Individual Development
Receive one on one planning and coaching with an Organisational Psychology Specialist.
Individual development plans and coaching can be beneficial for various reasons.
Whether you want to overcome a performance deficit or to accelerate the growth of a high achiever, SACS can tailor a development plan to meet the needs of the individual and the organisation.
One of the key questions that must be asked when creating a development plan for an individual relates to the person’s core characteristics, such as their intelligence and personality.
Because these characteristics are heavily genetically determined, understanding them can help you develop development plans that are much more likely to succeed.
Once you understand an individual’s personality and intelligence components you are in a far better position to create learning or coaching programs which will build on their core strengths or address natural areas of difficulty.
Individual development plans and coaching
The stages in a SACS development planning process typically include:
- Psychometric assessment of the person
- In some cases 360 degree feedback is also used to assess the leadership capabilities of the person
- Interview with the person to identify objectives, perceived strengths and perceived development areas
- Delivery of an individual development plan
In some cases you may want to engage us for further coaching. This generally consists of the following steps:
- Development and agreement of clear objectives for the coaching engagement: where will we be at the completion of the coaching activity?
- Reality check: how close are we to this ideal state – are the necessary changes substantial or minor? Is this fine-tuning or substantial change?
- Skills activities: Identification of and coaching in the skills activities needed to achieve the necessary changes identified in step 2.
- Real world practice: The person undergoing coaching, practices the techniques in the work world. The person self-assesses and keeps a record of developments and self-assessments.
- Further coaching based on progress and self-assessments
- Completion of the activity: final self-assessment and re-run of 360 degree feedback if it was used at the beginning. Conclusions drawn about the success of the coaching activity.
SACS coaching activities are targeted, specific and of a pre-determined length. There is strong evidence suggesting that, for most purposes, coaching engagements in excess of 6 meetings tend not to bring about change. We believe that the success of coaching activities should be assessed by the degree of change over the engagement, not just by the self-reported satisfaction of the participant.
Career transition management
At SACS, we believe that career transition management is not just about helping a person find a new job, it is about developing skills that will continue to help the person throughout their career. So for whatever reason you may want to support a departing employee in their job search, let us help.
The SACS approach is evidence based and focuses on individualised coaching. The stages typically include:
- Needs assessment: Job seekers vary enormously in their confidence. Some feel confident about their documents, but are nervous about interviews. Some are confident about interviews, but not about creating job opportunities. A thorough needs assessment allows the development of a personalised coaching program
- Psychological assessment: Career transition management coaching is more effective when the psychological characteristics of the person are well understood
- Implementation of coaching modules:
- Getting your mind right – psychological preparation for the career transition management process
- Destination setting – identification of the ideal next job
- Document preparation – resumes, covering letters, support documents
- Self-marketing – accessing the hidden job market
- Networking – using and developing your contact resources
- Managing relationships with recruiters
- Responding to employment advertisements
- Interview preparation
- Interview technique
- Evaluation of job opportunities
- Effective negotiation of job offers
- Assessment of success: An evaluation of outcomes and longer term planning
Sometimes the most valuable individual development decision is to decide that this person is not a natural fit for the job that they are in and to redeploy them in a role that will naturally play to their strengths. SACS has often brought about such an outcome leading to a pain free and economic repositioning of the employee in a role in which he or she immediately succeeds. Way better than weeks or months of fruitless coaching.
The importance of individual development plans and coaching is well known; similarly evidenced based, best practice processes.