Whether in a private, corporate or public context, we should always be aware of the effects of our approaches to human resource development. Are we really enabling learning experiences that promote personal growth for all?

It is highly irresponsible to invest only little in holistic personnel development processes – even if this is justified with low level expectation also in terms of Return on Invest. Low investment in people cannot be justified by anything though. I consider it as unethical to allow human potential (that is always available anyway) untapped. No human waste please.

The possibility of new experiences and personal growth is a basic need in the sense that these are the most important contributions to individual happiness and consequently collective peace. In order to continuously improve human / personal development processes, a structured improvement systematic is required as I have added to the ‘Happy Colofrul Growth’ framework and explained in this article.

For an introduction to the HCG Framework, please see post ‘Create to develop; develop to create. A framework.’

Private and Organizational Development

If an organization is a collective of individuals collaborating towards a common purpose, how could private and organizational development of individuals be fundamentally different? There shouldn’t be any big difference in the ultimate objective and approach if the focus is really on caring about personal development of individuals rather than managing the human resources just as any other resource from an efficacy (return on investment) perspective only.

It isn’t responsible leadership to invest little in holistic people development – although it may look fair if there is only little return expected too.

To not ask for people’s full potential is detrimental to the human nature of thrive and desire for fulfillment and is an expression of a separating view of lower value and rights of certain individuals by the ones not expecting and supporting the realization of everyone’s maximum potential.

Peoples’ potential becomes only available to an organization and society, if the individual’s commitment based on identification with the organization in an inter-dependent way can be achieved. Inter-dependency I understand as a healthy balance of self-responsible independency and collaborative dependency.

Continuous improvement of the personal development process

A common method used in business for the control and continual improvement of processes and products is for example the Deming Cycle with it’s four steps “Plan – Do – Check – Act” (PDCA). In Training & Development the same logic is reflected by a process named “Assess – Plan – Implement – Evaluate”. I have mentioned the iterative character of the Happy Colorful Growth (HCG) Development Framework and specifically the repetitive nature of the developing experiential steps of “see it – believe it – act on it” (see  post ‘Create to develop; develop to create. A framework.’). In order to emphasize the ongoing need of making new experiences and of maintaining existing behaviors, I introduce explicitly a continuous improvement process cycle to the Happy Colorful Growth (HCG) way of personal development.

Act / Adjust

Am I really happy? Listening to my heart and to feedback from communications (especially from my self) is helping to answer whether I am really happy. Being happy and positive (which basically is always possible in appreciation of our life in any circumstance) is the precondition to be spiritually and mentally open to dream big and see the truth. The secret lies in acting like “as if already”. Act as if you are already happy, and you’re happy from now and not somewhen in the future when certain criteria are assumed to be reached.

Planning

Based on the vision of myself in society, the planning process is orchestrating societal, organizational, and personal factors in order to make the development path believable to myself and others, translating the vision  and defining the processes and tasks that are helping to realize set growth goals.

Realization

Realization happens on all levels (universe, relationships, and the self). What can be consciously planned for are the tasks on the personal level that lead to personal growth of mind and body directly. However, working on the self is automatically influencing also the more unconscious drivers of relationships and dependencies in the wider context of the whole universe and lets us growth also from a heart and spiritual perspective.

Reflection

Feedback from myself and from inter-personal and extra-personal communication are important to inform about the effectiveness of the personal development process by evaluating related achievements. This is input to starting the development cycle over and over again, always adjusting the plan and actions towards an increasing consistency of defined, planned, and realized vision elements that are continuously created by “seeing it”, “believing i”t, and “acting on it”.

Please, do yourself and humanity a favor and expect more and invest more in personal development and growth of yourself and others.