Planning the Personal Development Conversation

Finally, when your relationship with your boss has matured a bit, begin to discuss how your tenure in this position will contribute to your personal development. What skills do you need to develop to do the job better? Are there shortcomings in your management capacities that you need to try to address? Are there projects or special assignments that you could get involved in (without sacrificing focus) that could strengthen your skills? Are there formal courses or programs that would strengthen your capabilities?

It is especially critical that you do this when you are making key career passages. If you are a first-time manager, get in the habit early of asking your boss for feedback and help in developing your supervisory skills. Your willingness to seek candid feedback on your strengths and weaknesses and, critically, your ability to act on the feedback send a powerful message.

The same fundamental principle holds whether you are becoming a manager of managers for the first time, a functional leader, a general manager, or a CEO. Whenever you are at a point in your career when success demands a different set of skills and attitudes, discipline yourself to be open to learning from others who have gone before you.

Don t restrict your focus to hard skills. The higher you rise, the more important the key soft skills of cultural and political diagnosis, negotiation, coalition building, and conflict management will become. Formal training can help, but developmental assignments ”in project teams , in new parts of the organization, in different functions, in different locations ”are indispensable in honing these key managerial skills.