Below are some (just a few!) honest opinions that I hold on the topic of professional development, from my vantage point as a recovering nonprofit leader.
​

1. Most professional development in the nonprofit sector is performative. We attend conferences, collect certificates, and check boxes while our organizations burn out the people doing the actual work.
2. Real professional development isn't a workshop. It's creating space for leaders to admit what they don't know without fear of losing credibility with their managers, boards and/or funders.
3. We've confused professional development with credentials. A board approved strat plan means nothing if you can't have hard conversations with your team about capacity, and we have not equipped them with said capacity.
4. The best professional development I ever received? A peer who told me the truth about my leadership gaps. Not a conference. Not a workshop. Just relational honesty.
5. If your professional development strategy doesn't include succession planning for yourself, knowledge transfer for your day-to-day, and growth in your role ... you're not developing professionally—you're just staying busy.
6. Professional development should be intentional, not an excuse to see people you have't seen since the conference last year. Also, if you're only learning things that confirm what you already believe, you're not growing.
7. We need to stop treating professional development as something you simply fund as a budget line item and leave it to your staff to figure out. Leaders who don't grow create organizations that can't either.

What would you add to this list?

We are chatting about this over on Instagram if you want to come join the convo!

The Well Lab waitlist is open. Professional development doesn’t have to be routine, cost a fortune, or be limited to workshops and conferences.