Professional Development Plan Evaluation - Term Paper Example

? Professional Development Plan Raquel D. Moura Saint Leo MBA 525 Personal or professional development plan is a good opportunityand even a systematic way of making everything that people would want to happen in their future career a great possibility. In this paper, the proponent was able to present her professional development plan stating the areas that need development; her personal mission and vision statements; her strengths and weaknesses; her assessment of current professional circumstances; any relevant theory for professional development; ideal job, position or career goal; assistance and support from someone; resources and support needed for her to achieve her goals; someone who has achieved goals like her; and support from mentor. It was found that in a personal development plan, people will be able to evaluate one’s own strengths and weaknesses in order to maximize what is substantially good and even turn negative things into positive. All of these activities are in line with maximizing the achievement of future success by equipping a person to be equipped in everything prior to the achievement of goals. Keywords: Professional development plan, career, goal, mission, vision. Introduction It is important that for me to succeed in my career, a person like me should have a broad range of skills pertaining to management and leadership. I should therefore be guided to the exact area which eventually will lead me to the right path and direction of my career. It is therefore a matter of priority which of the things I have to place a high standard of weight and value based on my current role and situation. In this essay, I was able to develop my professional development plan stating the areas that need development; my personal mission and vision statements; my strengths and weaknesses; my assessment of current professional circumstances; any relevant theory for professional development; ideal job, position or career goal; assistance and support from someone; resources and support needed for me to achieve my goals; someone who has achieved goals like mine; and support from mentor. These are all integral components of this entire professional development plan. Personal Vision and mission statements My mission statement is to stay where I have started while maintaining a positive relationship with family and friends. I will keep peace within myself, creating stability inside and out to guide me through my dreams and desires, to pursue knowledge, and balance within all of my obligations. I also will content myself in my surroundings and always know where security lies within my life. I will build a reputation of being dedicated to every goal that I will choose to pursue while having successes in both my personal and professional life. I also promised to myself to enjoy every moment along this journey, finding laughter, love, and happiness with each day that passes by. I intend to use my main five core values: achievement, honesty, responsibility, loyalty and growth in every aspect of my life. These values have helped me conquered goals toward my dreams. Many things happened when I moved to the United States. I have learned other culture, language, traveled the world, joined the Navy, divorced and finished my Bachelor’s degree. In my personal vision statement I see myself currently pursuing my MBA with a possibility to enjoy the Navy as a Reserve Supply Officer or even to further my education with a Ph.D. in International Global Consulting with Regent University. I believe that I will be able to guide people and organizations in their endeavors with this education. I will be able to serve as “a recognized expert, teach leaders with deep expertise and find solutions to complicated situations” (Global Consultant, 2012). I will be able to change people’s mind and make a difference in their lives. Who knows where I can go from here and what I can achieve? It is certain that the sky is the limit for me after I obtained my goals. I also believe that we are able to achieve anything that we want. Of course adversity will always exist, but life would not be fun if we do not have some challenges to face and overcome. I have become a small business owner, but I am not limiting myself to it. I have a silly ambition to open my own store at the mall and to launch my own designed clothing line of products, because I see myself as a very successful, diverse and skilled person. I believe that a person should have options to help them to get what they want, through their own abilities, instead of using other people to achieve those goals. My hope and desire, for the next 10 years is to have a very strong and stable financial capability and a family, which will be proofs that my plans have become reality due to my personal core values, mission and vision statement. My core values are connected with each other, in a manner that has been presented in every single step that I have taken. Honesty, loyalty and responsibility are essential in order to have the success that I have desired. I am aiming for growth in all areas of my life. My interest on personal development is rooted in this value too. I am fascinated to creativity which is associated with fulfilling any significant potential in me. In my mission and vision statement I will always go look forward to what I want, no matter if it comes sooner or later. Personal values After reading the assessment I have identified five ‘end values’ that are most likely connected with me: a comfortable life, a sense of accomplishment, family security, mature love and wisdom. I have also found among the ‘instrumental values’; broad-mindedness, courage, forgiveness, honesty and loyalty to be very important in meeting my needs. When I think about those values, I consider the instrumental values as the ones that we inherited from our parents. When I analyzed the