Aspects of Personal Development Plan - Essay Example

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN REPORT Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 3 SECTION I – PLAN FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 3 Self: Time Management 3 Group Working: Building Relationship 4 Academic Goal: Effective Oral and Written Presentations 4 SECTION II – PAROGRESS REVIEW 5 SECTION III – LONG TERM PLAN OF ACTION 7 CONCLUSION 8 REFERENCES 9 APPENDIX 10 Evidences 1 10 Evidence 2 10 Evidence 3 11 INTRODUCTION The report is a personal development plan (PDP) which shows an evaluation of the knowledge and skills that I currently posses. This report is also about developing the areas where I lack expertise. The personal development plan will cover three areas of development namely self goal, group working and academic goals. In the self goal, a particular area will be chosen which I will try to develop in the course of time. In the similar manner, I will be setting individual developmental goal in the academic and group working filed. SECTION I – PLAN FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Self: Time Management Time management is defined as the process of exercising, planning and controlling the amount of time spent on a particular activity (Forsyth, 2013; Roberts, 1998; Croft, 1996). Hence, time management facilitates the best use of time. Moreover, I believe time management is one of the essential criteria for a person to get success in life. Therefore, time management will be one of my objectives, towards self skill development plan. On the other hand the development plan in the context of group working is Group working and finally regarding academic goals, the self development plan is effective oral and written presentation. In order to develop my time management skill, I would like to pursue the following things: - Making List: - Effective time management requires proper schedule, hence I have decided to make a list of the activities that I will be performing (Latham, 2010; Harris, 2008). Alongside the activities, I will also allot time for each activity. Therefore one of the important resources in this context is the Gantt chart. Monitoring: - Apart from scheduling and allocating time for each activity, another important thing is to ensure that the activities are completed in the intended time frame. However, at times the activities may not complete within the given time frame. For this purpose, monitoring is important. Group Working: Building Relationship In my opinion, building relationship is one of the necessary activities to get success in life. In every aspect of our live, whether involving in any social activities, or building career path; interaction with different type of individuals is a necessity (L. C. Sobell and M. B. Sobell, 2011; Cragan, Wright and Kasch, 2008). Nevertheless, building relations with various individual also has large number of benefits for self development. One of the major benefits is that it helps to develop communication skills (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004). Therefore, building relationship is one of my objectives towards improving the group working skills. I would like to achieve this skill by the end of 2nd year. Moreover, I believe, in this current business environment, working under a group is extremely important. In order to build relations with different individual, I would like to take the following SMART approach: - Acknowledge group members point of view: - I believe that in order to create a strong relationship, it is important to listen to what others are saying. However, the most important thing is to acknowledge their thoughts. This will help me to create a concrete relationship with the group members. Honesty and Loyalty: - Honesty and loyalty are the two most important criteria for maintaining a relationship. Therefore, in order to ensure I maintain a cordial relationship with group member, I will remain honest and loyal. Academic Goal: Effective Oral and Written Presentations Effective oral and written presentations only develop the communication skills but also help to develop self confidence. Apart from that, I believe that having effective oral and written presentation skills will allow me to increase my leadership skills as well (Whetten and Cameron, 2010; Whetten and Cameron, 2011). Hence, I would like to develop my oral and written presentation skills as a part of academic goal. I would like to acquire these skills by the end of 1st year. In order to achieve the same I will be performing the following activities. In order to improve the oral presentation skills, the most important thing is that I have to confident during the time of presentation. Furthermore, to strengthen oral and written presentation skills, I will be undergoing some specialized training course. I will also consider studying newspapers and magazines on a regular basis. This will allow me to get in-depth idea about presentation techniques. SECTION II – PAROGRESS REVIEW In the first section, I have highlighted the areas where I need to make developments. The areas pointed out by me were time management for self development, building relationship for