Portfolio and Reflection - Essay Example

?Portfolio and Reflection Part A I worked with Hadfield institute, which has a charitable status working to promote charitable and it promotes the provision of training and educational facilities to those who cannot have an access to such facilities. Moreover, it also works for opportunities of social advancement and citizenship. It was a very good experience doing social work; it was different from the usual corporate sector and it gave me lot of opportunities to learn a lot. I gained knowledge about variety of tasks and explored myself about my strengths and weaknesses. My job title was Business Organizer which incorporated a variety of tasks of different types which are explained in this report. Motivation First of all, I would like to discuss about motivation and how this motivation works for a social work environment. If we go to theoretical background we will have a look about McGregor and Maslow’s work and I will apply it on a social work context. According to McGregor, in his theory X which he gave in his book in 1960, work is distasteful and people do it just for money and security, they can only work when being observed. On the other hand theory Y people are self motivated to learn and accept responsibility for work.(The Human Side of Enterprise, 1960).I found myself as theory Y worker who wants more participative kind of environment given to me at Hadfield. I applied for this job because I wanted to improve my employability skills and I wanted to gain experience. I wanted to know how I work even when my job is not clearly defined. My job was more like a record keeping an administrative job where I had to do tasks like photocopying and filing. Still I was able to satisfy my supervisor about my competencies and hard work. There was more participation from workforce and I got my communication skills improved The first couple of days were hectic for me as I did not know about the organization; I searched on internet about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. But tasks included variety and depending on the need I had to do different tasks. At first I got confused about the administrative and recordkeeping work because my tasks kept on changing in first few days. But then I realized that jobs at higher levels are even more competitive so I decided to develop stamina of working for variety of tasks so that I could be able for higher jobs. I was given full chance of communicating my point of view and my ideas and the colleagues and supervisor treated me very nicely. There were certain things which I did not know about myself before the experience at Hadfield e.g. my tasks were not hard but required lot of determination and I found myself to be fairly responsible about the tasks given to me. I had never thought of using my creativity to problem solving to such an extent before. The supervisor tried to test my capability, and this proved very helpful for me because I discovered and explored my own capabilities. If motivation concept is seen with a different perspective we can take Maslow’s hierarchy. According to Maslow, in his hierarchy of motivation given in his research paper, different people have different level of needs which motivates them to work. Money and security needs are the lower level needs and when they are fulfilled, people earn to fulfill their higher order needs. At the stage of self actualization, a person derives his identity from work and he works because he is intrinsically motivated to work (A Theory of human Motivation, 1943). I found myself on the esteem needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. Self-Actualization Esteem Needs Social Needs Safety Needs Physiological Needs I have reached that point in my career where I started deriving my identity from my work. I worked for satisfying myself as social work gives me satisfaction. Context of social work is little bit different from the usual jobs, here money is not the motivator but inner self is. So the higher order needs are in some way related to social work. I applied for this job to gain experience and to improve my skills. The role which I was given was did not have defined boundaries. My work activities involved a range of tasks from one to another, still I was able to satisfy my supervisor and I had a good work experience. I managed to enhance my employability skills and that was my objective of job. There were other jobs where I could get more money but the experience at Hadfield was very much useful for me. When a specific task is given to a person, it is easy to do it. But when the job is not properly defined, that is the job that utilizes the potential to maximum. It was a chance given to me to explore my own self, my abilities and competencies. I was able to achieve a good hold of a certain range of activities rather than working for a monotonous job. Interpersonal Skills and Teamwork To attain organizational objectives, it is necessary that all the function specialists sit together and find out ways to synergistically achieve their goals by combining each other’s competencies (Ten Commandments of innovation, 2010). In Hadfield, there was a culture of cross functional teams for enhancing creativity. According to Tuckman’s teamwork theory, there are four stages of team development as illustrated below in the graph. These stages are progressive and ideally all four stages should be attained by a team but that requires effective interpersonal skills Efforts are made at Hadfield to facilitate the people who are working in