SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
Do you invest in training and conferences for your professional development?
- Yes — I invest a lot of time in these events: 34%
- Kind of — I invest time in these events occasionally: 47%
- Not really — I don’t go to training or conferences often: 15%
- No — I don’t have the time or the interest: 4%
A good 80/20. 80% of you are investing time in your development via training and conferences. For the 20% who aren’t, ask yourself if you’re happy with your career and your growth. If the answer is no, I’d suggest you start carving out time to develop yourself. Only so much growth happens via osmosis on the job. For any of you looking to invest your time, find programs where you’ll get a disproportionate amount of content and growth for the time you’ll spend. By being judicious about where you invest your time, you’ll tend to pay attention more during the program and therefore take away more information that you can apply.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and the host of the upcoming Executive Insight 16 — a leadership conference being held in New York this November