group working and for academic development I have selected to improve my oral and written presentation skills. I have also stated the approached or the steps I will be taking towards achieving those goals. Time management was one of my three objectives and to increase my time management skills I was mainly dependent upon proper scheduling of the activities. Time management is referred to as the effective management of time, so that proper time is allotted to each activity. Some of the major benefits of effective time management are effective planning, proper setting of goals and objectives, setting deadlines, delegation of responsibilities, prioritizing activities as per their significance, spending right time on the right activity. Moreover, effective management of time allows people to assign particular time slots as per the importance of the activities. I have made use of Gantt charts to schedule the activities. Gantt chart is a tool by which activities are scheduled (Taylor, 2007; Pyron, 2004). It has helped me a lot in the entire process of attaining time management skills. I would like to share one of my experiences of the recent past through which I will illustrate how I have developed time management skills. Previously, I used to get late for almost every event and I was also criticized for the same. After I started working towards effective time management, the scenario changed completely as I become more punctual with time. Initially, in order to ensure I perform all the duties on time, I used to take help of a Gantt chant. Moreover, it also acted as a monitoring and tracking tool for me. With the course of time, I became habituated towards proper utilization of time and automatically I started to complete each activity on time. The second objective was building relationship with the individuals in order to ensure my group working capabilities increases. In order to do so I have had two simple approaches. One was to remain loyal with the individuals I interact and other one was staying honest. I always believed that honesty will allow me to remain true to myself as well to the individuals with whom I mostly interact. Apart from that, in this course of time I have always tried to acknowledge the point of views of the individuals. This approach has paid off to a large extent as I have been able to maintain a cordial relationship with the people I interacted. I would also like to shed light on how my coordinating nature has helped me to build relationship. I have always tried to coordinate with the others whenever I have any issues related to my work. This nature has allowed me to get in touch with various people. I would like to provide an example, which will clearly illustrate how I have developed my group working capabilities. The incident occurred during the last month when I was undergoing a training course for self development. In the midst of the course, I observed that I have been able to develop group working skills. The scenario became clearer when we were given a group assignment. I had a doubt that in group assignments there can be conflicts among the team members and can negative impact the final output. In addition, I also had a doubt about the extent to which I will be comfortable working in a group. However, all my negative thoughts disappeared as soon as I started to work with the other group members. Respecting each other is the most important factor to ensure a group runs properly. The most important thing was that, I was much more active in the group than any other member and for this reason; the trainers of the institution praised me and eventually made me the group leader. One of the trainers stated me that my group working skills have developed greatly, if compared with the time when I joined the institution. Hence, like this way I was able to develop my group working skills. Although, the skills pertaining to group workings have developed to a large existent, I still believe that there is a scope of further development. The third objective of my personal development plan was related to the development of oral and written presentation skills. In this context, I thought that it is important to do a certified course on self development so as to enhance my communication and presentation skills. I also considered studying newspapers and magazines on a regular basis. This approach has allowed me to learn how contents need to be presented so that the audience gets a clear idea of the area of study. Apart from that, the study of newspapers and magazines also allowed me to get more idea about the style of writing. This approach has paid off to a great extent as I have been able to develop my oral and presentations skills greatly. This can be best described with the example of a recent presentation seminar occurred at our university campus. In this seminar, I made a presentation on the topic importance of environmental preservation and presented it in front of at least 100 audiences. After the presentation was over, I got a standing ovation from the attendants and my professors also praised me. Apart from that, I also felt, my confidence has grown and I hardly felt nervous while I was in the middle of presentation. In order to keep a track of my progress, I have used a tracker for myself through which I have measured the extent to which, I have been able to develop my skills. However, I believe with this approach and continuous monitoring, I have been able to full my objective to a large extent. SECTION III – LONG TERM PLAN OF ACTION I have also set some long term goals for myself. The long term goals are presented in a tabular form below along with the time period required for its completion. Long Term Goals Time Line How to Achieve 1. To learn specialized courses related to computers 1 Year Admission to Computer training Centres 2. To increase analytical skills 1 Year Learning analytical tools 3. To develop leadership and Managerial Skills. 