A Reflection on Personal and Professional Development - Essay Example

A Reflection on Personal and Professional Development Introduction This is a reflection of my personal and professional development. This reflection reveals how I have developed over the period of learning. I have gained numerous skills from the speakers who have visited during the learning period and through the organisational visits. These skills will be very helpful to my future career. Personal and professional development refers to a set of activities that an individual engages in for enhancing their self-knowledge and identity. Through the personal and professional development (PPD) program, ones talent and potential are developed, their human capacity, as well as employability, also is built. Also, one’s quality of life is also improved and finally, an individual realises their aspirations and dreams. Personal Development Plan In the initial stages of this programme, I realised that I had poor listening skills. Good listening skills are essential to personal development. With poor listening skills, one does not understand what others are talking about, and most often one misses important points. The problem that accompanies poor listening is that one is never able to provide sufficient solutions to a myriad problems that one encounters. After realising that I had a problem in this area, I challenged myself and made a serious effort to start listening better. Through good listening skills, I started communicating and understanding others much better. Consequently, I have been able to grasp what various speakers have been teaching. I have also been able to build rapport with my fellow students within both the group and the entire college. Self-Awareness and Understanding Self-awareness is one of the factors that I have realised is fundamental for better communication and understanding. Widening my self-awareness has helped me to discover new truths about others. It has been the foundation of good rapport with my fellow group members as well as instructors. The self-awareness has been heavily researched. Awareness was conceived as being dichotomous such that an individual could be focused outward towards the environment, or inward towards the self (Duval and Wicklund, 1972). Both the outward focus and the inward focus are within the circle of the self. I consider the things that were within my circle of self-awareness at the beginning to be things that I could consciously comprehend. From that point, my circle of self-awareness expanded, and it still continues to expand. Duval and Wicklund (1972) viewed self-awareness to be composed of four discrete stages occurring in the following order: self-focused attention, self-evaluation on a salient dimension, affective reaction (positive or negative), and motivation to reduce the discrepancy. I became consciously aware of a greater portion of myself. The borders of my self-awareness have also widened to areas of future discovery and development. I consider my personal and professional development to have started at the point where I became self-aware. I have come to learn my views concerning everything that happened during the programme and to my personal life are hugely determining my today and my future. I have become more honest with myself about myself. The capacity of self-awareness is essential for a better future (Laery and Buttermore, 2003). Developing my self-awareness has been a critical thing because it has increased my understanding of self, others, and experiences that I am going through now as well as in future. Without such an understanding, I would not have learned how to understand my other colleagues in the group. Through self-awareness, I have also been able to discover the areas where I can flourish, and the areas that I cannot. Through collaboration, I came to understand different cultures in China, and this enabled us to set up our group based mutual understanding. Such an understanding cannot be possible without grasping one’s self-awareness. Self-awareness helped every member of the group to identify him or herself better and also to establish which task is more suitable for each and every member in the group. I learned to listen to other people. Listening has helped me throughout the programme to grow and improve my relationship with others within the group, and these listening skills can be applied even outside the group. Listening and sharing are vital aspects in both personal and professional development. At times, I am obliged to talk and do only a little listening. At other times, I am obliged to listen and only do a little talking. I have can successfully make a better judgment when it comes to balancing these aspects. Through understanding one another, we were able to proceed with in-depth research of the selected firm (Nike). However, I came to understand that people will only share and contribute to a certain cause if they feel that their cultural background is respected. I have learned that I should respect other people’s cultural backgrounds in my future profession. Cambie and Ooi (2009) argue that organisations should promote the study of other cultures not to satisfy intellectual curiosity but as their tool for personal and professional development. Through self-awareness, one also develops a top-of-mind awareness of other cultures. As we engaged each other within the group, different people from different cultural backgrounds were able to share their knowledge and experience. In the future profession, these skills can be very useful. If one becomes a manager in a company with employees of different cultural backgrounds, he/she will be able to encourage employees from different cultural backgrounds to share their knowledge and experiences. Such a manager “introduce processes that can convert this exchange into an integral component of the company’s decision-making” (Cambie and Ooi, 2009). In research, we found out that, Nike’s Chinese employees spend time with their counterparts from the United States. At Nike, diversity and inclusion are two factors that drive creativity and innovation around growth, especially in China (Dotlich, Cairo and Rhinesmith, 2009). Diversity training programs are crucial, especially in global firms such as Nike. Throughout the programme, trust was built. To achieve our research, we had to develop true empathy. True empathy means having other people believe that you can place yourself in their shoes and feel what they feel and use those feelings to develop responsive practices and policies (Dotlich et al., 2009). I learned that I learned that II should not impose my beliefs and structures on others if I expect trust to flourish. Despite being one of the emerging markets that will deliver the greatest business opportunity in coming years, China has very few board members in Fortune 500 companies. Therefore, it is important for the potential professional managers to develop their personal and professional skills to close this gap in future. This development starts by understanding the few group members to gain skills that can be expanded to dealing with large and diverse groups. In a company setting, one cannot have true strategic diversity unless he/she can understand the needs of various