assessment, I noticed that it mentions “mature value is a personal end value and equality is a social end value” (Benfari, 1999). When I ranked the end values, I have chosen ‘comfortable life’ first and compared it with a social value. When we achieve this level in life; I believe that the following values: ‘family security’, ‘ sense of accomplishment’, ‘mature love’ and ‘wisdom’ will be fundamental, not only in the end value but also in the social aspect. A successful career; for example, will bring those values together, because they will have the same connotation. In my case, I am still working toward these goals. Currently, I am MBA student and entrepreneur. In the future, I plan to pursue a career with the Navy Reserve as Supply Officer. On the other hand, the instrumental values will emphasize the ‘morality and competence’ (Benfari, 1999). The values selected by me will be focused more in the morality aspect of those qualities then in the competence aspect of it. In my point of view, those 5 values are describing my own personality and the influence that moral values imparted by my family through my entire years of growing up. It is certain that an individual can choose between loyalty and dishonesty in order to achieve goals. However, I have chosen to be a broad-minded person, because in my whole life, I have set my mind and goals to be closed to the values such as courage, forgiveness, honesty and loyalty. I have learned that a broad-minded person is able to have courage and forgiveness in their heart to do what needs to be done in order to achieve goals. At the end, all those values have defined me as a person and helped me to pursue achieving success in life. My strengths and weaknesses There are many things one has to learn from experiences in life. With my very own experiences, I was able to recognize my own strengths and weaknesses. Understanding them will actually pave the way for an individual to become better in anything he or she will choose to do. Positive skills or abilities will eventually lead to the achievement of goals. On the other hand, knowing the negative areas in life would be an opportunity for improvement. This simply means that an individual who knows about one’s self can actually recognize strengths and weaknesses. The good thing about it is the ability to overcome weaknesses and even maximize strengths. I have taken the Animal Leadership Test, a quadrant behavioral model designed by Dr. William Moulton, which is designed to examine the preferences and styles of my behavior in an environment or specific situation based on DISC (directing, influencing, steady, cautious) assessment (Marston, 1999). After taking the test, I found I was high on D’s (directing), or a Lion. As high in directing in a situation or within the environment, my basic motivations are results and challenges. All my desires for specific situation will allow me to have freedom, authority, varied activities, difficult assignments, and opportunity for advancements. I also respond best to others who provide direct answers, stick to business, stress logic, provide pressure, and allow freedom for personal accomplishment. In this assessment, I also have to learn that I need people, relaxation or time for myself, controls and restrictions, everyone has a boss, and a verbalization why I reached a conclusion. The said test potentially enables me to understand further what are the remarkable strengths and weaknesses that I have. In line with the above result of my Animal Leadership Test, one of my greatest strengths that I have is the ability to become very persistent. As a very goal oriented person, I make it a routine to jot down and prioritize things based on their importance. A paper and a small board clipped to my refrigerator are what I have for this purpose. In there, one may be able to find my short and long term goals. This eventually helps me organize and accomplish things and meet important deadlines. I realize I have been doing the very principle of Kotter’s eight steps in change management. 1. Establish a sense of urgency 2. Form a powerful guiding coalition 3. Create a compelling vision and strategies 4. Communicate the vision and strategies 5. Empower others to act on the vision 6. Plan for and create opportunities for early success (short-term wins) 7. Consolidate improvements and sustain momentum 8. Institutionalize new approaches/ make the changes stick Of the above steps, it is step number six that I have done my best part with as I always plan ahead and look forward to finding solutions. I learned many things from my mother. She told me that people who are well prepared are the ones who always have ABCs in their plans. In real-life situation, there are obstacles and changes. Therefore, it is not just enough to be confined to only one single solution, but from time to time, a flexible plan should always contain varying options in it. I should be able to learn from this because of my real-life actual experience. I made right and wrong choices in life, but what matters is the point of learning many things from them. I consider myself a strong person. I was raised in a good family background, with more of my life values obtained from my mother. Eventually when she died in 1993, I learned to live alone and decided things on my own. I ended up with a broken marriage, and was not successful with my relationship before. I believe this is just the consequence of my choices in the past. However, what is the most important for me in my experience is learning the values in life that my mother imbued to me. I moved to another plan, and that is why I ended up joining the Navy in 2004, and now going back to school to earn a degree in MBA program. Another important strength a person may be able to find from me is my patience. This is due to the fact that I came from an environment where there are many adversities so the virtue that was substantially developed