69. Development Plans Set Goals for Improvement

Giving corrective feedback to a coworker is great. Open dialogue often clears the path to improved performance. But how do you make sure the situation is going to improve? You need to take the next step by jointly creating a development plan. To make it easier for both of you, think of a development plan as a goal sheet. You and your coworker are going to agree to concrete and specific goals for improvement.

Performance Prompts

• Before writing the plan, make sure your coworker takes personal responsibility for his improvement. Unless your coworker buys into the plan, it will be meaningless.

• Writing a corrective development plan is a joint project. Unless your coworker takes accountability for the goals, they will be your goals and not your coworker’s.

• Before beginning, tell your coworker what you are going to do and why it is important to write a development plan.

• When creating a development plan, include the following details for each area of improvement:

  • Who—is responsible for action

  • What—action will be taken

  • When—action will be improved or completed

  • Where—action will be done

  • How—action is to be accomplished

• When goals are reached, acknowledge and reward accomplishments.

• Even if you or your coworkers do not need to work on specific areas of improvement, everyone should write a personal development plan. Everyone can grow and develop in one area or another, as described in Chapter 3.

When This Happens ...

After Allison takes responsibility for her development, your next step is to put a corrective development plan into place. Writing goals will help if you are the one responsible for appraising her. When it comes time to write a periodic appraisal, you will have specific details on which to base your judgment.

Try This

“Since this has been an area of recurring improvement, let’s write a development plan. We’ll set concrete goals for you that will help you steadily improve further. We agreed that retraining will help so we’ll include a date for the completion of that retraining. I will take responsibility for training you. Does tomorrow morning at 9 work for you? Great. Let’s meet in my office. Once you complete the training, what goals do you want to set for improvement?” “Well, once I understand the material, I’ll shoot for 100% accuracy rate on all of my reports. And because of unforeseen delays, how does 98% sound for on-time completion?” “Good. Now we have something to shoot for. I’ll follow up and let you know how well you’re meeting your goals. We’ll work on this together to make sure you’re successful.”

Writing concrete goals is your first step to reaching them.