Continuing Professional Development: a practical approach
Continuing professional development (CPD) is a major issue for all the engineering institutions, as well as other professional bodies. This book is designed to enable readers to take a personal responsibility for developing their own skills, competence and career continually.
Inspec keywords: continuing professional development
Other keywords: career development objectives; continuing professional development; professional institutions
Subjects: Education and training
CPD can have many different dimensions - limited only by your imagination. A definition of CPD which has generally been accepted by The Engineering Council's member institutions is: 'The systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skill, and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout the practitioner's working life.' On the other hand, you may like a much simpler definitionf: 'Steal ideas shamelessly.'
There are three key elements in successful CPD - whether from an individual or an organisational point of view. First, there must be a missionary zeal by each and every individual for their self-development. This must be based on a clear understanding of their key competencies, and all their learning must be directly linked to maximising the speed with which they develop these competencies. They need to use personal development plans (PDPs) and to have a clear idea of how they will develop their future career. Secondly, organisations must redefine the role of their managers, so that coaching and developing staff is the most important activity. This must be the basis on which managers are appointed, trained, developed, appraised, rewarded and promoted. Thirdly, the organisation must be a learning organisation. This means two important things: that the organisation maximises its learning processes and that its value system is cohesive.
This chapter discusses the responsibility of the individual in his or her own professional and personal development.
Competencies are critical to the success of individuals, organisations and even nations. Japan has long had an excellent and detailed approach to maximising the competencies of individuals in every possible way, and many Western companies, such as Motorola, have achieved outstanding success using the same approach. Use this chapter to start identifying your own set of competencies and then start thinking about how you would like to see these develop in years to come. A well-regarded book that is worth reading to understand the strategic implications of competencies in terms of an organisation's success or failure in the marketplace is 'Competing for the future - breakthrough strategies for seizing control of your industry and creating the markets of tomorrow' by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad. It is the total context of CPD which matters. Aspects such as the roles of coaches and mentors, as well as the means which an organisation uses to maximise its learning processes, will be covered in more detail in later chapters. At the heart of this chapter, however, is the commitment of each and every individual in an organisation to their self-development using personal development plans.
In this chapter, the author looks at different approaches to designing personal development plans. You can then decide, depending on whether you are looking at this subject as an individual, a company or a professional institution, on the benefits of either using an existing design or designing your own based on the ideas described.
This chapter discusses a multitude of ways of sharing learning across an organisation and of developing your competencies and career as an individual.
This chapter is aimed at providing you with ideas and techniques which you can use to improve your coaching and mentoring skills. All the evidence is that everyone has natural ability in this area, but the best way of getting even better is by having the confidence and commitment to practise and improve these skills on a regular basis. The payoff will be very simple, your ability - as Professor Charles Handy describes it - to raise both your own and other people's potential from perhaps twenty percent to something very much higher. The rewards are great, the risks are small, so go for it!
This chapter looks into the use of software for continuing professional development, developing your keyboard skills, using database and spreadsheets for your CPD.
One of the most cost-effective approaches to CPD can be by using distance learning. There are many excellent packages available-for example from the Open University - which for a very reasonable price provide an effective mix of printed study material, videos, assessment questions, tutorial support and vacation schools. Indeed, for several years when I headed training at GEC Telecommunications and GPT, the company was the single largest user of the Open University, with a few hundred employees each year studying courses at undergraduate, MSc and MBA levels. One of the reasons why such material can be so highly cost-effective is that employees usually study the material in their own time, with the company often paying the course and summer schools fees in return, sometimes also providing paid leave for employees to attend the summer schools.
This chapter discusses the role of universities and other providers in continuing professional development. Case studies on (a) the Motorola University, (b) the Warwick Manufacturing Group, (c) the partnership between IBM and Oxford University's Computing Laboratory, (d) forensic engineering at Glasgow Univesity, and (e) Eutech are presented to show the extent of opportunities available to most people as part of their continuing professional development.
Professional institutions started as voluntary bodies, but increasingly both individuals and the public will see them as indispensable organisations for ensuring that the services provided by professionals are both of high quality and safe. Essentially, professional institutions operate by peer review-with groups of members with expertise in a particular area assessing the competence of other individuals-and it is this process which has to be at the heart of any quality system. So, if you as an individual, employer or training provider are not already working closely with your relevant professional institutions, make the commitment to do so a very high priority in your personal development plan! It is only with such commitment from all concerned, after all, that institutions can be really effective - so, in the end, everyone gains.
This chapter discusses professional and personal development from an international dimension.
