Every company that practices gender diversity and inclusion should have a women’s leadership career development plan for their employees and if they don’t or you are navigating the progression of your career on your own, then here is a career growth action plan template for you to follow. Career advancement and professional growth plans drastically increase employee engagement. This not only produces greater performance and results for the company, but also, if you are the career professional, you are going to feel more fulfilled and happier at work.

Creating Leadership Career Growth Plans for Women

I am so passionate about empowering woman to advocate for their own professional growth and actualizing their full potential that this blog could be an endless essay on every single step we need to take to ensure our progress and its impact on future generations. For women, it is not a ladder we are climbing and it is not all about money, and yet we need to own our part in pushing the ceiling to equality of pay. It is a mountain we are adventuring on with wilderness beyond our nature and predators we must battle, some of our own conditioning. We must know ourselves first and foremost as ascending to the peak will not be all of our goals. A woman’s career plan has many factors to consider and what both the company and the professional need to comprehend is that her value of family does not undermine her value to the company nor the value of her worth monetarily or otherwise.

First Steps in Developing Career Plans for Women

Whether you are following this career plan for yourself or looking to create a Women’s Leadership Progression Plan for your company, this is the best place to begin assessing Core Career Indicators for Advancement:

What are your personal and professional strengths? Make a list of your top 5
What are the skills you excel at, enjoy, or want to learn?
What are your top values for life and/or career? Start with your top 10 and narrow to top 3 in order of importance
Where is your greatest potential utilized and where is there still potential that is untapped?
Write out where you have drive and why or what you desire most in your career.

Skill Gaps and Development

When looking at, assessing, and preparing your career progression plan, not having a skill yet is a minor technicality especially if you have an aptitude for it or a strong desire to develop it. Skill gaps should never disclude you or an employee from a future career advancement, but rather be set in your development plan for your professional growth. For example if an employee excels at a particular skill and is very successful in producing results, but has never lead a team before or managed people, professional training can be provided to fill this skill gap. Imagine being exceptional in your area and being able to teach and produce more employees with your skill and what this can do for a company in terms of production and growth.

Since women are less likely to self promote, their full known potential can be missed by their leaders and down played in their own eyes as well. Developing women and advancing women leaders involves raising the visibility of their potential to management and also affirming it as a mirror reflection for their own awareness. It is not that they do not have potential, it is that it has been minimized, hidden, or down played amidst societal programming. Lastly, if you are advocating for your own career advancement, your potential will need to be announced, shown, and proven in an ever so deliberate and bold way.

What are the Skills You need to Develop & Your Skill Development Plan

What skills do you require for the career advancement you seek?
What will your skill development progression plan be and its timeline?

Advancing your career is sometimes only one skill away that can be developed in days, weeks, months or even on the job. Do you need a mentor or specific training and if so how will you go about achieving this.

Career and professional growth is not just about your skills and strengths, it actually goes much deeper than that. You will only be able to advance your career in alignment to the proportion of internal acknowledgement you have of your own value and worth and your ability to self promote or share this certainty.

The Most Important Career Growth Tip for Women

Your skill, strengths, and values will guide you in the right career path direction, but when it comes to advancing your career, growing professionally, and making what you are worth, there is only one thing you must master. We could get into a very interesting, long discussion of why this is so different for women than men and there are some very specific logical reasons for it as well as some frustrating annoyances, but that is not what is important for your progression. What is of great importance for every women to embody for career advancement is the ability to proceed boldly as a whole, equal person in full ownership of the value she brings and the right she possesses to sit, stand, and lead feeling this to the core of her being. If you can raise your understanding of these concepts to a knowing with certainty, you will inevitably experience career expansion and evolution in alignment to your beliefs and declarations.

Implementing Your Career Advancement Plan

Clearly define your target end goal and timeline
If you are in Career Transition or Transformation – Start with Reflection, Discovery, & Assessments
Create a Circle of Influence to support your Expansion
Ask for help with Training, Mentoring, and Coaching
Do the internal work required for the external realization – Women’s Leadership Coaching / Confidence Coaching
Visualize and Verbalize your Career Advancement
Seek out Opportunity & Go after what you Deserve
Showcase, Present, Prove, and Live Outwardly Your Value – Visible to Others
Celebrate your Successes and Wins along the Way
Make Owning Your Worth, Money Talk, and Wealth a part of your Life

Women’s Leadership and Career Growth

Women’s Leadership is not just about developing you or women to be leaders in top positions in a company. Women’s Leadership is very much about leading your own career, leading your professional development, and overcoming obstacles that prevent you from realizing your potential and all that is possible for you. Every woman is a leader in the sense she is navigating the challenges of her life, managing her time and energy, balancing her desires with those of her family and community, and pushing the limits set forth by society and her own thoughts and experiences. I believe there are leadership qualities in every woman and we are responsible for leading our progress professionally, financially, and emotionally. They are intricately intertwined so they do not function independently of one another, but perfectly and succinctly impact each other. We must expand and evolve within the circumstances that are present and lead our progress expressively with a strong voice outside our natural, societal conditioning . It begins with you, moves forward with belief and embodiment, and advances with a plan and bold outward celebration of the very value and worth of which you are.

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