organizations with people of other languages. There were short courses for people who want to learn a foreign language and learn about cultural diversity. These courses proved out very helpful to me and there were times when I had to present my ideas in front of people of different cultures as Hadfield deal with people of different areas, different cultures. I was well able to convince others about my ideas using my presentation skills. This proved out to be very useful for me as it improved my knowledge and my adaptation to other cultures. Also it improved my interpersonal skills as it reduced my language barrier and I could easily communicate and work with diverse teams. Since my job was related to different departments, I had interaction with most of the people at Hadfield and worked in teams with them. So, being with diverse teams I managed to go through all four stages of Tuckman’s theory. My interpersonal skills enhanced, may be because of increasing knowledge of diverse culture and confidence instilled in me by top managers. Also listening ability was instilled in me because of the job experience at Hadfield. I not only expressed my ideas openly but also listened to others’ ideas and tolerated the difference of opinions. When I got to know that I will be working on the reception desk, I was very excited because I wanted to work with the experienced employee and also wanted to communicate with customers. When my role began as a receptionist, I was little bit confused because I thought I might make a mistake. But it was a good experience; I gained self-confidence and got to know that I can work independently. My job was to arrange appointments and keep track of the record. There was a day when a guest was coming from Yemen, I had to receive him and greet him. I was the first person to meet him, at first I found myself to be nervous but eventually I got used to it and felt confidence while meeting and greeting different cultures’ people. I had to manage diverse range of tasks in a day like facilitating others learn software and languages, helping non English speakers in filling application and data entry in excel, I enjoyed all of them and learnt a lot from them. Leadership and decision-making Malcom Knowles gave a theory of adult learning also called andragogy. He said that individuals want to be self directed and they learn if they think that they need to learn (Malcom Knowles, 1980). I had a proper induction when I was appointed in the Hadfield, I was informed about their rules and procedures and also there was no compromise on health and safety. I was trained on health and safety so leadership at Hadfield is concerned about employees’ health and considers them a key of good performance. There is an adult learning and participative environment at Hadfield. I found myself to be an adult who has the sense of self direction and can utilize my abilities if given choice from appropriate resources. So, I can be a good employee and team worker as well. I have a tendency to be self directed and learning because I have the tendency to improve my personality by developing my talent and potential. Decision making is a very important attribute of leadership and teamwork and decisions can only be made after having analytical ability and having full knowledge of the situation. At Hadfield, I was given this opportunity to express myself openly and to discuss my confusions, also the decision making was participative. As a result, it made me an adult with full self concept and aware of own identity. Also I found myself to be fairly analytical and evaluative about myself after this job experience. From the variety of tasks I was given, I could easily analyze my abilities on each job and was able to see what type of task I enjoy and I am competitive at. Also I found out about my time management skills that I can do work well before time and I am responsible enough. My supervisor gave me immediate feedback about my job which proved really helpful for me. One day I had to do application filling all day and I had to send it to my supervisor for double checking. My supervisor really encouraged me by telling me that I did a great job that day. This motivated and encouraged me. Sometimes I was also given an option of choosing between two tasks like going to English class or work in the reception. I went to English class helping students and teacher was very much pleased by my facilitation. This feedback from my higher ups really appreciated me and motivated me. The leadership was very supportive for me. Then I told my supervisor about the positive response of teacher and told him that I want to work for him, my supervisor agreed and encouraged me. Such behavior of supervisor made my job experience more useful and productive. Decision making was also participated, my task was not imposed on me without my consent, rather my opinion was given importance and my strengths were capitalized by supportive attitude of leadership. Honey and Mumford also gave four learning styles like Kolb. The four styles are activists, reflectors, theorists and pragmatist (Peter Honey, 2012). I found myself to be theorist who believes in practical implication of theories and who can assimilate the theoretical knowledge and apply it to practical life. All I learnt in my school life, I had a chance to apply it in language classes and software classes. I was able to make use of my prior knowledge which gave me confidence. If I make a comparison of myself before and after this module, I find that I am a better person now with