What an IDP (Individual Development Plan) Can Do for You, Your Team, and Your Business

Key Takeaways:

• IDPs are a series of questions and exercises designed to help employees and leaders better understand their satisfaction with where they are in life now and what they want to achieve, both in the long-term and short-term
• Employees use the information from IDPs to create a life vision, goals to achieve that vision, and actions (including improving their skills) to achieve those goals
• Employees who have clarity in long-term goals and can see how the company can help them get there are more invested in their job, happier, and more productive.

Every leader wants to help their team grow, but it’s sometimes easier said than done, especially if you’re starting from scratch. It helps to assess your team members first by employing proven strategies and tools, such as an individual development plan (IDP).

The first step in building a solid team is getting to know them — not just as employees but as humans. Learning where they want to go and how they intend to get there can help you help them.

Unlike one-time interviews and questionnaires, IDPs don’t evaluate performance. Instead, they tell you how content a person is with their current circumstances and their future aspirations. An IDP is a plan for success based on individual characteristics.

Neel Sus developed a unique IDP to reveal the most valuable information for increased business acumen. Let’s look deeper at IDPs, Neel’s vision behind his version, their benefits and uses, and how you can use them in your business.

IDP 101

When Neel began his personal transformation, it didn’t take long to realize that the changes in his body and mind were also helping in his career. It was then he realized the importance of IDPs and how, when correctly designed, they can help in personal life as well as in business.

An IDP is a partnership between leadership and employee. It outlines goals and prepares employees for current projects and future victories using their specific talents. It’s about finding something worth doing, that appeals to employees’ sense of purpose, that ultimately accomplishes the goals and benefits everyone involved. The objective is to strengthen the weak spots and learn to utilize the areas of strength.

What’s the point?

IDPs help employees improve in all areas because they directly affect the areas of life: health, finance, career, friends and family, personal growth, community, and fun and leisure. Positive personal transformation creates strong leaders and successful CEOs.

An effective IDP starts with a simple conversation between an employee and their supervisor, who takes the information they glean and uses it to design a plan for the employee’s growth, keeping in mind their personal and career aspirations.

Creating an effective plan entails setting realistic goals, identifying and building the required skills to meet those goals, and knowing how to use current talents to make things happen. An effective leader can take what an employee loves about their job and turn it into a reason to aim for an even better position.

Leaders and first-level employees alike benefit from assessing areas with the greatest potential to pay off for everyone. In this way, employees and the company succeed together.

For Neel, his version of an IDP developed in 2016, when at age 39, he realized he wasn’t where he wanted to be in life. After spending a decade studying successful, fulfilled people with a focus on things like tech, business, and leadership, he expanded his studies to include subjects like psychology, philosophy, neurology, and physiology.

According to Neel, this allowed him to “see patterns in how they all got successful and fulfilled, and I was able to make concurrent gains in all major areas of life, leveraging an IDP-like approach. I then worked with human development experts to develop the IDP as it exists now.”

Having such a tool at our disposal — one that allows us to truly change and improve upon all aspects of our lives — makes it easy to see how beneficial IDPs can be. Let’s take a look at some more advantages of employing an IDP.

Benefits

IDPs align employee goals, training, and development with the company’s mission and objectives. Leaders better understand their employees, allowing for more accurate training and staff development. This feat is accomplished in various ways, such as:

Encourages employee realizations

Not every employee knows exactly where they want to be in 10 years, or even in 5 years. Putting together an IDP helps them realize where they want to go and what is needed to get there and increases their self-awareness. Supervisors can then advise taking certification classes and other training options to further those skills.

Learning more about their life goals can help them decide about their workplace aspirations while addressing the intellectual, financial, and relational areas of life. If employees know they’re performing well in a certain position, it can alert them that they like a certain job more than others and inspire them to work toward a specialized field.

Fosters action

IDPs create a plan that employees can move forward with immediately. They contain actionable steps to start on day one and projects to complete later. It’s an effective way to learn how to predict plan outcomes and stay on course.

Quantifies specifics

Using an IDP helps quantify or measure specific details about an employee’s desired future job role. Making plan completion predictions doesn’t always work, but IDPs help gauge when a job could begin and how long it might take to complete. This allows goals to feel more achievable and timelines to be more accessible.

IDPs also have benefits that are specific to the company. They aren’t just for first- or middle-level employees, either. IDPs can help every employee up the corporate ladder.

Tips for employing IDPs in your company

Businesses like using IDPs because they help improve the company and their employees while simultaneously providing an apparent, tangible record of progress and gain. However, those facts don’t always translate to an easy installment into the company culture.

These tips can help make things easier:

Start with an objective

Employees are more likely to enthusiastically jump on board a company program if it solves a problem. Let your team know the “whys” behind implementing IDPs, and you’ll likely see greater engagement.

Extoll the virtues

Employees aren’t just interested in why they’re creating IDPs, but also in what they will gain from it. Ensure your team fully understands the personal benefits such as improving skills, earning certifications, and future promotions and pay raises.

Be flexible

People learn more about themselves as they dive deeper into their IDP. Make sure there’s plenty of space and time to revamp plans and take a different route than previously planned. A rigid IDP with no room for adjustments is harder to complete.

The most important thing to remember when starting the IDP journey is to be realistic. IDPs concentrate on achievable goals. While we encourage our teammates to create goals in all areas of life, they are only required to create goals in the career area. The actions to accomplish that goal must address current skill, performance, competency, or ability disparities. Development goals should be attainable yet challenging to retain employee enthusiasm. They must include the right balance of training, on-the-job application, and tasks that involve steeper responsibilities.

Individual development plans can be a golden ticket to success for employees and leadership. Neel and his team prove that a holistic approach to life can bring exponential improvements in every area. Why not start with your team?

Curious about IDPs? We can help

Neel Sus believes that every team can benefit from a holistic approach to business and careers. His guidance and support can help you take your team to the next level. Check out the testimonials and examples and see how an IDP can help in your current situation.