Professional Development Proposal

1. Professional Development Proposal Bob Daumer EDD 9100 (24800) November 19, 2006

2. Need for Professional Development • Information age & a fast pace • The only constant is change • “It’s more important than ever … to continue learning” (Hughes, L., 2004, p. 26.) • Competitive and valued employees • Soft skills & technical skills • Define the goal (Cano, J., 2006).

3. Identifying the Opportunities • Evaluate the organization • Select organizational sample • Create & administer holistic leadership professional development survey (Clawson J., 2006; Kouzes, J. & Posner, B., 2002) • Interpret all sources of data • Customer evaluations • Employee monitoring • Survey responses

4. Interpreting the Results • Customer evaluations and employee monitoring indicate opportunities exist • Survey responses reveal specific opportunities • Organization-wide holistic leadership training • Organization-wide time management skills • Individualized professional development programs

5. Interpreting the Results (continued) • Do participants recognize their leadership responsibility? • The majority of participants recognize leadership as part of their responsibility • 72-90% of participants identify leadership skills as “highly relevant” to their job.

6. Interpreting the Results (continued) • Do participants practice holistic leadership all of the time? • Participants indicated that holistic leadership is not practiced all the time • Most participants only practice holistic leadership between 70 and 80% of the time • Individual participants indicated a wide spectrum of time spent practicing, including responses in the 10 to 50% range

7. Interpreting the Results (continued) • Are participants proficient in leadership skills? • Participants indicated that they are either proficient or can perform leadership skills with minimal guidance • This finding is interesting as it seems to indicate a disconnect in perceptions • Senior leadership has identified a need for improvement • Participants rated themselves high, indicating improvement is not necessary • Further investigation of this finding is necessary

8. Interpreting the Results (continued) • What opportunities for improvement do the participants ask for? • Participants asked for general holistic leadership training • Participants asked for time management training • Other hand-written comments indicate individualized development opportunities exist and are desired.

9. The Strategy for Improvement • Implement professional development as a required leadership practice (Fenwick, T., 2003) • Programs are based on a formal coaching process (Ting, S. & Hart, E., 2004) • Develop organization-wide development programs for holistic leadership and time management • Develop individualized development plans for each employee

10. References • Cano, J. (2006). Essentials for effective professional development. The Agriculture Education Magazine, 79(2), 2. • Clawson, J. (2006). Level three leadership: getting below the surface (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. • Fenwick, T. (2003). Professional growth plans: possibilities and limitations of an organizationwide employee development strategy. Human Resources Development Quarterly, 14(1), 59-77. • Hughes, L. (2004). The importance of professional development. Women in Business, 56(2), 26-27. • Kouzes, J. & Posner, B. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. • Ting, S., & Hart, E. (2004). Formal coaching. In C. D. McCauley & E. V.Velsor (Eds.), The Center for Creative Leadership handbook of leadership development (pp. 116- 150). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.