This was a conversation I had very regularly with the team. It got to a point at one stage of the company where I was fielding these questions or requests, probably weekly, and needed to take a step back and do a reset so that everyone was on the same page and ask: “What are we talking about when we talked about professional development?” 

Some people wanted to take a course, some wanted to get a certificate, others wanted to go to conferences or different things like that. Defining that was the challenge.

Some people that were requesting this needed core training on the work that they were doing. They still had a lot of a lot of growth opportunity for their key role and it became hard to say, “Oh yeah, you should learn this new skill when you really need to master the skills that are in the role today.” 

I wrote this document around how I am thinking about professional development so that we had a benchmark to go back to and talk about.

I kind of broke it down into three core parts: 

1. Perfecting the skills required in your role was the baseline. This needed to happen before any consideration would be made to do above and beyond that from a professional development standpoint. 

2. The second one was understanding how the work that we were doing also aligns with the business objectives. There's a lot in that that I'll get to and talk about and add some color within this document below. 

3. And the last one was what we traditionally think of it as upskilling in areas of personal interest or potential company impact. You can't do the last one until the first two are are in progress or amazing.

There's often a big disconnect for creative teams on understanding how their roles and their work rolls up to the business objectives. 

A commonly asked question is: What are the business objectives and what does what I'm doing map to that? And so this section was another area where we can say, "hey, maybe your professional development should be focused on getting a better understanding of how to read data or how to work collaboratively with other departments across the organization."

Volunteering or asking for ways that they could take on more challenges in their current role is an area where you're given more responsibility and through that you have the opportunity to increase your development through experience. 

Quite frequently I would ask people on the team: "What else you would be interested in getting involved with? Can you share some of those things with me I can look for opportunities to push you out of your comfort zone and go pursue them?" 

Interestingly enough, after I published this document two or three different people came and reached out to me and said, "Hey, I'd be interested in X," and within that week I found an opportunity for them to get involved in a new area and grow professionally.


Michael Smith

Professional development is a huge topic at our company where a lot of what we were creating was ways for product people to develop their own skills. This document outlines how Reforge design team approaches professional development.

One of the content designer competencies is "Owns Professional Development". In some conversations, it became apparent that this may be nebulous. Partly because there are a lot of definitions and partly because many companies don't formally encourage this.

help bridge the understanding gap and have a consistent expectation

 around the topic, I'm writing this insight document.

The way I view professional development is threefold

💪 Perfecting the skills required in your role (this is an expectation that I would imagine everyone pursues over the course of their career)

🏦 Pursuing an understanding how your work affects and aligns with the business objectives

💭 Upskilling in areas of personal interest or potential company impact

All of these are super high-level buckets and not super actionable, so let's dive deeper into each to try and form a framework of how this might play out for your career at Reforge.

This one is pretty easy to define, and we've gotten better at supporting it on the Content Design Team. The idea is that the other skills-based competencies are getting better over time. Things like Figma expertise, CDS alignment, communication with others, etc.

 for this one could look like: self-identifying areas of weakness and looking for ways to bolster those skills.

Not great at using Figma? Watch some tutorials, practice using it outside of Reforge specific use cases, play around and try to figure stuff out

CDS alignment not up to snuff? Read back up on the documentation, look at how others use the system, do the exercises we've put together.

Communication a struggle? Read some books/articles about improving this, take an improv class, practice situational exercises.

Unsure of what the topic you're designing for is about? Learn more about the topics we teach on by taking Reforge courses or adjacent reading.

This opportunity is more nuanced and less specific because it requires putting on a different lens than you may be used to wearing. Individuals that are able to align themselves with the objectives of the company see a much higher growth trajectory because they are able to speak to - and act in - a way that shows value and buy-in to leadership.

 here might look like: identifying potential issues or sticking points that could be solved by your actions. An action could include documentation, a process flow, or chipping in toward an area you're unfamiliar with but see a need. Some specific points on this to think through:

What is currently working that might break soon?

What isn't working well but I see an opportunity to improve it?

What team/individual looks like they could use a hand?

What is an area that would improve the company that no one is focused on but I'm willing to spend time to help figure out?

This is probably the most commonly attributed concept of professional development. It gets to the heart of the question: What's next for me professionally? And how do I get there?

In this specific instance, the actions should push you outside of your comfort zone. If you're considering development in this area, but find the area to be easy, that isn't development - it’s practice.

I actually would rely on a paper I read that was 

 that mentions that there are 5 activities that contribute to PD. Of the 5, there are 3 that are applicable to this aspect of 'upskilling'. I've highlighted those below (the 2 that are unhighlighted, I've included into the above aspects of perfecting skills and business objectives):

Participating in professional organizations

Reading books or long-form publications on relevant areas that interest you

Formal degree or certificate programs/courses/workshops

Volunteering or asking for ways you could take on more challenges in your current role, be it projects, a "problem to solve", a long or short-term assignment

One of the biggest aspects I see in advancing PD is the support of the manager. While the pursuit of PD activities is great; opportunities that are void of sharing back to the team, incorporating application, or retaining the information tend to fizzle out. By tracking the activities, accountability persists and the long-term benefits of the action will increase actionability.

This is why Professional Development is so important as an aspect of the Content Designer competencies. It is a personal pursuit that has a partnership with peers and managers. At the end of the day, Professional Development makes an employee better, but in addition, it makes the team better!

In conclusion, no matter the activity that is chosen, Professional Development should follow a few general standards:

Did you communicate the development opportunity with someone else? 

Is it pushing you outside of your comfort zone? 

What is your plan to apply your learnings? 

Professional Development Framework at Reforge

Professional Development Framework

💪 Perfecting your skills in your role

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