stakeholder groups (Dotlich et al., 2009). Time Management Among all the skills that an individual acquires during their learning, time management is of the utmost importance. For learners, time is a limited resource. Learning how to manage it effectively is very important. Differences among people in time management practices account for differences in how people achieve in their programs and projects. Time management is the most important determinant of a learner’s outcome at the end of learning period. Pehlivan (2013) argues that time is the only asset that cannot be changed or purchased or stored. Therefore, there is importance in learning to utilise time during the learning period. Educationists have realised this and they have put special emphasis on the issue of time management in the modern education system. In organisational setting, time management is also important. Pehlivan (2013) further observes that the secret of being successful in life is through effective management of time and paying sufficient emphasis to planning. Our group research was well planned. Meetings and activities were planned well and with consideration of the nature of activities that were supposed to be conducted. Such timely planning of activities has helped me to learn how to manage my personal time. Personal time management is about a persons ability to use their most valuable resource (Saxena, 2009). As every one of us in the group learned, lack of proper time management always causes last minute rushes to meet deadlines. Such an environment may lead to stress and degradation of performance. The group meetings and activities were well scheduled; deadlines were met. However, sometimes, activities had extended beyond allocated time to eliminate the panic of not completing a task in time. For example, the meeting on 28 November 2014 was extended for 30 minutes than it had been planned. During the same meeting, the subject company was changed due to the complexity in researching about it. Such issues revealed the importance of time management. The basic idea is that the management of personal deadlines is achieved with exactly the same techniques that will be used in large projects in future employment. Before this research project, I never used to have the capacity to manage my time well. After an engagement with the group members, I have been able to perfect my time management skills. Group Development A group refers to people working together cooperatively to accomplish established group goals and objectives (Masters and Wallace, 2011). For example, our group of four members (Meiyi Wu, Yihao Yang, Yang Yang, Natalie Mok) was working together to conduct research on a specific firm. One of the main characteristics of individuals working together is interaction, communication, and work group interdependence (Bauer and Jenny, 2013). Interpersonal influence exists in a group, and it is an important aspect through which intervention effects can be transmitted and maintained. In the social learning theory, learning depends on some variables which includes an individual’s self-efficacy. Bauer and Jenny (2013) argue that self-efficacy beliefs are strongly linked to an individual’s engagement in a certain group. Therefore, an individual can benefit greatly from group engagement. As Gunn 92007) argues, a person is bale to negotiate meanings through group engagements. Organisational Visit From the group activities, I acquired good research skills and very strong written communication skills. I was capable of organising and implementing key events for my programme area. I was also able to keep several activities allocated to me moving simultaneously. However, I still need to gain more confidence at presenting and public speaking. I have benefited greatly from the visiting speakers and organisational visits. Our group visited the Sage Gateshead, which hosts a wide range of internationally famous artists. Through these artists, I have learnt the art of presentation and public speaking and I only need to perfect it so that it can help me in my professional field. The Sage Gateshead is one of the best music venues in the United Kingdom (Kane, 2011). One of the issues that the Sage Gateshead focuses on is sustainability. Sustainability is one of the factors that organisations are using to gain a competitive advantage. The Sage Gateshead recycles all the materials that they can. They recycle cardboard, plastics, cans and papers. This is one of the lessons that our group learned about today’s organisation – sustainability is an important aspect is a business. There were other lessons that we learned from Stephen Little, the manager of Sage Gateshead. The manager said that it is important to get the right staff and get the right balance between in-house staff and contracted staff. He further added that, if an organisation contracts everything out, it loses the ownership of the situation. Finally, the manager added that it is important to have younger people in a group always to be ready in cases of succession. As a future manager, I consider my strengths as strong communication skills, leading by example, taking charge comfortably, and fair and open-minded. The other group members tell me that I am good in these skills. However, I also need to strengthen my capabilities by developing my interpersonal skills to get the best from my staff. My idea of personal development includes activities such as improving my self-awareness, developing my areas of strengths, enhancing my potential, and fulfilling my aspirations. The idea of professional development involves activities such as project planning and time management. The project planning tells an individual how much time is needed and the time management tells an individual how much time is available (Saxena, 2009). References Bauer, G. and Jenny, G. 2013. Salutogenic organizations and change: The concepts behind organizational health intervention research. London: Springer Science & Business Media. Cambie, S. and Ooi, Y. 2009. International Communications Strategy: Developments in Cross-Cultural Communication, PR and Social Media. London: Kogan Page Dotlich, D. Cairo, P. and Rhinesmith, S. 2009. Leading in Times of Crisis: Navigating Through Complexity, Diversity and Uncertainty to Save your Business. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons. Duval, S. and Wicklund, R. 1972. A theory of objective self awareness. New York: Academic Press. Gunn, V. 2007. Approaches to Small Group Learning and Teaching. University of Glasgow. Kane, G. 2011. The Green Executive: Corporate Leadership in a Low Carbon Economy. Oxon: Routledge. Leary, M. and Buttermore, N. 2003. The evolution of the human self: tracing the natural history of self-awareness. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 33, pp. 365-404 Masters, A. and Wallace, H. 2011. Personal Development for Life and Work. Mason: Cengage Learning. Pehlivan, A. 2013. The Effect of the Time Management Skills of Students Taking a Financial Accounting Course on their Course Grades and Grade Point Averages. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(5), pp. 196. Saxena, P. 2009. Management in Organisations: A System and Human Resources Approach. Delhi: Global India Publications. Read More