better interpersonal skills, with learning and decision making ability and applying theoretical knowledge to the practical life. Hadfield gave me a place to apply theoretical concepts in real life that increased my learning. As Hartog says, reflective practice helps us to learn through experience and is concerned about identifying the inquiring the mistakes and learn from them. I was not confident that I can do this job but after doing different tasks I was able to find my mistakes and tried to learn from them. I was better able to manage time and stress then. There were times when I did mistakes and reflected afterwards that this was not supposed to be done in the way I did. I try to learn from my mistakes being at Hadfield and this will help me in career progression. I got a chance to learn from my experiences and mistakes at Hadfield. Also it has been very helpful to me in identifying my weaknesses and gray areas. It also improved my emotional intelligence, gave me patience to work with someone who does not know even little bit about education. It gave me control over my emotions. Also it enlightened me about how customers respond at times and what needs to be done to achieve customer satisfaction. However, I think I could do a better job and would have leant ore if cultural visits would have been more and cultural diversity would have been given more importance. As the people with whom we deal with, or who do not have access to educational facilities, have different cultures and backgrounds and the most important thing which they need to learn is to adapt themselves to a more prevalent culture so that they can work with different language speaking people. More exposure to culturally different customers could even be more helpful. But applying my theoretical knowledge in the job by helping and facilitating others was the part of the job which I really liked. Part B CDWBL model has been very helpful for me in identifying my strengths and weakness and areas of further improvement. It has been an effective method of translating my internal qualities to the productivity of my job life. I got to know that I am a good facilitator and I can help other learning about software and language. Rather than record keeping, I enjoyed more in helping others and it also further increased my knowledge. Motivation and Enthusiasm The first internal quality I have mentioned in CDWBL model is motivation. When I applied CDWBL and analyzed my motivation, I found that I have intermediate level of motivation. Covering the language barrier was very hard for me while doing job in England, but I was intrinsically motivated to learn language and I succeeded to do so. However, I will still say that I need to further increase motivation. I can do this by not following the job just for money and personal security, but with a motivation and willingness to work and learn. In the long run, my motivation will help me in my career management. It is all about passion to learn which will help me excel in long run. This identification of my motivation and enthusiasm helped me in analyzing myself and take further steps to improve. From the feedback of the supervisor and facilitators, I got further motivated and improved myself. If I did anything good, I was given an immediate feedback which helped me reinforcing it and made it a part of my personality. Next time whenever I will do it, I will do it more enthusiastically. Teamwork In today world, concept of teamwork is very important in handling business. Cross functional teams are formed, including members from different departments and work on projects by delegation of work and brainstorming for coming up with innovative and creative ideas. For being a team player, one needs to have strong communication skills and the basic core of teamwork is to utilize each member’s strengths and qualities and complementing one’s weakness with other’s strengths. The key to be a successful team is the accurate communication. There is a bond formed between the members of the team because they pass hard times together and a commonality of their goals bring them together and maintains a bond between them. This collective handling of stress and formation of close bonds between team players is called pressure cooker situation. Through CDWBL model I found out myself to be intermediate team player. I have been involved in such games that involve teamwork like football. Also I have been involved in group projects in university, in which we divided the tasks and did work. So teamwork is enhanced by experiencing with multiple teams and finding out what are the problems in teamwork. This identification has helped me about how good I am at handling the teams and will prove to be very useful for me in my future career. I will know what my strengths are as a team player and how the strengths of group members are utilized effectively and also how everyone is the team is given confidence and how to motivate the group members and keep their spirits high. Oral communication & presentation of ideas for varied purposes/ audiences CDWBL model also helped me improving and analyzing my oral communication skills and presentation skills. While studying in university, I have done improved my presentation skills because it was the demand of projects. Also studying in a different country helped me adjust to different culture, different language and be communicative. All through my work experience, I have been open to different cultures and always customer focused which is the new trend nowadays. The companies; success