How to Budget your Professional Development

Why do we budget our money? 

While I’m no expert on financial planning, I think it’s fair to say that when you have a limited amount of money, you want to use it wisely to have the greatest impact and so that you can accomplish what you hope to accomplish.  

Have you ever tried budgeting your professional development? 

I don’t mean budgeting your professional development funding. While that is important and part of the equation here, that is secondary to budgeting your professional development. 

And that’s something that I am an expert on.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say “professional development”? I bet you thought about conferences (and thus coffee break galore). If you know me, you’re probably thinking “Is this where Megan starts talking about books again?” While books do, in all their glory, support your professional development, they are not central to this post. Maybe you thought about advanced degrees. A certification? 

While you’re not wrong, you’re not entirely right either. 

Why this is important

All of these more formal types of learning do contribute to our professional development, but not nearly as much as good ol’ on-the-job experience or even social connections like coaching and mentorship. In the 1980’s, the Center for Creative Leadership did a study that suggested that only about 10% of one’s professional development comes from structured courses and programs; about 20% from exposure through mentors, coaches, and colleagues; and the remaining 70% coming from on-the-job experience.

While this is not a perfect (or recent) study, and while it cannot be applied to all people, professions, or industries, what we can learn from it is the importance of learning through applied experiences.

I know what you’re thinking. “Megan?! Why in the world are you, someone who sells courses and coaching, pointing out how little consequence these services are to our professional development?!” 

Good question.

And I have three very good reasons:

1. I actually care that you learn and grow and positively contribute to this big wide world of ours. We certainly need what you have to offer. 
2. I purposely build into my courses and coaching application of what you are learning. Because really, you’re not fully learning something unless you’re applying it. (I hope those pops that I’m hearing are not bubbles bursting, but rather corks popping in celebration of this truth.) My courses and my coaching approach are project-based. They are explicitly designed for you to get results, which you can only achieve with that one-two punch of learning-and-doing. (Never fear — more on this below.)
3. I have a professional development planning document that you can use. And if you know me, you know how I love a good template that helps others learn, grow, and rock their dreams. (Grab your own PD template here!)

Professional Development Categories

While I appreciate the 70-20-10 approach that came from the Center for Creative Leadership, and while I appreciate other interpretations of it (such as Training Industry’s on-the-job (O), social (S) and formal (F) sources framework for it), I’d encourage you to budget your professional development in a slightly different way.

I would encourage you to think about your professional development in terms of: 

1. Life experience,
2. Growth through relationships, and
3. Intentional study.

Use the 70-20-10 ratio as a good starting point for the respective points above, and then modify according to what works best for you. 

Let’s explore these in a bit more depth.

> Category 1: Life Experience

No matter if we want to fill this bucket or not, it’s getting filled. And oftentimes to the point of overflowing. Luckily, I have some key recommendations for flipping your life experience, especially your daily work experience, from something passive to something that furthers your professional development:

• Be intentional about converting day-to-day work to experiential learning. You might do that through:
• Taking a positive, growth-minded approach to your daily work, being grateful for what different experiences offer;
• Requesting or volunteering for projects and roles that expand your learning horizon; and
• Reflecting and/or journaling about what you’re doing, what you’re learning, and how you’re growing.
• Be aware of how your experience may not be 100% accurate. We all see through our own lens, and one way of doing things isn’t necessarily the best. Just because you learn something through your daily work experience does not mean that it is the best way to do something. It’s almost like it’s too personalized for you. Maintaining a growth mindset that is open to new ways of doing things is crucial to furthering your professional development. Practicing continuous improvement and creative problem solving are two ways to help make your daily work experiences an even better form of professional development. (In my course Refresh, I teach about creative problem solving.)

> Category 2: Growth through Relationships

Being a “people person” who is an educator at heart, I swoon over this heading, though I do realize that not everyone feels that way. 

Growing through relationships is essential and unavoidable. Even if you’re not very outgoing or even if you don’t jive with your manager, you still learn from others.

Learning from others can be very informal, such as by seeing how your colleague does something, but you can also make it intentional. That’s where the gold lies.

• Identify what you want to learn and why, and then identify individuals from whom you could gain that knowledge and insight. 
• Ask these mentors and coaches about their experience, their perspectives, and their advice for you. 
• Reflect on what they tell you, and choose the take-aways that make sense for you.

The best mentors and coaches will lead with questions — the kinds of questions that make you reflect, and therefore grow. They might come from informal friendships or work relationships, from formal mentorship programs, or from working with a coach (such as what I do with Project Coaching). 

Whereas learning through life experiences is very personalized to you, growth through relationships is more of a middle ground. Some of what you learn will be what worked for others, and I’m sure you’ll learn some more generic best practices. However, some of it will be those coaches challenging you specifically for your challenges. That is invaluable.

> Category 3: Intentional Study

Intentional Study is the type that first comes to mind when thinking about professional development: degrees, certifications, conferences, etc. I would challenge you to broaden your perspective of this area to include books, podcasts, webinars, short courses (such as Refresh) and other such media that is designed for more general consumption.

You may say “Well, Megan, I already read a lot and attend webinars regularly,” to which I would say Great! I would ask you how you choose the nonfiction books you read, the webinars that you attend. Your time is valuable, so determine first what you want to learn, and then seek out books, webinars, and other learning opportunities that help you accomplish that learning goal.

When recruiting for my program Refresh, which teaches professionals how to lead projects that will yield more innovative results, I ensure that this is the right fit for them and their goals. I make sure that they are not just registering for it because it sounds nice, but because it advances their career and their learning goals. I also make sure to wrap in elements of life experience and growth through relationship by having them complete a real parallel project during the course and by offering coaching as part of the course. By weaving together the three professional development categories into one intentional learning opportunity, it maximizes the development potential. 

A few tips for when approaching intentional study opportunities:

• Be strategic about how you choose to spend your precious hours.
• Take it with a grain of salt. Be aware of how generic what you’re learning is. Not everything will apply to your situation, but there is likely good reason for them to say what they’re saying. 
• Plan it out. Make sure that you can apply what you learn as soon as possible after learning it to make it stick. 

Budgeting your Professional Development

In this post, I’ve mentioned over and over the importance of being intentional and reflective to maximize your professional development. To help you with that, I made you a template to help you budget out your professional development. 

>>> Get your Professional Development Planning template here! 📑 

Let me know what feedback you have!