Self Advocacy and Professional Development

Having strong advocacy skills will help you on your road to professional development. In fact, receiving the most effective professional development will require you to advocate for yourself along the way.

The Steps to Professional Development

Knowing the proper route to professional development will require you to take a few steps.

The first steps are seeking out the proper opportunities for development.

1) Assessing your skills

• In these steps, you will be required to assess your skills and what you’re good at—this will help you figure out what areas you may need to strengthen. Think back to some of the feedback you’ve received from your peers, mentors, teachers, and supervisors.

2) Find something challenging

• You will also need to think about finding a professional development opportunity or area that is challenging for you. Professionally developing in an area that you’re already good at may not challenge you to grow.

3) Identify Support

• Lastly, you want to identify someone to support you in holding you accountable to professionally developing and possibly giving you suggestions of places to find this development.

The second stage of professional development is sustaining relationships with individuals who hold knowledge.

1) Develop Relationships

• The same individuals from the previous steps will be crucial to building your professional network, provide feedback for you, and help serve as advocates for your own development. Developing relationships with skillful and knowledgeable individuals will help you receive more casual professional development as they can teach you new skills and recommend valuable areas to seek knowledge.

2) Seek Out Community Groups

• There are also valuable community spaces to support your professional development, but you may need to do some research or ask for recommendations to find these spaces.

3) Network

• Lastly, networking with individuals is key to building a sustainable and supportive professional network. The more individuals you meet, the more perspective and knowledge that they can share. Your network can support you in serving as your advocate, serving as mentors, writing recommendations for programs or opportunities, and helping you develop new skills.

You can find diagrams breaking down those steps below!