Executive summary

Businesses constantly manage the achievement of their vision, mission and objectives through the strategic planning process. Similarly, there has to be a formal way for individuals to audit their strengths and weaknesses to develop themselves as better individuals. Having a professional development plan can be identified as a proactive step towards this. Today, the job market conditions have significantly changed and there are plenty of qualified individuals who are willing take over jobs. Therefore, being professionals we should constantly focus on developing ourselves to be better individuals.
Most of the businesses organize generic training and development programs for the benefit of their employees. Here, the main disadvantage is that these programs are not specifically addressing the individual training needs of the employees. This further stresses the importance of having a professional development plan. The first part of the report have significantly audited the managerial skills and competencies of myself within the role of an Executive. A detailed personal SWOT analysis has been conducted to facilitate the professional development plan.
The last section of the report have recommended necessary corrective steps to develop myself as a better leader. A detailed professional development plan has been attached with gaps and recommendations.

1. Introduction

The objective of this report is to prepare a Professional Development Plan (PDP) to assess the professional competencies and skills and identify the gaps which need to be filled to achieve the future professional goals. In an organization, goals and objectives are important to strategic planning; they turn the mission and vision into specific measurable targets (Abraham, 2012). Even in personal life, it is important to have clear short term, medium term and long term goals and objectives to achieve our goals and career ambitions.
Further, PDP is useful to identify the training and development needs which require individuals to achieve their future targets. When preparing a PDP, individuals should always take the directions from the existing career plan. Within this process, it’s really important to have a clear assessment about the strengths and weaknesses about themselves. Moreover, it’s useful to assess individuals’ current position in terms of skills such as communication skills, leadership skills and emotional intelligence and identify areas that need to be developed to be a better leader. Finally, recommendations can be made based on the identified gaps to achieve the future career goals. Personal development plan needs to be reviewed time to time and to monitor the progress.