is more related to customer satisfaction and value adding services rather than increasing sales. This skill will help me throughout the career because at work I will need to convince people in certain presentation, be an eloquent speaker and also be customer centric and open to other cultures. Products in different countries have to be localized to the country so that it meets the customers’ needs of that area. So it helped me improving my presentation and oral skills further. Being at reception desk sometimes, I had to inspire the visitors and customers with my convincing skills and spread the awareness about the cause for which the organization is working. The positive response of customers told me about the effective speaking and communication skills I have. Written communication and Presentation of Ideas Written communication and presentation of my ideas to varied audience also has been improved with the passage of time. Doing job in a firm requires an employee to sometimes send formal emails to other companies; maybe there is a need of communicating an idea to the top management itself. So, writing skills are also required at almost all the stages of a career ladder. Being promoted from one semester to next in university, I had to prove that I have improved my writing and oral presentation skills. This helped me focus on my writing skills and presenting my ideas in a written form and also be as convincing as possible. Although the job at Hadfield did not require much written reporting from me, but I know that it will help me in future. However, careful recordkeeping was a part of my job and I was successful in managing it. Adaptability, flexibility and working under pressure One of my main focuses of coming to another country for higher education was that I wanted to achieve flexibility to different cultures. Nowadays workforce needs to be flexible because innovation and creativity cannot be achieved if there are tight work schedules and the structure of organization is not helpful for incorporating innovation and creativity. I think I have been able to achieve it to the advanced level because I have worked with different people and adjusted and heard others’ opinions. Although I was given variety of tasks but the supervisor and other people in the departments were really cooperative and helping. Sometimes I was given more than one type of tasks to perform on a single day, I managed to do it as I have the flexibility and adaptability for that. E.g. working with a non English speaker and greeting a person from other culture like Yemen required a variety of skills and adaptability. I was able to do it successfully. Obtaining, evaluate, analyzing and organizing information Another very important skill I have analyzed through CDWBL model is to obtain, evaluate, analyze and organize information. Some companies are market research firms and they need their analysts to be very analytical and draw out patterns from the market trend. I found that I am intermediate in this thing and I need to improve it. My job at Hadfield was not analytical and evaluative about market. So I did not have much exposure to analysis of market and I need to work on it in further jobs.. However, it was a great chance of self analysis. Problem solving Problem solving is very much required in customer centric organization as well as in every other aspect of life. Since I have work experience in retail industry, I have been into extensive problem solving because all the customers’ complaints have to be handled tactfully to maintain the image of the organization. I am intermediate in this quality and need further improvement. Being a receptionist, I realized that customers can come up with unexpected queries and problems and I sometimes found it hard to manage. So I need improvement in my problem solving skills. Attention to detail Attention to detail is very important for some projects in university as well as some jobs. I am intermediate in this respect and need to work more on it. Sometimes not giving attention to details causes a wrong decision and major blunders. So through this CDWBL model, I realized that I need to work more on it. Since one of the tasks given to me was recordkeeping, I had to be very specific and accurate about details and had to focus on minor details. I was able to manage it but still I can improve more on this thing. Analysis and decision making Decision making is one of the most important qualities required both in professional and personal life. I have made some wrong decisions in university life and through CDWBL model, now I know how important this quality is. Before decision making one should analyze it from every aspect so I am working on improving this quality. Decision making mostly comes at upper management level, however, at Hadfield there was supportive decision making and I gave my opinions and ideas about the decision. Negotiating, Compromising and dealing with conflict/criticism Conflict of opinion is a very common phenomenon we experience in our daily as well as professional life. This apprentice program has really helped me to work on my negotiation skills as I am kind of novice to this concept. Listening to other’s opinions, listening to criticism is very important as people have the tendency to get offended when they are being criticized. Also the business deals have to be negotiation based while everyone is trying to maximize their own share. These skills have been taught by this apprentice program and helped me improving. Dealing and negotiating with customers