Individual Development Plans (IDPs) serve as powerful tools not only for developing your employees, but also for demonstrating that you are committed to their development. IDPs benefit employees by providing developmental road maps to follow for acquiring skills needed in current and future roles; for managers, IDPs often serve as the foundation of efforts to develop employee skills that are critical to team performance.

The best IDPs are living documents that can change during the course of their implementation. Good IDPs share some common characteristics:

1) they are created after a careful assessment by both employee and manager of the employee’s strengths and weaknesses;
2) they leverage an employee’s strengths and focus on improving one or two weaknesses;
3) they contain a plan for an employee to meet
development goals with assistance from his/her manager;
4) they explain the standards upon which the achievement of these goals will be
measured;
and 5) they provide a timetable for revisiting and reassessing these goals.

Perhaps most importantly, the success or failure of an IDP often hinges on the relationship you share with your employee. In other words, the messenger matters as much as the message.

The success or failure of IDPs hinges less on the contents of the plan as it does on the type of relationships that you maintain with your direct reports.

If you are viewed as inconsistent, unfair, or if an employee is dissatisfi ed with you as a manager, your assessment of an employee’s performance—regardless of quality or intent—will likely have little impact. It is therefore imperative that you establish healthy relationships with your direct reports.

An IDP is, for the most part, exactly what its name implies: a plan for development unique to a particular employee. There are three important guidelines to remember in the creation of an IDP:

• Incorporate Employee Input. There are two important components to a development plan’s success: employee input and employee buy-in. Employees typically know their career aspirations, the areas in which they perform strongly, and the areas that require improvement. Managers learn these aspects after observing, assessing, and discussing with the employee his/her performance.

Creating an IDP without employee input can hamper employee buyin and decrease the chances of the plan improving performance.

• Leverage employee strengths while mitigating or improving one or two areas where the employee may not be as strong. Managers may select these areas of focus after assessing the needs of the team or the organization and aligning employeedevelopment goals with those needs. IDPs often focus on the skills and knowledge employees need to fulfi ll their current jobs as well as those they will need to perform at the next level. Finally, goals must be achievable: expecting employee performance to turn 180 degrees is not only unreasonable, it can discourage the employee.

Creating a plan for incremental improvement, on the other hand, makes goals attainable and increases the likelihood of employee buy-in.

• Create a plan for meeting goals. That said, IDPs should not consist only of a “laundry list” of training courses. These plans should include a mix of development opportunities: specifi c training courses, on-the-job experiences, stretch roles, and potential mentoring relationships. The plan requires that the manager assists the employee in meeting his/her goals, that the employee fulfills an agreed-upon timetable for completing these development opportunities, and that the employee understands the standards for measuring results.

Obviously, managers can improve the performance of their employees by ensuring they have the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their current jobs well and by differentiating between which skills are “nice to have” and which are “need to have.”

However, by providing the opportunities to develop the skills your employees will need as they move along in their careers within your organization, you are not only increasing the skill-set of your team as a whole but also demonstrating that you are committed to employee development.

Part of an IDP’s construction requires identifying these skills by engaging in frank discussions with employees about their career ambitions and then assessing current areas of strength and opportunities for improvement.

It further requires periodic assessment of how the skills and knowledge needed to optimally perform a particular job evolve as the organization changes.

Do not assume that employees can fi nd the development opportunities that they need. Part of the manager’s role in the development process is to help identify training options to assist employees in meeting their development goals. While part of this process takes place during the construction of the IDP, some of it also occurs across the IDP’s life cycle.

Providing employees with information regarding formal courses, as well as identifying other opportunities for development—such as stretch roles, on-the-job development, and mentoring programs—helps employees move quickly from “development planning” to “development action.”

Beyond helping employees fi nd relevant training courses, managers can assist their employees in meeting their development goals by providing them with work experiences that provide development opportunities within and outside of their jobs. Among these are on-the- job experiences.

Employees can improve their skills or leverage their strengths as they learn during projects or tasks that are part of their day-to-day work. Assigning projects which encourage the development of target skill areas can aid employees signifi cantly in the attainment of their development goals. In essence, you should partner with your employees to “mine” their jobs for projects/activities that will facilitate
their development.

For example, an employee that is struggling with project management may benefi t from managing an aspect of a team project on his/her own.

Additionally, you can either pass along existing or create new opportunities for your employees to develop through the use of stretch roles. These stretch roles can further develop an aspect of a skill or strength that an employee may not have otherwise.

An IDP should include a timetable for the employee to engage in training to achieve goals and for the employee and manager to meet and discuss the employee’s progress against the plan.

While some managers revisit the IDP during the formal review process, more frequent meetings may be appropriate, particularly if an employee appears to be struggling to achieve the goals set forth in the IDP.


Regardless of when you deliver feedback or the type of feedback you deliver, it is important to remember that an IDP is a living document. Employees rarely perfect their skills in the time between performance reviews. It is important to amend the IDP when changes occur in an individual’s responsibilities or goals, when the organization’s or team’s
goals change, or when parts of the plan, such as the types of training solutions recommended, are no longer options.

During the life cycle of an IDP, opportunities may emerge for employees to gain experience in roles beyond their delineated job responsibilities.

These “stretch roles” provide opportunities to further develop skills or strengths that employees may not otherwise be able to access. The emphasis when passing along development opportunities is on acceptable risk: providing a development opportunity that does not “stretch” an employee does not help him/her attain development goals, while providing an opportunity that places the employee out of his/her depth creates unacceptable risks for both the employee and the organization.