within me is to learn to wait, leading me to understand today when and where to act the right way. I also have good people skills based on my learning team as a personal strength. I always have encounter with people everyday may it be from work or at school. So I essentially developed speaking and listening skills especially on imparting inputs with my team members. With this, they can always count on me since I could be a good team player who could at least provide them with opinions and other relevant things. Considering that everyone has different personalities, conflict may be always a possibility, but having good people skills will ensure warding off from it within a team. I may be good at doing what I want to do because of my strengths. However, this does not potentially ensure achieving growth and development to the fullest. On the other hand, I also have weaknesses to deal with in order to correct and improve them so as to ensure growth and development on my part. Personally, I lack perfectionism. Although I like to keep everything organized, but I spend a lot of time in doing so. I maybe good at organizing other people’s things, my boyfriend’s for instance, but that was just becoming excellent personal assistant. There are still many things I have to deal with myself to move on the line of perfection especially on the issue of management. I feel always having the lack of time in addressing things to be done. I feel I have not prioritize things after all since I keep on wishing to have more time to do the things I intend to do. I also have find difficulty in my presentation skills, especially on the organization part of it. It is the first step to identify one’s personal strengths and weaknesses. Doing so will eventually allow that person to make an effort to improve weaknesses and learn from every situation, may it be in career or personal life. As for me, understanding my weaknesses in particular is an opportunity for me to turn them into an opportunity or strength. So here is my action plan on how to overcome and improve my personal weaknesses and turn them into strengths in the first place. I have to admit that I should come up with the initiative to delegate tasks without further supervision. Works should be categorize accordingly, whether from home, work or school, all it takes is to improve my scheduling activity and placing appropriate time for each. With regards to my presentation skills, I need to keep on learning things especially in presenting to a familiar group and having the confidence in what I am handing over to them. Turning weaknesses into strengths is not an easy task, but there is no impossible about it when there is always a drive and perfect motivation in doing so. This will eventually open many doors for both of my professional and personal life, my motivational factors to look forward to. Assessment of your current professional circumstances Unemployed, I relied only on my small eBay Store, Latina Brazil which I have started after I left the Navy in August 2010. It has all the latest styles of female shoes, clothes and bags. This store is a bit slow for now, since I still have been busy with school. I was a full time student with Saint Leo University in Virginia Beach, but now am taking classes in the Little Creek Base and Tidewater Community College since September 2010 in an attempt to finish my Bachelor in Business Administration with major in Management by beginning of 2012. I started MBA program in March 5th. Meanwhile, I was applying for jobs, and have made some interviews that really were not for what I really want. All I want is to have my own business. Working career for other companies is also important, but at the end of the day you are making money and killing yourself for someone else’s wealth. Although as of now due to financial constraint, I would love to work for a big company. I sent my resume to them. I have even considered the possibility of going back to Brazil; the economy has got much better there now. Fortunately, there is a great job opportunity there for those who have bachelor’s and master‘s degree and even speaks English well,. A good salary waits for those people who have these qualifications. On May 29th, I will start my internship with Nordstrom Store in the Macarthur Mall in Norfolk. The opportunity seems promising since this company offer management opportunities to employees. I will give my shot on that. Meanwhile I, will always keep my mind and eyes to any another probable opportunities. I am also taking Spanish, Dutch and Chinese classes online. I have figured out that I need to have more skills in different important languages to help me professionally. Clearly, I have many options to choose from, but what is so good about my case is my capacity to make myself productive wherever I will set my best foot forward. The relevance of at least one theory or concept discussed in class to your professional development Emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be acquired (Goleman, 2011). This means that since it can be acquired it can be an effective component in my professional development. With emotional intelligence, a person is in a habit of using emotional information from other people and themselves, which can be integrated in the daily activity of feeling, thinking and so on (Sparrow & Knight, 2009). In my leadership animal test, it is one of my concerns to highly improve my connection with other people and definitely in engaging myself with them, I always have to ensure that the application of feeling and thinking would be always applied. In this case, I would be able to appreciate the fact that I am dealing with humans who in one way or another have essential emotions as integral parts of their innermost beings. Discipline for career success Discipline for career success is a must. There must be an underlying principle that an individual should follow especially