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Nowadays, security professionals have to be leaders as much as they do managers, and be competent in a wide range of generalist skills ranging from finance through to negotiation. Without doubt, security is rapidly changing from being a single skill job to a multi-faceted profession that requires extensive expertise.

The environment in which security professionals operate has been unstable for quite some time. Existing threats change their nature and extent without warning, and those which appeared remote only yesterday are now very much immediate. Professional competencies are constantly tested, so too management skills in the more general sense.

If you were to examine the 'career development journey' for most security practitioners, some common threads will emerge – two of them being the parallel strands of training and education.

Sadly, career development among many security professionals is all-too-often a haphazard affair. They leaf through various periodicals, canvass like-minded colleagues and troll the World Wide Web looking for the next source of knowledge that will help them along the way. If one is found, managers then embark on the next step towards what they hope will be the summit of their career.

This 'hunting around' for professional enlightenment is – in all probability – not the fault of anyone in particular, but rather a symptom of the age in which we are living. Though their jobs require them to make strategic plans, formulate and meet various business targets and ensure that they know where their department is headed, professional development for security managers in the longer term is very often neglected.

The task at hand is made even more difficult by the plethora of seemingly identical courses offered by a number of providers and, of course, shrinking budgets for training.

How, then, might security managers 'get it right' when it comes to professional development? Just as important is the question of how they'll do so for those relying on them for their own future (ie their successors)?

The answer lies in somewhat different but nevertheless connected processes.

The need for career planning
Where are you and your team now in terms of skills development? Where do you want to be in, say, two or three years' time? Without a clear vision of the future – an oxymoronic phrase if ever there was one – careers will wander aimlessly such that any successes will be by virtue of accident rather than design.

Career plans are often derided as being impractical. While this is possibly true (at least in part) due to the mobility of people in the security profession, career planning is not impossible. Nor should it be neglected. Without any vision of where you'd like yourself and members of your team to be in terms of career progression at some defined point years hence, you cannot hope to plot any sort of course to get you there.

Though their jobs require them to make strategic plans, formulate and meet various business targets and ensure that they know exactly where their department is heading, professional development for security managers in the longer term is very often neglec

You can almost guarantee that there'll be changes in direction, but at least those changes will be from a specific point and corrections can be made at the appropriate time to return to the original course.

Having decided where you're going on a professional level, you then need to analyse the set of skills currently at your disposal. This analysis should encompass not only a list of skills themselves, but also levels of competency. How much do you really need to know about the workings of that digital CCTV recorder? Will you need to be able to fix it, or will an understanding of its capabilities suffice?

It's worth remembering that there's a point at which we can concentrate too much on a favoured subject to the neglect of the somewhat less palatable. Unfortunately, it's often the latter tasks where skills need to succeed. Finance, corporate operations and human resources are common areas of neglect, but all of them are vital.

Once you've decided on the skill sets you possess, you then need to pick out those which you require for the job at hand. This is often facilitated by discussions with colleagues, mentors or those in the Personnel Department.

Will gaps in the armour be revealed? Probably. Will your carefully-crafted image as the consummate security manager be ruined? Possibly. But will the process help you in the future? Certainly! Once you have subjected yourself to such a process, inflict it upon your team as well!

Plugging those skills gaps
Having found the skills gaps, they need to be filled. What you have to do is identify whether those gaps in ability are down to a lack of pure skills or knowledge. Pure skills need training, whereas knowledge gaps tend to require education. Or so the purists will tell you.

Research the subject of 'security management training' on the Internet and you will be confronted by a plethora of choices. Picking out the right training provider and course is a potential minefield. Is the course identifying those areas that you really need to know about? Are the right subjects included, and taught in the necessary detail? Are the trainers competent and experienced in their field? With training budgets shrinking on an annual basis, you need to make sure that any investment will provide you and your team with a decent return on initial outlay.

Alas, making the training decision and having the training programme implemented is usually the final step taken. It shouldn't be. All-too-often, funds are expended on training but, as soon as the delegate returns, that's that. Skills will soon atrophy if they remain unused.

All delegates returning from career and professional development courses should be afforded a post-course interview such that they might explain where and how they'll use their new found competencies.

It's certain that the next generation of security managers will fail to reach the standards their employers expect unless they can be provided with a broad range of skills and knowledge courtesy of focused training and education. Managers owe it to the profession to ensure that such failure is not allowed to occur.