Individual Development Plan: 5 Steps to Plan For Success

Sailors wouldn’t dream of going to sea without the GPS they need to navigate safely. But for many employees, career progression can feel like sailing into uncharted waters. 

That’s where individual development plans (IDPs) come in. IDPs allow you to take control of your career path by mapping out your professional trajectory. In today’s ever-changing work environment, think of an IDP as a GPS for your career: You have a destination, you know how to get there, and you’ve got an alternative route if there are rough seas. 

What Are Individual Development Plans (IDPs)?

An individual development plan (IDP) is a document that lays out an employee’s career goals and what they need to do to reach them. It also identifies strengths and areas for development or growth. 

While IDPs were traditionally used to create a framework for employees who weren’t performing as well as expected, they’re becoming a popular way to track skill development, identify strengths, and plan for career development. Employees, especially younger generations, increasingly want career progression transparency, which is exactly what an IDP provides. 

The Structure of an IDP

The structure of an IDP varies, but typically includes five key components: 

• Strengths: Outlines an employee’s unique skills, knowledge, talents, and behaviors, and how these help their team or company move forward. 

• Development opportunities: Specific opportunities that can support employee development and growth, for example, training courses or certifications.  

• Long-term career vision: Instead of focusing on a specific title or role, IDPs consider the overarching motivators, environment, and purpose that drive each employee. 

• Short-term career plan: Outlines the steps that need to be taken over the next one to two years, to get you to your longer-term career vision.  

• Growth areas: Breaks down short- and long-term career goals into manageable milestones. This includes development needs like gaining specific qualifications, working with a mentor, or signing up for hands-on training. 

Why Are IDPs Important?

Employee development isn’t always given the recognition it deserves. Recent Lattice research uncovered that only 15% of employees have regular career development conversations. And that’s a huge missed opportunity. Dave Carhart, VP of Lattice’s People Strategy Group noted that “business leaders are well aware of how much the economic environment and needs of their business have changed, many lack the same level of understanding of what their employees need to deliver high performance.” 

Luckily, that’s a gap that IDPs are perfectly suited to fill. 

For employees, the benefits of an IDP include:

• Professional growth: Opportunities to improve and develop skills by identifying opportunities for development and growth. 
• Career development: The short- and long-term career goals in an IDP help employees chart a path toward career progression. 
• Improved motivation, engagement, and performance: The clear goals provided by an IDP can help boost motivation as employees feel supported and encouraged to succeed. 
• Increased confidence: Taking the time to think about and identify specific skills can boost morale and confidence. 

And for organizations: 

• Talent retention: A commitment to employee growth and development can improve loyalty and decrease turnover.  
• Improved performance: Focusing on employee development and performance management typically translates into wider organizational success. ‍
• Succession planning: IDPs can help identify high-potential employees and develop a talent pipeline for key positions. 

Top 5 Steps to Create a Successful IDP

1. Identify your top strengths.

Your strengths make you unique. They distinguish you from other employees and help you succeed in your role. Strengths and competencies come in many forms, including:

• Skills
• Behaviors 
• Knowledge 

Defining these for yourself can be tricky. While IDPs aren’t the same as performance reviews or one-on-ones, the feedback within these reviews can be a good starting point. Look through self, manager, and peer feedback from reviews. Are there any trends and consistent themes? Consider your personal relationships too, because work isn’t the only place our strengths play out. 

Strengths make up your personal value proposition to your manager, team, and company. They’re also a large part of why you were hired in the first place. While it can feel uncomfortably like bragging to talk about your strengths, it’s a useful exercise. Think about what comes naturally to you, or what you accomplish easier or faster than your teammates. One useful way to frame your strengths is to consider the business impact or measurable results you’ve contributed to. For example, maybe you work in customer service and your ability to consistently solve queries helps boost customer satisfaction and loyalty ratings. Or you work in sales and your strong negotiation skills have led to a 25% increase in sales revenue over the last quarter.    

A focused approach is best, so keep your list of current skills and strengths at around six to eight items. 

2. Capture your development opportunities.

On the flip side of strengths are development opportunities. Rather than frame these as weaknesses, consider them as the knowledge, skills, and behaviors you can improve on as potential strengths. 

The best places to identify areas for growth are:

• Performance reviews: We all have blind spots when it comes to our own behaviors, but reviews, constructive feedback from others, and 360-degree reviews can shine a light on areas for personal development. Look for themes across feedback from various sources, and use these as a starting point. Remember that even though constructive, or critical, feedback can be uncomfortable to receive (and give!) it can often be more helpful than positive feedback when driving career growth and development. 

• Self-reflection: Take time to reflect on areas or skills you want to develop. Is there any knowledge you’d like to learn that will help you succeed? Are there qualities or skills you’ve observed in others that you’d like to cultivate? 

Once you’ve identified these opportunities, remember you don’t have to tackle everything at once. Prioritize the development opportunities you can work on now, have already seen progress with, or will make the biggest impact. Make a note of any other potential opportunities and put them to the side for your next IDP. 

3. Brainstorm your long-term career vision. 

Even if you don’t have the specifics mapped out, it’s important to have long-term professional goals that set the direction for where you want to go. None of us can predict the future, so rather than focus on a title you want, it’s better to create a flexible long-term vision that aligns with three key factors: Motivators, purpose, and environment.

Motivators

Motivators are the aspects of your job that mean you’re excited to get out of bed and encouraged to keep going when faced with challenges. They also keep you engaged and focused. 

