Personal Leadership Plans

“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

--Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!


Creating Personal Leadership Plans:
It’s never too soon or too late to pull together your own personal leadership development plan. Whether you are just out of school and beginning your career or whether you are a seasoned veteran who would like a new career direction or new impetus for your current career, a “plan” can pull everything together for you.

You already know a great deal about yourself, but this knowledge is not well-organized unless it is written down. When you write things on paper or electronically, it forces you to focus your thoughts and energies.

You align your past, present, and future in an integrated way that can’t be done when all the parts of you are simply whirling around in your head.

When you explore your beliefs, values, interests, needs, and those experiences that have shaped your life, you can pull this together into a better understanding of who you currently are and where you want to go with your life.

The preparation work involved in this Plan will also help you to develop the very useful practice of introspection, looking inward for guidance.

Self-Awareness and Self-Direction

In addition, including a personal mission statement in your Plan turns it into a compass you can use to guide your future—both your career and personal life. It helps you make decisions and move ahead more confidently when you have a well thought-out purpose as the foundation of your life.

You can begin by using the Personal Leadership Plan template on this website to develop your own Personal Leadership Plan. Make this leadership development plan your own by modifying it in any way that makes sense to you.

Some of the things you believe are important and would want to include in your own plan may be different from the suggestions on our example and probably different from the plans of others.

But this document will be a good place for you to begin. The work involved in putting this Plan together will be important and useful activity to you in your life.

When it’s time for performance review or promotion, or a possible change of career direction, use this plan as a tool. Keep it private or show it to your mentor, your boss, or to a potential boss if you wish.

There is no right or wrong way to use your Personal Leadership Development Plan once created. The only “wrong way” is not to create one at all.

Check out our list of outstanding leadership qualities to help you create your personal vision of effective leadership or return to the homepage to continue to learn more about developing leadership skills.