was also part of my job which gave me exposure to the conflict management, but I need further improvement. Managing own learning and independent working The university gave chance to develop myself, manage my own work and do my work independently without depending on anybody. University gave me chance to depend on myself because I was given an option of attending lectures and seminars. It made me self motivated to learn however still I need to improve in it. Sometimes I was given option between two tasks and I was able to select the one in which I am efficient and could learn more. Planning, coordinating, organization and time management University life enables us to meet strict deadlines and plan my work accordingly so that exams, projects and classes are managed side by side and it teaches effective time management. However, I am novice to intermediate in this respect and I need to work more on it and handle stress and manage time simultaneously, like in exams. At job, doing many tasks on a single day, I learnt time and stress management and I achieved better outcomes which showed improvement. Confidence and self awareness Having confidence to ask questions from others if you do not understand something really helps you gain confidence and make final product a flawless creation. This confidence was instilled in me during university life when we were encouraged to ask questions and given such assignments which really helped us to get to know ourselves. I found my strengths and weaknesses through this and I need to work more on them. At Hadfield, I found about variety of tasks, the depth of skills required and my position and abilities on each job. Imagination and creativity Coming up with new ideas and solutions to solve a problem is very useful in professional as well as personal life. The use of imagination while drawing helped me improve my creativity. Other real time scenarios also happened when my creativity helped me drawing out solutions and I need to improve it further. Sometimes there is a situation where I cannot work if not guided. Working at Hadfield, helped me identify those situations and action plan to handle those problems. Dealing customers is an example of such situations where I could not deal with them sometimes so I need improvement. Leadership and managing others While working in groups I have an experience of taking charge of others and leading others while they do their work. Similarly, while doing job we need to administer and lead a group of people that helps you to polish your leadership and management skills. I am intermediate in it too and I am working to improve it. My job at Hadfield did not involve much of the people management but involved facilitating others in learning of languages and software. I was able to do it successfully but I can improve by further learning about leadership and managing others. Part C Key Learning Points from CDWBL CDWBL has taught and helped me a lot in analyzing myself and identifying my weakness and strengths. It has taken into account all the required attributes of a professional experience and helped me knowing myself e.g. finding out about the job can do better and job at which I need improvements. This insight was given to me by Hadfield experience. Be organized and time management I want to improve my time management skills which are very crucial to career development. Doing assigned task with the specified time and allocated cost is very important part of any job. I can clearly say that improving my time management skills will help me when I will go through career progression. I should keep separate files for separate tasks to keep a track of all the tasks in hand and tracking the progress from time to time. I want to avoid the disorganization of work in a random manner and I want to change this thing from my previous career to have a time conscious and organized career management. Be a team player Having realized the importance of teamwork all during the university life and job experience I want to be a good team player for all my future life. I want to listen to other’s opinions more and want to be open to others’ ideas rather than directing other with my ideas. I want to be more flexible yet committed to excellence not compromising to hard work and competitiveness. This will help me in my future career and help me to improve my communication skills. Playing such games which involve more team work can help me be a team player and enhance my communication abilities, overcoming the communication barriers. I had exposure to different teams working for different projects like learning languages and software, I was able to facilitate them and ensured better communication in group tasks. This has helped me to identify that I am suitable for a job which involves more teamwork because I can really improve my team playing skills. This will open the opportunity for me to apply for such jobs like managers, assistant managers and department heads. Improving my team playing skills, I can utilize other’s strengths and minimize the weaknesses of team as a whole. If I had to organize a group task, I made a team of people with multiple skills together in a team to enhance effectiveness. Communicating with senior managers I want to b confident enough so that I can ask and consult my senior managers because their work experience is more. I wanted to remove the communication barrier I might have experienced in past now I wanted to be confident and self assured so that I was not afraid of asking the questions. My general