Personal Development Plan - Essay Example

?Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 2 SELF-ANALYSIS AND CRITICS 2 STRATEGIC ANALYSIS 4 COMMUNICATION SKILLS 5 WORKING IN TEAMS 6 ACADEMIC ABILITIES 7 PERSONAL REFLECTION 8 CONCLUSION 9 References 11 Appendix 12 INTRODUCTION Personal development plan (PDP) is a document intended to improve the weaknesses and to enhance the strengths of individual. PDP could be best defined as a structured process undertaken by students in order to pinpoint their performance and to plan for their career development (The Higher Education Academy, n.d.). The aim of this document would be to explore different areas and would indicate my performance based on Where I was? Where I am currently standing? What areas need improvement? Where I want to be in the future? How will I get there? This personal development plan is intended to help me: To become more effective, confident and independent In identifying my strengths and weaknesses To improve my skills To develop a positive attitude towards learning SELF-ANALYSIS AND CRITICS From time to time I was provided with many different opportunities to develop my skills and abilities, which I did. If I compare my past and present self, I would definitely say that with the passage of time my performances, communication skills, research skills and reading skills have greatly improved. Moreover, I can say that I have become a more professional individual than past. The key to my success has been team work and confidence. With both these factors on my side, I have a long way to go in the future. These skills have allowed me to be more friendly and interactive with others. With radical improvement in my communication skills, I have been able to interact effectively with my group members and teachers during seminars and lectures. This communication skill has also helped me in dealing with different individuals throughout my educational career and has enabled me to share my views and opinions with others and to understand other’s perspective as well. Being a marketer has helped me to enhance my research skills and knowledge regarding how a research is conducted. Within few months, I have become fully aware of different techniques to conduct a research. Moreover, I have increased my speed and now can do better research on a variety of topics. With continuous academic reading, I have also been able to improve my reading skills. In the past I have some serious issues in reading but with positive attitude to learn and gain more knowledge, I have keep on reading articles, novels, newspapers, comic books and researches and this has certainly helped me in improving my skills. Whenever I encountered a word that I was not aware of, I did not hesitate to ask others about it. This helped me a lot to improve my particular reading skills. The same I used to do with different concepts, I have never been afraid of asking from my colleagues or even my teachers. This has really helped me in making a better learner. The weak spot that I have continuously been told about by my teachers and lecturers is lack of motivation in regards of the level of English. I belong from a different background and origin, and English is not my first language but all thanks to my lecturers that have provided me with special time and attention to explain each and every possible thing that I was having hard time understanding. With the extra help, I was able to speak English more fluently which has been a huge improvement for me. I continually have challenged myself to inspire and to learn new vocabulary. Whenever I took a bus, I communicated with other passengers in English to improve my weakness. Overall it could be said that I have made huge improvements in terms of grammar, spelling mistakes, vocabulary and pronunciation with the passage of time. The strengths that I was told about by my tutor were my positive attitude towards learning and my politeness. With the help of these strengths I was able to overcome many difficult situations. These strengths have helped me to develop several skills that a marketer must possess. With positive attitude towards learning, I have been able to grasp fluency over English and other skills. With the opportunities at hand, I was also able to become a successful and confident team player that not only provides strong arguments but also listens to what others have to say. My politeness and friendliness have allowed me to blend in with other individuals at the university and to take active part in discussions and debates. STRATEGIC ANALYSIS In this section, I have provided strategic analysis of my abilities and skills. When I enrolled myself for further studies, within a week or so I was aware that my personal and interpersonal skills needs further improvement in order to sustain and survive at this level. I realized that my communication skills and conceptual skills need to be improved if I want to be a successful marketing manager in a multinational enterprise. This was all provided to me at this university, after enrollment I was able to further improve my research skills, communication skills and academic knowledge. From the academic knowledge, I was aiming to understand the international business environment and the changing consumer trends and behaviors. I have not only learnt about business and marketing but I have realized how to deal with people, how to understand the psyche of different people, the importance of cultural and other factors that can influence the work and behavior of the individuals, and many