Personal Development: Embarking on a Journey of Transformation.
Updated: Oct 9
What personal development means at mid-career
When I first wrote under this title, I described personal development as a process of becoming someone new. After fifteen years of working with experienced professionals, I see it differently. The people I work with rarely need to become someone else. They have track records, judgement and skills that took years to build, and what usually holds them back is that they cannot see those things clearly enough to put them to use.
Personal development at this stage of a career is less about reinvention and more about getting an accurate picture of what you already bring, then deciding what to build on.
That does not make planning less important. If anything, it makes it more important, because a plan built on an unclear picture tends to send people in the wrong direction with a great deal of energy. Over the years, I have come to believe that having a plan helps, but knowing what to put in the plan helps far more. Experienced professionals most often go wrong on that second part, and that is what this article is about.
Why a personal development plan still matters
A plan gives you a target, and a target changes how you spend your time and attention. When I was younger, I always carried a plan in my head of things I wanted to achieve. It was not written down anywhere, and it was not especially sophisticated, but it meant that when an opportunity came along, I knew whether it moved me closer to something I cared about.
Two of the goals on that plan took far longer than I expected. I always wanted to learn to drive, and I passed my test at 34, two years after I started. I also wanted a degree, and I have written before about how that part-time degree began. I started it in 2000 and finished it in 2008, fitting study around work for eight years. Neither goal fit a job description, and neither came quickly. What I take from both is that a goal does not lose its value because it takes longer than planned. It took time, but I got there.
I mention this because professionals in their thirties, forties and fifties are often harder on themselves about pace than they need to be. They compare their progress to a timeline they set years ago, or to a colleague with completely different circumstances, and conclude that because something hasn't happened yet, it won't happen. A personal development plan that allows for honest timescales protects against that. It is one reason I encourage people to celebrate the wee wins along the way, because progress measured in years is easy to overlook unless you make a point of noticing it.
The problem is rarely the plan
In my experience advising professionals, the difficulty is seldom an absence of goals. People who come to me have usually thought hard about what they want next. The difficulty is what goes into the plan, and why it goes in. Development plans in organisations are often written shortly before an appraisal, usually against a competency framework, and they tend to focus on gaps. The question being answered is, "What am I not good enough at yet?" rather than, "Where do I add the most value, and how do I do more of that?"
That produces plans full of courses that address weaknesses, qualifications chosen because they seem expected, and upskilling that follows whatever the organisation happens to be prioritising that year. None of these choices is wrong in itself. The problem is that people make them by default rather than on evidence. Someone who has spent fifteen years building strong client relationships may find their plan dominated by a spreadsheet course because their last review flagged data analysis. They complete the course, tick the box, and are no closer to the role that would actually suit them.
The cost of this is easy to miss because it builds slowly. Time and energy go into areas that will only ever be adequate, while the strengths that set someone apart receive no attention at all. Over several years, people drift into roles that fit the plan rather than the person. When they eventually sit down to talk about it, they often describe feeling competent but flat, and they cannot quite explain why. If that sounds familiar, the questions in my piece on standing at a career crossroads are a useful place to start.
What the evidence suggests
The support professionals receive for this kind of planning is thin. LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that only 15% of employees said their manager had helped them build a career plan in the past six months, down five percentage points from the previous year.
My reading is that professionals largely write their development plans alone, and usually in a hurry. Without someone to ask better questions, people fall back on the most visible input available, which is their last appraisal. That is how a plan ends up describing what an organisation wanted from someone last year, rather than what that person does best.
Development outside work counts too
One view I hold firmly is that personal development does not have to be about work at all. When I sit down with people, the conversation rarely stays inside the job for long. They have interests, ambitions and commitments outside work that matter to them, and they are entitled to include those in their plans. Learning a language, completing a qualification for its own sake, training for an event or finally learning to drive are all legitimate goals.
There is also a practical argument for it. Goals pursued outside work build qualities that work depends on. Finishing something difficult over a long period builds persistence. Fitting study around a full-time job teaches people to manage their own time and energy without anyone checking on them. Taking on something new as an adult, with all the awkwardness that involves, builds a kind of confidence that carries into interviews, presentations and difficult conversations, as well as into the early months of a new job. These qualities rarely appear on a competency framework, yet they show up in how people perform.
Organisations frequently overlook this. When development plans are limited to the job description, employers lose sight of half the picture, and employees learn to keep their other ambitions to themselves. A manager who asks what someone is working towards outside work can learn more about that person’s motivation in five minutes than a year of appraisal paperwork reveals.
What effective professionals do differently
The professionals who make the most progress tend to approach their personal development plan with more honesty and less obligation. Four habits stand out in the people I work with.
Start from evidence, not aspiration
Before deciding what to develop, they find out what is already working. That might mean a validated strengths diagnostic, structured feedback from colleagues, or a careful look at the moments in their career when they performed at their best. The aim is to replace assumptions with evidence. What often surprises people is that the thing others value most in them is something they take for granted, and that what they have spent years trying to fix matters far less than they thought.
Separate what you are good at from what gives you energy
Being good at something and being energised by it are not the same. Plenty of experienced professionals have become very skilled at tasks that drain them, simply because they were reliable and the work kept arriving. A useful plan builds on strengths that are both effective and energising, and treats draining skills as something to manage rather than expand.
Give goals honest timescales
Some goals take months and others take years. Effective professionals accept this and plan accordingly, rather than abandoning a goal because it hasn't happened by an arbitrary deadline. They also mix longer goals with shorter ones, so that they can see progress while the bigger pieces are still underway. My driving test and my degree both took longer than I'd like, but I got there with both.
Talk it through with someone who asks better questions
A plan written alone tends to reflect what you already think. Sitting down with someone who listens carefully and asks good questions often brings out goals and strengths that would never have made it onto the page otherwise. That might be a mentor, a trusted colleague or an adviser. What matters is that the conversation is about you, rather than about the organisation’s priorities for the year ahead. In my experience, the most useful parts of a plan come out in conversation rather than on a form.
What organisations often misunderstand
Organisations often treat personal development plans as part of the appraisal cycle, completed because the process requires it and reviewed a year later. That approach turns what could be a valuable conversation into an administrative task. The employee writes what they think the manager wants to see, the manager signs it off, and neither learns very much.
Organisations that get more from development planning treat it as an ongoing conversation about where each person adds the most value. They give managers the time and confidence to have that conversation, and they accept that a plan may include goals unrelated to the current role. They gain people who understand what they bring and can see it used, a far stronger basis for engagement than a signed form.
A question worth asking
Look at your current plan, whether it is written down or carried in your head, and ask whose priorities it reflects. If every goal on it came from an appraisal, or from what someone in your position is supposed to do next, it may be describing the wrong version of you. It may suit the organisation rather than reflect the person who does your best work. The more useful question is not what you still need to fix, but what you already do well that has never made it onto the page.
If you would like to build your next steps on clear evidence of your strengths, Ascent is a four-month, one-to-one programme designed around that idea. It starts with a validated strengths diagnostic and works from what is true about you towards a clear strategy for what comes next.
By Paula Donnan
Strength at Work | Better judgement. Stronger leadership. Higher performance.
If this is affecting you, book in for a free 30-minute initial briefing to discuss the way forward.
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