Draft of the announcement to be sent out in early March

As the April 30th evaluations are approaching, it's time to start thinking about your personal development goals for the 2007-2008 year. Excellent communication skills are essential for your future success at Vanderbilt. Talk with your supervisor and anyone else who may help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on how those strengths and weaknesses apply to your current position's job activities, as well as any other positions you may wish to work towards. Identify the one or two areas in which your improvement is the most important. Make a plan on how to improve in those areas;

• Include specific non-work-related actions, e.g. study this book, attend 90% of these workshops, form a learning team with other dept members.
• Include specific work-related actions, e.g. write more of the analysis reports, do more of the oral presentations of analysis results.
• Include a way for your supervisor to track your efforts, e.g. send them a monthly update on what you have been doing. Communication is rated in the credo section of the evaluations and your effort to improve is a major part of that rating.
• Be prepared to adapt. Your initial plan may be a dud. If what you are trying is not helping you, change your plan.

Your time is valuable. Concentrate your efforts on the activities that are helping you the most. It is your responsibility to figure out what those activities are, to seek out feedback on your progress, and to judge how much those activities are helping you improve. Your supervisor may be of some help to you, but remember they are not experts in communication and they are not the ones who ultimately determine things like promotion. At the end of the day, your overall excellence in communicating is what matters. If you make a consistent effort using efficacious strategies to improve where you need it the most, over time your excellent communication skills will become self-evident.