other things that are not only important for a successful career but also important for becoming a successful person as well. To become a marketing manager, it is vital to understand the consumer needs and their behavior. I knew that I had to further develop my understanding of these factors; to gain greater insight into business and academic knowledge. This would allow me to effectively manage and motivate my customers as well as my staff members. The others skills that require further improvement is my English. Even though I was getting better at English, I still had to work harder day by day to cope with other students at the university. To improve my English I kept reading newspapers, novels and magazines. This was also aimed to reduce the grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes that I was still making when doing my assignments and research work. Another skill that required constant attention was my interpersonal skills. These skills could be said as the soft skills that could help a person develop internally as well as externally. I already had some interpersonal skills but somehow I was not satisfied with what I had. To be at the level where others were, I had to work harder in understanding these skills and to implement these skills in my daily life. COMMUNICATION SKILLS Communication skills have an important role in the success of an individual (Price, 2007). In order to manage people and lead them, the communication skills of the individual have to play a vital role in managing them successfully and efficiently (Bolman, & Deal, 2002). Different people have helped me in improving my skills and they have identified several flaws in my communication skills. Feedback from my teachers and other colleges have given me the confidence to keep going forward and to further improve my abilities by speaking English. The dedication and commitment to improve my communication skills were some factors that pushed me to interact with others and learn my flaws. Now, I have started interacting in English with students at the university and I have continued to interact with others in the grocery stores, public transport etc. Therefore, feedback from different people has helped me in improving my communication skills and in becoming a more confident individual. Presentations were another source to increase my motivation regarding the communication skills. Within 3 years I have learnt to speak and write English properly. In presentations I was able to communicate with the audience with strong arguments to convince them along with the teacher. I kept challenging myself to increase my performance as I am a quick learner and have tried to learn as much I can from my mistakes. WORKING IN TEAMS In organizations, individuals have to work in teams and in groups. Organizations have been increasingly using team work and encouraging employees to work in teams (Salaman, Storey, and Billsberry, 2005). Therefore, at university level students are encouraged to work in groups. For me, working as a group in university was the most essential and important skill that has helped me grew to be a better professional and a better team player. At my previous academic institution, the concept of individuality was preferred and teamwork was constantly being ignored. This working in a team has helped me in understanding different individuals and their perspective. This skill has helped me widely to open my knowledge in terms of sharing ideas and listening to what others had to say. While working in team, I have learnt a very vital element; to listen to others perspective and to help others overcoming their weaknesses. Working in team has helped me reduce my fear of interaction with others as my group members corrected me every time I have made a mistake and provided me with instructions to correct my mistake. I kept learning from my mistakes and tried to improve by not repeating the same mistakes again and again. Being confident, capable individual and friendly has allowed me to blend in with others in the university. For me, working in teams has always been be a worthy experience as it involves coordination and distribution of tasks among team members for the accomplishment of common goals. From my perspective, teamwork and group has played an effective role in increasing the level of engagement. Being engaged in many group discussions enhanced my communication skills as well as interpersonal skills as I learned to be assertive and also learned to listen. I empathize in discussions and try to see things from my team member’s perspective. I have learned that by putting myself in other shoes, I can understand where my team members are taking the discussion. By doing this I am able to develop strong sense of argument supported by facts and figures. I realized that what I was doing earlier was negotiation but at this university I learned to argument rather than negotiate. ACADEMIC ABILITIES The academic abilities have helped me to reach my consistent progress. I have always tried to gain valuable insights from academic researches and concentrated a lot before conducting a research. I have always relied on internet and library sources to prepare and complete my assignments. To avoid any of the grammatical mistakes, I usually go through the whole assignment more than 3 times. I never hesitated to take help from my team members in eradicating any grammatical or spelling mistake that could ruin my hard work. The more I concentrate on my academic skills, the more I learn to manage my time and this time management