Personal development

The business-to-consumer market involves selling books, courses and techniques to individuals, such as:

• Newly-invented offerings in fields such as:
  • Fitness
  • Memory training
  • Beauty enhancement
  • Large-group awareness training
  • Weight loss

• Traditional practices such as:
  • Yoga
  • Martial arts
  • Initiation ceremonies
  • Meditation
  • Spirituality
  • Asceticism

Some programs deliver their content online. Many include tools sold with a program, such as motivational books for self-help, recipes for weight-loss or technical manuals for yoga and martial-arts programs.

A partial list of personal development offerings on the business-to-individual market might include:

• Books
• Motivational speaking
• e-Learning programs
• Training workshops
• Individual counseling
• Life coaching
• Time-management techniques

Some consulting firms such as DDI and FranklinCovey specialize in personal development, but as of 2009 generalist firms operating in the fields of human resources, recruitment and organizational strategy—such as Hewitt, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Hay Group, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Korn/Ferry—have entered what they perceive as a growing market, not to mention smaller firms and self-employed professionals who provide consulting, training and coaching.

Some ancient Indians aspired to "beingness, wisdom and happiness".[12]

Paul Oliver suggests that the popularity of Indian traditions for a personal developer may lie in their relative lack of prescriptive doctrine.[13]

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) wrote Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defined personal development as a category of phronesis or practical wisdom, where the practice of virtues (arête) leads to eudaimonia,[14] commonly translated as "happiness" but more accurately understood as "human flourishing" or "living well".[15] Aristotle continues to influence the Western concept of personal development to this day, particularly in the economics of human development[16] and in positive psychology.[17][18]

In Chinese tradition, Confucius (around 551 BCE – 479 BCE) founded an ongoing philosophy. His ideas continue to influence family values, education and management in China and East Asia. In his Great Learning Confucius wrote:

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.[19]

Psychology became linked to personal development in the early 20th century starting with Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).

Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis, making the important point that aspirations look forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences.[20] He also originated the concepts of lifestyle (1929—he defined "lifestyle" as an individual's characteristic approach to life, in facing problems) and of self image, a concept that influenced management under the heading of work-life balance.

Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the Self.[21]

Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung's early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development comes under the influence—throughout life—of aspirations, which he called "the Dream":

Whatever the nature of his Dream, a young man has the developmental task of giving it greater definition and finding ways to live it out. It makes a great difference in his growth whether his initial life structure is consonant with and infused by the Dream, or opposed to it. If the Dream remains unconnected to his life it may simply die, and with it his sense of aliveness and purpose.[22]

Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert Bandura (born 1925), suggested that self-efficacy[23] best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results. According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:[24]

1. It makes you expect to succeed
2. It allows you take risks and set challenging goals
3. It helps you keep trying if at first you don't succeed
4. It helps you control emotions and fears when the going gets rough

In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals[25][26] rather than on pathology (he created the "positive psychology" current)

We have discovered that there is a set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance. Much of the task of prevention will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these virtues in young people.[27]

Social psychology[28] heavily emphasizes and focuses on human behavior and how individuals interact with others in society.[29] Infants develop socially by creating trusting and dependent relationships with others—namely parental figures.[30] Toddlers further develop social skills. Additionally, they begin to gain a desire for autonomy. The balance of social involvement and autonomy varies per person, but normally autonomous behavior increases with age. Some studies suggest that selfishness begins to diminish, and prosocial behaviors increase, between the ages of six years old to twelve years old.[31] Additionally, the years of adulthood are times of development—self-actualization, relational and occupational development, loss and coping-skills development, etc.—affected by those around us: parents, co-workers, romantic partners, and children. Social psychology draws from many other psychological theories and principles yet views them through a lens of social interaction.

The psychodynamic view of personal development varies from other perspectives. Namely, that the development of our traits, personalities, and thinking patterns are predominantly subconscious.[32] Psychodynamic theory suggests these subconscious changes—which emerge as external actions—are formed from suppressed sexual and aggressive urges and other internalized conflicts.[33] Sigmund Freud and other notable psychodynamic theorists postulate that these repressed cognitions form during childhood and adolescence. Conscious development would then be "digging up" these repressed memories and feelings. Once repressed memories and emotions are discovered, an individual can sift through them and receive healthy closure.[34] Much, if not all, of conscious development occurs with the aid of a trained psychodynamic therapist.

