Hi Anne. I think there is two parts to your question, so I’ll break it up as such:
1> Does personal development really work? In my personal experience, yes it really does work. From the age of 17-27 I worked in Sales in the IT Industry. After working with a key group of strong sales individuals who were highly motivated I decided to heed their advice and put a lot of effort and energy into really upgrading my personal skills. I started reading books like Stephen Covey’s the Seven Habits of Highly Effective people, starting reading up on sales methodology, I took a few sales courses.. was reading a lot of self help books including Anthony Robbins. The first year of doing so, it helped me get a relative decent amount of success. But come the third year of doing so (and I went to go and see Anthony Robbins’ live in person at a seminar he holds called "Unleash the Power Within"), I was able to more than double my salary (the 1st year, I had a base salary of about $35000, within 3 years my base salary jumped up to $75 000. So does it work? For me it did. In spades.
2> How do I find really great motivated people to work with? I have always found that like tend to attract each other. People who are down, will hold their pity party sessions at the coffee machine together. And likewise, people that are motivated will eventually find each other as well. So the best advice I would have, is to be focused, motivated and outgoing. You will attract others like you, to you.
To assist you, here are the hyperlinks for the Seven habits of highly effective people as well as Unleash the power within. there are a lot more that I used to help train myself, but these are probably the two most important ones.
Cheers.
Ken