Personal Development Plan - Assignment Example

Personal Development Plan BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.............................................................................................................. 2. Team-working development needs......................................................................... 3. Emotional intelligence development needs............................................................. 4. Global awareness development needs..................................................................... 5. Conclusion.................................................................................................................. Personal Development Plan 1. Introduction The personal development plan is intended to describe a set of skills that have been developed throughout the course of the academic year that will assist in improving employability and workplace competencies. The report identifies how specific developmental needs were identified, how new goals had been established, and the action plan that assisted in improving an identified skills gap. The report is designed to determine whether goals had been successfully achieved and the specific learning that occurred as a result of following an implementation plan. 2. Team-working development needs I have always been a very independent person who prefers to work autonomously in nearly all aspects of academics and professional life. However, with the advent of internal business auditing and external auditing consultants that continuously monitor business function and adherence to accepted accounting standards, I realised that team-working was a very strong deficiency at the personal level. Auditing systems designed to measure compliance require collaboration between accounting professionals, management and a variety of external servicepersons which prevents autonomous working. Diagnostically, I discovered through secondary research literature that many companies do not rotate their auditing teams, which builds familiarity with business professionals throughout the organisation and familiarises auditing servicepersons sustaining years of tenure with business operations, accounting procedures relevant for the business, and social relationship development.1 This will require frequent interaction, communication and collaboration with a variety of business professionals that will expect contribution to discussion and mutual respect. This tends to conflict with my traditional need to work in segregation from others in the organisation. Developing my cooperative abilities, therefore, was established as my SMART goal since it is going to be a realistic part of the accounting environment when entering the workplace. I determined that the most appropriate goal was to ensure that I gained experience working with others by purposely engaging myself with team activities both in-school and in terms of extracurricular activities. I decided that I would begin attending study sessions and attempt working collaboratively with individuals at the Student Union in order to prepare myself for partnered study and building a sense of inter-dependency with diverse individuals maintaining unique viewpoints. This was the most practical and viable methodology of learning teamwork, socialisation skills and relationship development within a two month period. The action plan was to engage students in areas of study to gain practical skills in negotiation and academic intervention. I was able to build important trust with students I was unfamiliar with, which is a critical dimension in building team-working skills when working with diverse professionals in the workplace.2 Upon reflection, I not only learned how to work collaboratively with different individuals, but to develop reliance on the skills and opinion of others that assisted in my own decision-making. As a person who is used to working autonomously, I believe that engaging others under the premise of study was appropriate for the professional environment that made me more qualified in inter-dependent working and building trusting relationships absolutely critical in a professional context. 3. Emotional intelligence development needs I have always been a self-sufficient and resilient individual who has not been prone to emotional outbursts in the face of high pressure situations or stressful life scenarios. I have, historically, found myself growing frustrated with those who are sensitive and unable to cope effectively with difficult situations in the academic world, in lifestyle and even social situations. I have never held much empathy for individuals who have poor coping skills and have wondered why individuals cannot manage more effectively without restraining their emotional capacities. This has complicated my relationships in the academic environment and in previous workplaces. It has made me an ineffective leader in the past and even managed to annoy and frustrate those that have much heavier reliance on their emotional states to handle difficult situations. I have always recognised this as a personal weakness, but contemporary literature on leadership and its importance in many different workplaces managed to open my eyes to the notion that I needed significant development of the emotional states of others to build trust and relationships in dynamic workplaces. Diagnostically, I learned through the results of a primary research study that effective leaders require emotional intelligence, especially as it pertains to recognising and maintaining awareness of the emotional state and needs of others. One cannot be an effective leader without these important traits if they expect to achieve followership and dedication. As a result of this renewed awareness of my deficiencies in areas of emotional intelligence, I set a SMART goal of building a higher sense of empathy toward others. I felt that this goal could be measurable by the change in social reactions that occurred as a result of drawing on more emotional responses to see if followership occurred as a result of work on my empathic and sympathetic abilities. An opportunity arose in which a community organisation was seeking volunteers to assist in helping skill-challenged (uneducated) adults gain important employability skills. This experience occurred over a two week period and I immediately decided it would be an excellent opportunity to build these important skills. The action plan was to remain dedicated to the volunteerism program that would allow me an opportunity to engage those who were frustrated with their current un-employability situation. Immediately during the program, I was struck by the lack of coping skills and emotional restraint that many individuals exhibited. Unfortunately, within one week of volunteering, I was forced to quit the program as I could not tolerate or find empathy for those who continuously chastised themselves, emotionally, for failing to understand rather simplistic skills development concepts and activities necessary for quality employment. Upon reflection, I realised that I lacked the inherent capacity to find empathy for those who cannot cope appropriately with very simple life and career scenarios. As a result, I will have to work further on examining the appropriate literature offering tips on building empathy and emotional intelligence if I hope to become an effective leader upon graduation. I am inherently a very resilient individual able to ignore my emotional responses to make practical judgments. I learned that I might not be a qualified candidate for leadership in the workplace until I have had more time to explore methodologies for improving emotional intelligence, however this is strongly based on my inherent personality traits. 4. Global awareness development needs Companies that understand cultural differences and are able to build cohesive teams are considered more attractive to investors.3 These types of firms are considered to be very high prestige. As a future accounting and finance professional, I will likely be working in organisations with very diverse cultural differences in the employee and management population. Diagnostically, much research literature has shown that cultural characteristics are absolutely critical dimensions to effective team development and effective leadership. This recognition made me realise that my skills in cross-cultural competency were quite low which could impact my leader abilities and capacity to work within a team dynamic. Therefore, I set a SMART goal of learning about different cultures using Geert Hofstede’s work as a guide. I set a goal to explore secondary and primary data available in journals and books that would familiarise me with different global cultures and their social, professional and lifestyle preferences over a period of three weeks. I established an action plan of exploring available literature and then creating a testing template for myself to measure my learning comprehension and understandings. After three weeks of study, I took the test and scored very highly in my understanding of different global cultures, illustrating that my ability to work cooperatively with different cultures was improving substantially. I followed my action plan to the letter and achieved a great deal of absorption about foreign cultural characteristics. I found out much more than I anticipated originally about the implications of culture on business functioning and efficiency in a variety of different perspectives that gives a company competitive advantage through cultural understandings. Upon reflection, I found that my knowledge base regarding foreign cultures was growing enormously which equipped me with the fundamental understanding that could improve team performance and even leadership when working with very different, diverse individuals sharing unique cultural characteristics from my own. For instance, I learned that many Asians are collectivist and find group membership to be important over individual loyalties. I also learned that Western cultures value cooperation in the workplace, which is also aligned with most European business values. I believe through this experience I am much more equipped with the underpinning knowledge of global cultures that can assist in developing better HR-related strategies, team-working strategies, and building social connections that are so important in today’s business world. 5. Conclusion My most imperative skills requiring development were team-working, emotional intelligence and global awareness. Through development of these skills, I will be more employable and better equipped to work in the accounting field. All three skills are highly desirable and crucial in dynamic working environments. By developing these competencies, I will have better personal growth and maturity that is a vital part of finance and accounting professionalism. Read More