has become the cornerstone of my success in meeting the deadlines. I have always submitted my assignments before the deadline with proper Harvard referencing system. To avoid any misconduct, I have always used quotation marks to indicate the quotes and the page numbers from where the quotes are taken. Using library and internet as secondary sources of information, I am used to provide all the necessary references to avoid any misconduct. PERSONAL REFLECTION This section is emphasized on the overall personal reflection. I have learned a lot to develop several strategies to present myself personally and professionally. The most important thing that I learned was to convert my weakness into strength, which I successfully did. I was able to interact with others in English and was provided with a very positive response from my team members and class mates. Even though English is not my first language, I have gained a lot of grip over English with the help of my teachers and team members. With extensive academic reading, I have become more confident about my work. With the passage of time, I have increased my knowledge about the strategies that could be implemented when conducting a marketing research and understanding the consumer behavior. I have developed a sense of responsibility towards my work and have become more interested in completing my work before the deadlines. I have always taken care to avoid any misconduct by providing proper Harvard referencing system. In addition, the team work also was an achievement for me as I learnt a lot about different individuals and their perspective. This skill helped in improving my interpersonal skills as well as personal skill. It helped me to groom myself and to open myself in terms of sharing ideas. It also helped me to become positive, assertive and calm. CONCLUSION In this personal development plan, I have shared my experience and abilities that I developed with the passage of time. I started out with highlighting the self-analysis and critics, where I discussed regarding my strengths and weaknesses followed by an overview of strategic analysis. In the self-analysis, I have first mentioned my skills and abilities that include communication, group and teamwork, academic knowledge and research skills. My greatest weakness indicated by my teachers is still the English but I have taken many measures to improve my weakness. My major strength includes friendliness and positive attitude towards learning. In the strategic analysis, the need for further improvement of skills and abilities are discussed. The skills that need further improvement are personal and interpersonal skills along with the academic knowledge. Through the extensive feedback from my tutors, I was able to overcome my communication flaws and these feedbacks enhanced my confidence level to further improve my communication abilities. After the communication skills, I have discussed my teamwork skills and its importance in improving my understanding of the topic and effectiveness. Through this skill I have gained a lot of academic knowledge and understanding of my team members. I learned the importance of listening to others before taking any decisions. It has also helped me increasing my communication skill within the group as well as with others. Following this, I have discussed academic abilities. In this section I have provided an insight regarding how my assignments are done and the extent I am committed towards my studies. To avoid any misconduct I have always preferred Harvard referencing system and used direct quotes in quotation marks. Finally, I have written my overall personal reflection where once again I have highlighted my strengths and weaknesses along with the measures taken to eliminate the flaws and to enhance the strengths. References Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E, (2002). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Price, A. (2007). Human Resource Management in a Business Context, 3rd edition. London: Cengage. Salaman, G., Storey, J., and Billsberry, J. (2005). Strategic Human Resource Management: Theory and practice. London: Sage Publications Ltd. The Higher Education Academy (n.d.). Personal Development Planning. Available from http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/pdp/pdp [Accessed 22 December 2012] Appendix My Action Plan Action Resource When Becoming a more confident individual Participating in more activities Complete within 2 months Improving my communication skills Improving my level of English and becoming more proficient in speaking English Learning how to give better presentations Complete within 2 months Becoming a better team player Working with different group members on different projects Leering how to deal with group memberships and how to accomplish a project Complete within 3 months Improving my leadership skills Leering about different leadership skills and theories Complete within 4 months POINTS TABLE FOR SELF-PERCEPTION INVENTORY Question letters Section no. a b c d e f g h 1 0 3 2 0 1 2 0 0 2 1 1 2 2 1 0 1 0 3 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 4 1 2 1 1 0 0 2 1 5 0 0 3 2 1 1 0 1 6 2 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 7 1 1 2 2 0 0 2 0 SELF-PERCEPTION INVENTORY ANALYSIS SHEET Team roles Section no. IM CO SH PL RI ME TW CF 1 0 3 2 0 1 2 0 0 2 1 1 2 2 1 0 1 0 3 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 4 1 2 1 1 0 0 2 1 5 0 0 3 2 1 1 0 1 6 2 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 7 1 1 2 2 0 0 2 0 Totals 7 9 13 10 6 3 5 3 Read More