Professional Development and the Myth Surrounding It

Professional Development and the Myth Surrounding It

Professional Development

Learning something or developing a new skill is not a one-day activity. Learning anything new requires a period in which you can learn it, practice it and perfect it. Although, these principles are ignored in our approach to professional learning. Many organizations invest in professional learning programs that last only for a few hours after which there is neither any follow-up activity nor is anyone given any opportunity for practice.

It is just as easy! Perfection needs practice. One can’t run a marathon by just standing at the door, or walking towards it. To win a marathon, you first need to start by walking, then running and practicing it over and over again until you have built enough endurance. And then you can participate in a marathon, and probably also win it! This is how learning and Professional Development happen.

Professional Development

Organizations generally rely on on-site training which is reserved for high potential employees and seniors. Here in they spend a day away from their desks and spend time learning something new; however, the next day it is the same routine with emails and pending work. In this case, they get very little or almost no time to implement what they learn in their daily activities.

Work would go on and on after a professional development training program, but there won’t be any progress and changes seen in the processes. What we can learn from this is learning is a process that requires practice to get the desired results. And this is exactly where most organizations go wrong in the training programs for Professional Development. Having a one-day training program and expecting changes is equivalent to giving someone a day-long lecture on driving and expecting them to drive flawlessly the next day.

This signifies why you should take things in a phased manner. Learning is building on something that you have learned and applying it bit by bit and then learning some more. It is not a one-day process. The same thing needs to be applied to workplace learning.

Instead of training the employees for one day and expecting them to apply it on their terms, the organizations should teach their employees something new every day and give them time to practice it and then implement it. This way everyone is in a benefit, employees will learn something new every day, and the management of the organization will also get the desired results and changes they need to have in the organization for Professional Development.

The process is simple, crystal clear. Learn something new, apply it to the work routines, keep repeating it until you have perfected it, and then move on to learn something new. It is simple math and a completely wrong myth!

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