Development - Personal Statement Example

Personal Development [Muhammad Uzair Rasheed] of Introduction I come from an Arab background with my basiceducation completed in Abu-Dhabi. Our part of the world is growing at rapid pace, not only there has been a tremendous amount of growth in real estate and other businesses, special emphasis has been put on education as well. Education friendly environment prompted a lot of international universities to open their campuses in the Arab world. Times are changing and there is now a growing trend in younger generation to undertake international standard courses at these universities. Besides great education quality standards, what prompted me to travel to UK for higher studies was my urge of living in a multi-cultural society. Opportunities for study and growth in professional careers are available to all living in the UK. I hope to have an evaluation of myself in context of personal and professional development. I need to have understanding of what positives I have in me that will help me in achieving my goals and what negatives I have that need to be fixed in order to be successful in my personal and professional life. Although personal and professional development plans are important at every phase of life but this is the most important time for me to evaluate myself and develop personal and professional development plan. I served in Abu-Dhabi police for more than 4 years and my experience of working there was so great that I have opted this profession as my career path. My aim is to join the police force after I graduate with the degree of police officer in 2011. Personal Evaluation: It is a difficult task to evaluate one’s self without being biased about it, however I will try to evaluate myself by listing down my strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: I feel that one of my key strengths is decision making, it is used throughout life because one has to make smaller or bigger decision during the course of life. It’s very common that before making an important decision, there are clouds of confusion all around. I experienced it making decision of higher studies in the UK. It was a tough decision, as majority of my friends and my relatives were pursuing their higher studies in Abu-Dhabi. I compared all the pros and cons of this situation did a fair bit of risk assessment and finally I was quite sure in my mind that I have made the right choice in the given circumstances. If I look at my career path and my motivation of becoming a Police Office, I feel that this strength of decision-making will help me a lot in my career development and growth. Another key strength I found about myself during self-assessment is of quick learning and adaptability. This strength helped me when I left my native country and came to UK. Learning variety of courses from Law and Management to Engineering analysis in a competitive environment like here was a challenging task. What made my learning task more challenging was the new environment factor that i had to live in. My ability of quick learning and adaptability to new environment helped me getting in-sync with the overall system here. I feel its going to be huge plus for me in the professional arena as well because while working, you are put to task many times and this is often a differentiation factor between two employees. Adaptability to change is also a precious gift in ones personality because it allows you settle down and accept the change. It is worth mentioning that change is inevitable in life and those who are quick to adapt become successful. Another important strength that I found out about myself during evaluation is good observation skill. This skill has helped me a lot in quick learning and adaptability. I go for a walk or do exercise daily and I recently found out that exercising helps you unblock you observation skills (Neal 2006) Weaknesses: If finding out about ones strengths is difficult then evaluating ones self with respect to weaknesses is probably the hardest job in the world! After evaluation, i found about that I am NOT a good listener. This characteristic of not listening well may have come as a by-product of expressing myself too much at times. After evaluating my personality, i feel that it comes from having the insecurity that I may not have made myself clear enough for other people and I try too much to make sure. I learned now about its implications and how important it is to listen others well. It is very important to give feedback and also receive feedback for improving work, rather other people at work should be encouraged to speak and give feedback. Also, in all the interpersonal skills, listening is the most important so I am putting emphasis on improving this skill by sufficiently allowing and paying attention to the speaker, being attentive of key words used in discussion, summarizing to collect whatever information has been communicated. I feel about myself that I may not have sufficient qualities to be a good leader. I have been able to make good and precise decision about my personal life but may not have sufficient confidence to lead. I have been a bit of a shy person and not that social kind of person in my life. However given the confidence now that any person can do anything in life, I look forward to work on it and change it into an opportunity. Practicing Theories Learned: Course has been of great help in understanding the work environment and improving performance there. I learned about importance of developing a complete portfolio and keeping it up to date at all times. It is definitely not a one-time job and portfolio needs to be updated for progress made at regular intervals of time. I have learned that maintaining content quality in portfolio is very important. Quality in content shows seriousness of the applicant, I learned about highlighting key areas in my portfolio keeping in mind my professional development plan. A