Create Your Leadership Development Plan
A Practical Approach for Turning Goals into Action
In Path to Becoming a Better Leader, we introduced the Learn → Practice → Apply → Reflect cycle. And in Identify the Leadership Skill You Need to Develop, we walked through how to identify the capability that could make the biggest difference in your leadership. Once you know what you want to develop, the next step is building a plan to actually get better at it. Here’s how.
Decide How You Will Learn
Start by determining how you’ll learn enough about the capability to understand what good looks like and choose an approach you want to try. You might read an article or book, watch a video, take a course, attend a workshop, observe another leader, or learn directly from someone who is particularly strong in the area. Choose 2–3 ways you will learn and make them specific. For example, instead of “Read about delegation”, try “Read two resources on effective delegation and identify an approach I want to use with my team.”
The goal isn’t to learn everything there is to know about the capability. It’s to learn enough to move forward with intention.
Decide How You Will Practice
Knowing what you want to do and being able to do it are different things. Before the stakes are real, identify ways you can try the new behavior, work through what feels difficult, and get more comfortable with the approach. Depending on the capability, you might:
Work through a realistic scenario in a workshop.
Role-play an upcoming conversation with a peer or coach.
Rehearse an important presentation and ask for feedback.
Practice responding to questions you’re likely to receive in an upcoming meeting.
Talk through how you would handle a difficult leadership situation before encountering it.
For example, if you’re developing your ability to give difficult feedback, you could practice the conversation with a peer or HR partner before having it with your employee. Practice doesn’t need to make you perfect, but it should make you more prepared to use the behavior when the real opportunity arrives.
Identify Where You Will Apply It
Now take the behavior into your actual work. Look ahead at the conversations, meetings, decisions, projects, and leadership situations you already have coming up. Identify where you will intentionally use what you’re developing.
If you’re working on delegation, choose a real responsibility you will transfer to someone on your team.
If you’re developing executive presence, identify an upcoming senior leadership meeting where you’ll intentionally change how you communicate your recommendation.
If you’re developing coaching, choose an upcoming 1:1 where you’ll resist giving the answer and instead help the other person develop their own solution.
It makes the change in behavior deliberate by deciding: When will I use it? Where will I use it? How will I approach it differently?
Decide How You Will Reflect
After you’ve applied the behavior, take time to understand what actually happened. Ask yourself:
What worked?
What didn’t?
How did the other person respond?
Did I have the impact I intended?
What would I do differently next time?
Your own reflection is valuable, but outside perspective can help you see things you may have missed. A manager, peer, mentor, or coach can help you examine what happened and determine how you want to adjust your approach.
Then take what you’ve learned into your next opportunity.
Build the Support Around Your Plan
As you build your plan, consider where you need help. Development isn’t a solo activity, and different people can provide different kinds of support. You may need:
Knowledge: Someone who can share expertise or best practices.
Practice: Someone who can role-play, rehearse, or work through a situation with you.
Opportunities: Someone who can give you stretch assignments or additional ownership.
Feedback: Someone who can observe your behavior and help you understand its impact.
Reflection: Someone who can help you think through what happened and what to do differently.
Accountability: Someone who will help you follow through on the plan.
Then decide who is best positioned to provide each type of support. It might be your manager, former manager, peer, mentor, coach, subject matter expert, project sponsor, cross-functional partner, or senior leader.
The goal isn’t to find one person who can provide everything. It’s to build the support your particular development goal requires. And when you reach out, make a specific ask. Instead of “Will you mentor me?”, try “I’m working on becoming more effective at influencing cross-functional decisions. You do this particularly well. Could I bring you an upcoming situation and get your perspective on how you’d approach it?”
People can support your development much more effectively when they know exactly what you’re trying to develop and how they can help.
Put the Plan on Your Calendar
You now have a development plan. The most important step is making sure you actually do it. Development rarely happens because you suddenly find extra time. Make the time intentionally by scheduling what needs to happen:
Learn: When will you read, watch, attend, or meet with someone to build your knowledge?
Practice: When will you rehearse or try the behavior before the stakes are real?
Apply: What specific real-world opportunities have you identified, and when will they happen?
Reflect: When will you review what happened or talk it through with someone who can help?
Schedule any conversations you need with your support network as well. Your calendar should reflect the development you said matters to you.
Putting it All Together
When you’re finished, you should be able to answer:
What am I developing? The specific leadership capability you want to improve.
Learn: How will I understand what better looks like?
Practice: How will I try the behavior before the stakes are real?
Apply: Where will I intentionally use it in my actual work?
Reflect: How will I determine what worked and what I should adjust?
Support: Who can help me at different points in the process?
Time: When will I actually do each of these things?
That’s your leadership development plan. It doesn’t need to be a complicated document or a year-long curriculum. It needs to give you a clear path from knowing what you want to develop to intentionally doing the work required to develop it.