Motivators are specific to you. They can be intrinsic, which means they’re driven by an internal desire to do something because it’s rewarding or fun, or extrinsic, which means they’re driven by external forces, like a bonus or a set timeframe. They can also be both — for example, you might really enjoy working on problem-solving, creative projects with a short deadline, like a team hackathon. While some may take priority over others at different times, they’re generally stable throughout your life. Common motivators include:

• Autonomy
• Recognition
• Compensation
• Creativity
• Influence
• Learning
• Lifestyle
• Problem-solving
• Relationships 
• Social impact 
• Security
• Variety 

Think about situations when you’ve felt the most motivated at work, and try to find the reasons why. Consider projects or tasks that you particularly enjoyed, new challenges that got you fired up, or the types of conditions that give you the most satisfaction from your work. Did you most enjoy learning a new skill, earning a bonus, or brainstorming a solution to a new challenge in your company’s sector? Try to identify three different motivators, if possible. 

Purpose

Most of us like to live with purpose — the desire to contribute to something greater than ourselves. Think about what drives you and makes you feel most fulfilled, not just at work, but in life. What kind of impact do you want to make at work, at home, in your community, or in the world? Are there any themes or patterns you can identify?

Environment

The company you work for can be a place where you thrive, or simply survive. A large part of this comes down to culture. A positive organizational culture — where everyone is supported to do their best work — is a winning combination for employees and the company. 

Consider if the company you’re working with has this kind of culture. 

Do the values of the company you work for align with your own? Does it prioritize belonging, promote accountability at all levels, and do leaders follow through on what they say they’re going to? How does your organization respond to feedback and new ideas? How does this environment impact your experience at work? 

4. Set a shorter-term career plan. 

Now your long-term career vision is in place, it’s time to make the short-term action plan that will get you there. Whatever your long-term goal, these shorter-term steps will help determine your course. The good thing about short-term career paths is that there can be many routes to your long-term destination. And whichever one you choose now, you can always choose another later if you change your mind.

The reason you set your long-term career vision first is to provide a North Star. Think of your short-term plan as the navigational set points along the way that help you get there. That way, if and when circumstances and plans change, you know you’re still heading in the right direction.

First, make a list of all the possible short-term opportunities. Cast a wide net — this could include options including:

• Inside your team
• Within the company
• Outside the company
• Outside your industry 

Next, consider any constraints and development areas that could affect your progress towards these opportunities. This could include things like motivators, strengths, or resources. You’ll likely need to prioritize some development areas over others within these short-term plans — so consider what that might entail, what trade-offs you might need to make, whether it’s worth it, and if you can take the steps you need to, now. 

5. Detail immediate growth areas. 

Now your long-term career plan — your North Star — and short-term navigational checkpoints are set, it’s time to figure out what actionable steps are needed to execute your plan. Identify and then break down goals into smaller, step-by-step tasks that can be tackled either individually or a few at a time. 

This way, large plans become less overwhelming and you’ll feel more motivated as you track continuous progress over time. 

One successful framework for detailing your growth areas is the “3 E’s” — education, exposure, and experience: 

• Education: What formal educational resources can help you build knowledge? Consider training programs, online courses, books, articles, and webinars. There are countless resources online for every area of interest, so focus on the ones that will make the best use of your time. 

• Exposure: Find people with the skills or knowledge you’re trying to gain, and learn from them. This could be through mentorship, informational interviews, or tapping into your network of close contacts. Remember that loose connections may also open up opportunities that aren’t immediately obvious, so be open to different possibilities that come your way.

• Experience: Put yourself in positions or situations where you can gain experience in your chosen development areas. You can read all the books in the world but sometimes, the best way to get better at something is to do it (and then do it again and again). 

Two Examples of IDPs

Know all the theory — but want to see what an IDP looks like in real life? Here are two examples to get you started.  

{{rich-highlight-1}}

{{rich-highlight-2}}

Measuring the Success of Your IDPs

Once your IDP is created, the work doesn’t stop there. It’s also crucial to regularly track progress towards your professional development so that you can make sure that if things get off-track or your priorities change, you can take the right steps to correct it in a timely way. Consider checking in on your progress at regular intervals with your manager to celebrate successes, identify challenges, and recalibrate your IDP as needed.

Human resources teams can facilitate this progress by using tech that makes it easy for their managers and employees to track their progress toward their goals. Options include:

• Lattice Grow: Includes easy-to-launch development plans that empower employees to take control of their career aspirations. 
• Lattice OKRs and Goals: Helps accelerate growth by aligning employee achievement with organizational success.   
• Lattice Performance: Encourages feedback, growth, and accountability as employees work towards their development goals. 
• Lattice Engagement: Easily collects detailed employee engagement feedback and quick check-ins from Pulse Surveys, essential for keeping track of how employees are feeling. 
• Lattice Analytics: Offers a connected and holistic solution for HR teams, creating a culture of continuous improvement that IDPs help facilitate. 

By embedding the IDP process into daily conversations, managers can support their teams, help set goals, and unlock all the benefits that IDPs can offer. 

Empowering Employees to Be Their Best 

Just like a GPS is essential for navigation, an IDP is one of the best ways to navigate towards your personal and professional goals, because it helps plot a route and series of actions that make these goals feel within your reach. 

Ready to find your direction? Download Lattice’s IDP template and start creating the roadmap that will help you get there.