understanding of the concept increased. That required nothing but my self confidence, a belief in me. At Hadfield, discussing my tasks with supervisor and taking feedback from him made me confident enough that I was able to communicate him without any hesitation. I could easily communicate him that which type of tasks I enjoy more and asked him to help me in those. This confidence will help me in moving through different jobs throughout the career because I will be confident enough to ask if I cannot understand anything Prepare and manage the work in the correct way As I want to attain progress and move towards higher jobs, I will need to manage and prepare work more tactfully. Especially if there is team work in the organization, I need to delegate some work to other group members and do the final compilation and make sure that everyone in the team in working. Also if somebody in the team needs my support I should help them. I can do this by arranging tasks in proper files, knowing the starting and ending dates of all the tasks to be completed and monitoring the progress from time to time. This will help me in career progression as I will learn how to assume responsibility of any project, how to allocate resources and make sure that others are working. This will polish my leadership and self managing activity too. I will learn accountability and responsibility in my work which will keep my top managers happy. My feedback can be positive depending upon the timeliness, cost and quality consciousness. At Hadfield, I kept record of all tasks at hand and managed them timely and efficiently. This learning was inculcated in me by virtue of this module which gave me insight about the importance of time management. Being able to negotiate with customers /clients Being a bilingual student gives me more advantage in the job market yet I need to capitalize on this strength of mine. I want to be a company’s representative and learn the negotiation skills. I need to learn how people expect more than what they deserve and how to neutralize the aggressiveness of a party. How to make sure that the deal will not be a loss deal for the company, how such situations can be converted to win -win situations and how to maximize share of both parties. This can be learnt by having a look at the already done negotiations of famous companies. I can see the examples of various organizations about how they are managing conflicts. If a company has a diverse workforce, I can see its management criteria about how it is resolving the conflicts between the workforces. Further I may need to consult some experienced professionals who can guide me about the right pathway to be followed in handling tough negotiations and tough parties. Overall during this module I have learnt a lot about the useful and required attributes which are necessary to make me successful at a job. I want to utilize this module at the best of it, removing and trying to overcome all the problems I have while communicating with others, negotiating with others, leading others and also managing myself. I want to be more organized in my work as compared to previous life, I want to keep track of my work more than I did in past. I can do this by learning from observation and experiences of others. The guest speakers who came, proved out to be very helpful, I had an opportunity to learn from their experiences. Also some of them have been working as top managers in prestigious organization; they gave comprehensive speeches about what they expect from employees as top managers, what kind of employees are praised at their level and what is the level of competency required to be on the top. They also explained the importance of time management and importance of being a team player. How tasks are assigned in teams and how do they expect the work to be completed. They helped us identifying key strengths for a positive career progression. It really increased our awareness about ourselves and provided an in-depth self analysis. I can easily look into my past and see what I would want to change in my work; this learning has been caused by the module. I could easily analyze why at some situations why I was not able to lead and manage others, why I could not be helpful to customers and found it difficult to deal with customers’ complaints, a person with effective leadership skills and a wonderful negotiator. My work at Hadfield, I found that, a subject which is at my finger tips, I can be good at facilitating others learn that. I also found that unexpected situations occur very often and I need improvement and creativity to handle such situations. Conclusion The learning imparted during the module proved out to be very useful in my practical work experience at Hadfield. I found a practical exposure to almost all of the concepts studied and I found my strengths and weaknesses in certain areas. This experience will help me throughout my career progression and will guide me which job is suitable for me and what are the skills and competencies required to improve further. It will also teach me time and stress management skills which are very important in today’s dynamic environments. I will really work hard to make full use of the self analysis which I made during the job experience. References MCGREGOR, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York, McGraw-Hill. TAY L., & DIENER E. (2011). Needs and Subjective Well-Being Around the World. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 101, 354-365. 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