Cognitive-behavioral views on personal development follow traditional patterns of personal development: behavior modification, cognitive reframing, and successive approximation being some of the more notable techniques.[35] An individual is seen as in control of their actions and thought, though self-mastery is required. With behavior modification, individuals will develop personal skills and traits by altering their behavior independent of their emotions. For example, a person may feel intense anger but would still behave in a positive way. The accumulation of these efforts would change the person into a more patient individual. Cognitive reframing plays an instrumental role in personal development. Cognitive-behavioral psychologists believe that how we view events is more important than the event itself. Thus, if one can view negative events in beneficial ways, they can progress and develop with fewer setbacks. Successive approximation—or shaping—most closely aligns with personal development. Successive approximation is when one desires a final result but takes incremental steps to achieve the result. Normally, each successful step towards the final goal is rewarded until the goal is achieved. Personal development, if it is to be long-lasting, is achieved incrementally.

Educational psychology focuses on the human learning experience: learning and teaching methods, aptitude testing, and so on.[36] Educational psychology seeks to further personal development by increasing one's ability to learn, retain information, and apply knowledge to real-world experiences. If one is able to increase efficacious learning, they are better equipped for personal development.

During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses[37] led to research on the personal development needs of undergraduate students. Arthur Chickering defined seven vectors of personal development[38] for young adults during their undergraduate years:

1. Developing competence
2. Managing emotions
3. Achieving autonomy and interdependence
4. Developing mature interpersonal relationships
5. Establishing personal identity
6. Developing purpose
7. Developing integrity

In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy in 1997 when the Dearing Report[39] declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students with personal development.[40] In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines[41] for universities to enhance personal development as:

• a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development;
• objectives related explicitly to student development; to improve the capacity of students to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning

In the 1990s, business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the European Foundation for Management Development set up the EQUIS accreditation system which specified that personal development must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs.[42]

The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between Metizo, a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School[43] in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development competencies.

As an academic department, personal development as a specific discipline is usually associated with business schools. As an area of research, personal development draws on links to other academic disciplines:

• Education for questions of learning and assessment
• Psychology for motivation and personality
• Sociology for identity and social networks
• Economics for human capital and economic value
• Philosophy for ethics and self-reflection

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization at the top, defined as "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming".[44]

Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people self-actualize—he estimated one percent[45]—his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while job security and good working conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees.[46]

As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual. In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't managing their employees' careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It's up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.[47]

Management professors Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract.[48] On the one hand, the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees". On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes personal development and "embrace the invigorating force of continuous learning and personal development".

The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in career development from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities. Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that women's careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps[49] had a major impact on the way companies view careers.[50] Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in her Working Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change,[51] indicating that priorities of work and lifestyle continually develop through life.

Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies.

Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs.[52] Typical programs in this category include:

• Work-life balance
• Time management
• Stress management
• Health programs
• Counseling

As an investment, personal development programs have the goal of increasing human capital or improving productivity, innovation or quality. Proponents actually see such programs not as a cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization's strategic development goals. Employees gain access to these investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and future potential of the employee, usually defined in a talent management architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research staff and perceived future leaders. Organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented) programs to many or even all employees. Personal development also forms an element in management tools such as personal development planning, assessing one's level of ability using a competency grid, or getting feedback from a 360 questionnaire filled in by colleagues at different levels in the organization.

A common criticism[53] surrounding personal development programs is that they are often treated as an arbitrary performance management tool to pay lip service to, but ultimately ignored. As such, many companies have decided to replace personal development programs with SMART Personal Development Objectives, which are regularly reviewed and updated. Personal Development Objectives help employees achieve career goals and improve overall performance.

Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005, Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym "SHAM": the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"—not only as ineffective in achieving its goals but also as socially harmful. "Salerno says that 80 percent of self-help and motivational customers are repeat customers and they keep coming back whether the program worked for them or not."[54] Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand ... The more people read them, the more they think they need them ... more like an addiction than an alliance".[55]

Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized. ... although a veneer of scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing".[56]