virtue of getting education in a multi-cultural society like UK, I have observed and learned the importance of being true professional rather than being centric to my personal values and beliefs. I am not denying the fact that one should not be practicing whatever values or beliefs one has. These values are important in individual capacity because they are part of our upbringing and experiences in life. I learned that it’s very important to have a worldview of life and things around us. Our view of life is dependant upon what we learn during our childhood and how we perceive the world when we are learning through various stages of life I have learned about developing the personal skills and how important they are in our professional lives. Almost all job advertisements I saw, they have a mention of ‘strong Interpersonal skills’ for the idea candidate. I learned about various factors involved in communication and its not merely ‘talking’ that matters the most. Through studies, I came to know about importance of Listening part and it has a highest part (about 45%) in all communications that are done. Listening skill is equally important in personal development just like it is important in professional development. Importance of listening in communication is often well illustrated when we analyze our listening skills with those closest to us. (Staiano 2006) As I mentioned above that I learned through evaluation how I couldn’t focus on listening part in my life, I am learning now that it is an active process and it needs to be learned because our responses are dependant upon how good we perceive things. People often envy those who are gifted with the art of talking however it doesn’t mean that good talkers are good communicators (Zancanaro 2005) Based on the knowledge gained, I am now working on verbal and non-verbal aspects of communication and how I can improve them. Non-verbal parts are very important and can be very easily forgotten, I learned that it’s very important to keep eye contact with the speaker, should focus on speaker and shouldn’t interrupt. (Dicks 2004) Another amazing thing I learned about that we should also pay attention to our perception i.e how others perceive us. It would be very helpful and such a gift if we are able to see our self from other people’s eyes. Effective Planning: In order to be successful both personally and professionally, it’s important to keep focus on the big picture, i.e. there should be personal and professional goals and proper planning about how to achieve them. Goals in life should be specific, no vague terms or larger than life statements. Very often we see that people set professional goals as “achieve career success” or simply “be a successful professional in my field”. Intentions are definitely good from the person but goals are not definite to be followed (Scivicque 2007) Goals should be measurable and achievable as well so at any point in time they could be reviewed. Setting un-achievable goals cause de-motivation and frustration over period of time. Realistic goals help in keeping a check and confidence through the career path and keep boosting. Planning for achieving goals and short-term targets is important; it should be time bound and flexible at the same time to get desired output. I have learned about goal and target setting and I am applying it in both short term and long terms scenarios of my life. Very often in life and especially in our professional lives we come across list of priorities that need to be done simultaneously. Such situation is most likely to end in chaos and nothing seems to work at the end. I have come across such situations quite often and it left me into nothing but just frustration. I have learned know that all priorities cannot be done at the same time and there is always a way around to define and schedule priorities. When in a professional life you feel there is “too much to do”, you should review list of priorities. Focus should be on work-life balance and priorities should be planned according to their urgency and importance attributes. (Wetmore 2009) Conclusion After studying the course, I really feel that personal and profession development planning is very important in one’s life. It gives a sense of direction and during the course of life it keeps a check on our goals as well. It’s very easy to get excited and think about future in a fanatic way but its really important not to lose focus and plan personal and professional life with clear goal in mind that is achievable, definite, measurable and specific. While working, we often lost work-life balance in order to excel in our careers. It has to be understood that a balanced life boosts a career in a long way. Priorities need to be handled well in order to lead a balance and happy personal & professional life. REFERENCES Neal, Elsa (2006), Unblock by Exercising Your Observation Skills, Retrieved March27, 2010 from ‘HearWriteNow’ website http://hearwritenow.com/articles/motivation/observation/ Staiano, M. (2006, June 1). The Importance Of Listening In Communication. Retrieved March 27, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-­Importance-­Of-­Listening-­In-­Communication&id=210731 Zancanaro, G. (2005, January 16). The Importance of Listening Skills for Self Improvement and Success. Retrieved March 28, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-­Importance-­of-­Listening-­Skills-­for-­Self-­Improvement-­and-­Success&id=9733 Dicks, Sheila (2004, December 02) Top 7 ways to improve your listening skills. Retrieved March 28,2010, from http://top7business.com/?id=779 Scivicque, Christine (2007, September 14) Professional Goal Setting Retrieved March 28, 2010 from http://personaldevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/professional_goal_setting Wetmore, Don (2009) Managing Multiple Priorities Retrieved March28, 2010 from http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol35/priorities.htm Read More