing it helps YOU develop too!
2.3. Coaching & Mentoring
2.3.1. Mentee
2.3.1.1. Find a mentor and leverage the opportunity.
2.3.2. Mentor
2.3.2.1. Find a mentee and help them grow.
2.4. Discussion Forums/Groups
2.4.1. Participate in communities of professionals in the area that you are most interested. [These can be groups on social media.]
2.5. Social Media Engagement in the area you want to grow in.
2.5.1. Twitter
2.5.2. Facebook
2.5.3. LinkedIn
2.5.4. Blogging
2.5.5. Social bookmarking
2.5.6. Ratings and comments
2.6. Networking
2.6.1. Inside UWW
2.6.2. Outside UWW - or even outside the network
2.7. Professional Association
2.7.1. Don't just go to the meetings, jump in with both feet and get known in the Association. This will push you and build your expertise!
3. Formal
3.1. Courses
3.1.1. eLearning
3.1.2. Instructor lead
3.1.2.1. Free standing offerings
3.1.2.2. Certificates
3.1.2.3. Degrees
3.1.3. Action Learning