2 Year Effective Listening, critical thinking and trying to lead group assignments properly. The present business environment has become very much demanding and thus every individual has to develop certain skills for competing in the market. In the similar manner, the professional world is also characterized by immense competition. Hence in order to survive in the professional field, there is a need of improving certain skills. Some of the skills which I mentioned above are learning specialized computer application, developing analytical skills and developing leadership skills. Computer skills are essential because these days there is hardly any job which do not require computer operation. Also I believe that developing analytical skills will provide me with more opportunities and can open up new avenues for my future. Finally, regarding the development of leadership skills, I feel without leadership skills, it is hard to become a manager. Therefore, considering my future career, I intended to develop or learn the aforementioned factors. CONCLUSION The study was about choosing personal development plans for me and how I succeed to fulfil those objectives. In this context, my aim was to develop my group working skills, oral and presentation skills and improve time management. In order to fulfil these objectives, I have pursued several things such as newspaper reading, making schedule etc. Even, I have also taken specialized training to develop these skills. After accomplishing all these activities, I can conclude that I have succeeded to fulfil my objectives to a great extent. REFERENCES Buchanan, D. A., and Huczynski, A. A., 2004. Organizational Behaviour: An Introductory Text. 5th ed. London: Prentice Hall. Cragan, J. F., Wright, D. W., and Kasch, C. R., 2008. Communication in Small Groups: Theory, Process, Skills. 7th ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Croft, C., 1996. Time Management. Connecticut: Cengage Learning EMEA. Forsyth, P., 2013. Successful Time Management. 3rd ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Harris, J., 2008. Time Management 100 Success Secrets: The 100 Most Asked Questions on Skills, Tips, Training, Tools and Techniques for Effective Time Management. Raleigh: Lulu.com. Latham, C. D., 2010. Time Management: The Busy Persons Guide To Planning A Well-Organized Schedule: Organize Your Office, Organize Your Home And Organize Your Life With These Effective Time Management Tips To Help You Plan Your Time Efficiently Even With A Very Tight And Bu. KMSPublishing.com. Pyron, T., 2004. Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Project 2003. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Que Publishing. Roberts, J., 1998. Time Management. Surrey: Crimson Publishing. Sobell, L. C., and Sobell, M. B., 2011. Group Therapy for Substance Use Disorders: A Motivational Cognitive-Behavioural Approach. New York: Guilford Press. Taylor, J., 2007. Project Scheduling and Cost Control: Planning, Monitoring and Controlling the Baseline. Plantation: J. Ross Publishing. Whetten, D. A., and Cameron, K. S., 2010. Developing Management Skills. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc. Whetten, D. A., and Cameron, K. S., 2011. Developing Management Skills. London: Prentice Hall. APPENDIX Evidences 1 Topic: Oral Presentation Subject: How the Professors praised me. English Professor: - “The Quality of your presentation was excellent”. Personality Development Trainer: - “The benefits of orientation classes and your hard work clearly reflected in your presentation”. Computer Professor: - “Great Work, Keep it up!” Evidence 2 Topic: Building Relationship Subject: How I have remained Cordial and friendly with colleagues Colleague 1: -“He is a good person and is extremely helpful”. Colleague 2: - “Whenever I was at a loss, he pulled me up and gave confidence”. Colleague 3: - “One day, I was not feeling well and he completed his work and then completed mine, this is a clear reflection of his supporting and friendly nature”. Evidence 3 Topic: Time Management Subject: How I became punctual Friend: - “He never used to on time at the venue, but suddenly he has changed a lot in the last two three months. He comes in time and leaves in time”. Relative: - “He was extremely lazy and never performed his duty on time, but he is now punctual.” Professor: - “Unimaginable transformation! He even used to get late for exams, but now he comes before everyone arrives”. Read More