Personal Leadership Development Plan

Just as classes started I embarked on a 10 day vacation to celebrate my 40th birthday with friends.  Our international travels took us to Palma, Mallorca in Spain and Paris France.  Amidst all of this I was managing to do some reading and posting through our class discussion board.  Now that I am back "state side" it is time to work on the official post unveiling my plan.  Per the assignment, I am going to use 5 sections to outline my plan.

Objective
To create a plan that will focus primarily on growth in the competency related to "development of self," incorporating the leadership development objectives of enhancing conscious engagement and enhancing my capabilities related to leading in complexity.

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) highlights both ownership for leadership development and focusing on vertical development as two of four trends in leadership development.  This shifts the narrative that someone above or outside of a person's organization structure is charged with the individual's leadership development.  It places the action emphasis on the individual to shape and own their personal leadership development.  CCL also lays out that research shows that less than 8% of adults have reached a cognitive development level that is self-transforming (being able to step back from developed personal ideologies and recognize the limitations and contractions that could be associated with those, without needing to focus thinking that gravitates to a polar end).  It also points out that the days of type indicators that espouse equal benefit of all types are a thing of the past, giving way to staged development assessments indicating advanced levels of complexity in thinking being more capable in more developed leadership situations.

Conscious Engagement

• Incorporating time daily for at least one of the following: meditation, yoga stretching, or focused reflection on nutrition.  

This was largely influenced by the CCL readings dealing with vertical development, primarily elevated sense-making as one of the most neglected condition for vertical leadership development and a focus on meditation, mindfulness and changing of the body as a way to re-pattern your mind.

Leading in Complexity

• Identify a late stage mentor both inside and outside of my current organization and ask each of them to talk through 1-2 scenarios based on current organizational situations I am experiencing from their advanced perspectives.
• Explore the viability of taking Susanne Cook-Greuter's Leadership Maturity Assessment (LMA) or the Leadership Agility 360 created by Bill Joiner

This was influenced by CCL readings referencing adult development combined with the conceptual move from types of leadership to stages of development related to dealing with complexity.  

Collaborators

Some collaborators will be in the form of resources like the utilization of applications for guided meditation and yoga as well as nutritional tracking and reflection. 

Other collaborators will be people I have worked and do work directly with (late stage mentors) and others will be those that can provide access to assessments and coaching related to those.  Depending on the assessment this might also be peers and those I supervise or even students for feedback. 

Documented Learning

I will continue to use this blogging medium to document my learning and share my weekly updates and reflections. 

References

Petrie, N. (2014). Future trends in leadership development. Center for Creative Leadership.

Petrie, N. (2014). The How-to of Vertical Page | 11 leadership development- Part II: 30 experts, 3 conditions and 15 approaches. Center for Creative Leadership.