One question project: Marjolein Hemker
How do you prioritise personal development vs professional
development?
This is a question close to my heart as a former Head of Talent Development, who is currently on sabbatical to work on my personal development.
Before I address this question, maybe it’s best to first define the difference between personal and professional development. The goal of personal development is to improve one’s physical, emotional, or social well-being in some way. In contrast, professional development plans aim to improve one’s performance in a specific role or in their broader career path (source: LinkedIn Learning).
You could argue that both personal and professional development are important for most people. But if I were to pick one, I would choose personal development. In my experience, professional development usually happens quite organically in your work – you have to learn to work with new systems, updated models, new theories, etc. All of this is constantly needed and demanded to perform well in your job. When it comes to personal development, such as exploring personal values or managing your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, most companies historically place less emphasis on it. But these skills are very important too, on a personal, as well as professional level.
I believe that if you know yourself - your passion, your values, your strengths, etc., and you manage to guide and care for yourself, it improves your well-being and happiness. It improves your social interactions, and things will just cost less energy, or ideally even energize you, when you do the things that suit you well. From a more holistic perspective, I believe that personal development is crucial in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, as defined by the United Nations, such as no poverty, climate action, and addressing inequality. The Inner Development Goals, a not-for-profit and open-source initiative, created a beautiful framework that identifies the abilities, qualities, or skills needed to achieve these goals.
Even from a professional development perspective, I would say that personal development becomes more and more important. Technology development and the speed of change happen so fast, and it’s likely that most of the technical work will be done by machines in the next couple of decades. It’s only reasonable to expect that human skills will therefore become more important to stay professionally relevant. An interesting resource to check in this regard is the top-10 skills of 2025 by the World Economic Forum. As you can see, there are only 2 technical skills on this list. All the rest of this list is composed of self-management, working with people, and problem-solving skills.
All in all, I think personal and professional development are closely connected. In the best possible scenario, your personal development adds to your professional development and vice versa. Fortunately, more and more companies recognize this as well. So, here’s my piece of advice: take some time to reflect on where you are and where you want to be in your development and share this with your manager. Even if you want to focus on more personal skills, you might be pleasantly surprised by the support you will get. I wish everyone who reads this a lot of growth and happiness.
About Marjolein:
I was born and raised in The Netherlands, for the most part in Amsterdam. I still live there with my husband, Gijs. We are surrounded by a great family and many lovely friends. I am passionate about dancing, cooking, and, well, basically everything related to food. I see myself as a lifelong learner, so my professional expertise in Learning & Development suits me well. At the start of my professional career, I realized that making a positive impact on people’s lives really drives me. And given the amount of time people spend at work, I decided to focus my efforts there. I hope I have contributed to the happiness and well-being of at least some, and I strive to make even more of an impact in the future.