towards self in order to ensure success. Self-management for instance is necessary in my part as an essential activity that requires discipline (IDEA Health & Fitness Association, 2006). Before I could manage other people and even my own business, I should be able to first manage my self by virtue of discipline. This is essential because successful people in their respective fields have employed specific disciplines prior to the achievement of their success. Why it is necessary for you to prepare for change and development In my case, the reason why it is necessary to prepare for change and development is to be “ready for and successful with” my personal and professional career in the future. To become a business owner, knowledge and means are important to be acquired to lead me to the point where I want to be. Working with a company is a good primary step for my objective. In fact, I am about to start my internship with Nordstrom store. This will allow me to learn the business process involved in a retail store. Correspondingly, my experience with eBay is another good opportunity how I could integrate the modern process in the business of retailing. When I am ready, and after learning the market I want to be part with, a good decision will eventually be initiated on the kind of store or brand I want to pursue. Your ideal job, position or career goal As stated earlier, my ideal job is in line with the business in retailing, so for now it is good to apply for companies which specifically are offering this kind of job. I do not want to stay long in a company, but just want only to acquire learning because my definite plan is to actually institute my own retailing business. As of now, just prior to the achievement of this objective, my first step is to acquire relevant certification for me to become more qualified and highly reliable and credible in my chosen field. Thus, acquiring a certification on my MBA degree is a must. O Duties and responsibilities It is my duty to achieve my planned success. It is not other’s duty but mine. So if it is a need to work for 70 hours in a week, then I have to do it for as long as it is an integral component of my duties regarding the achievement of my personal and professional objectives. Furthermore, it is also my responsibility to keep my business in the level that I have already planned. o Location As the familiar adage puts it “strike while the iron is hot” in the same way I could say that I must go wherever there is a promising opportunity that waits for me. This requires sufficient flexibility to move just to look for that opportunity. Thus, if opportunity is in Brazil, then moving back to my hometown is not an issue, but just again a part of my responsibility in achieving my goals. o Are you currently qualified or prepared? As of now, I am not yet fully prepared but still on the process of preparing myself. In the first place, I still have to achieve better qualifications in order for me to move to the next level. In order for me to help prepare, I am counting on my MBA and outside source with SBA, the chamber of commerce that has potential to help me in whole preparation process. o What do you need to do in order to become qualified or prepared? Now, I still have to study hard and apply for a job. o Why is this your ideal position or career goal? Once again, to own a business is my ideal career path. I simply choose this because I already have a specific foundation and it is really my own desire to become the boss of my own company in the future. As of now, I am preparing for this. I want to get a job. I am going to have a meeting in the Chamber of Commerce in Hampton Roads this coming week to learn more about grants, loans, and to know how to make an acceptable business plan. Even though I have learned in my Marketing Class with saint Leo University, I need further assistance to build on this plan. How is this position or career goal consistent with your: ? Values I want to become independent, be my own boss, set my own schedule but still follow rules, and be the right example to my future kids as I am planning to become a mother next year after my MBA ? Mission and vision I just simply want to be secured in my life in the future. This is the reason why I need to come up the career path and the ladder of success I desire for myself. ? Personal life I just simply want to be successful in the future, while having my own babies. I dream to own a big home and later would like to invest in some real estate in Brazil. Whose assistance or support will you need to achieve this goal? Of course to achieve my goals, I want to commit everything to God above all to ensure success. I also rely on my boyfriend for any kind of assistance and support that may be associated with my goals. I also have to believe in myself because next to God, it is my own self that I could next trust with. I also want to apply for grants, loans from SBA and study on how to effectively create a business plan. What resources or support will you need to achieve this goal? I think for now, the SBA and veterans are the two sources of support that I could employ in order to achieve my goals. Do you know anyone who has already achieved this goal? I have a friend in Brazil, who owns 20 salon stores in Rio de Janeiro, who thought me that when you want something, you have to act on it. He believes that even if a person’s mission or vision would sound silly for others that would not matter if people would just act on something they have in mind. A great possibility of achieving the impossibility would take place after all. Have you identified a person who is or who might become a mentor in your achievement of this goal? Why have you selected this person as a mentor? My boyfriend is a lawyer; he is my strength and my mentor. I have changed a lot. Even though I was weak before I met him, now I have gained more remarkable strength. Actually, he has a lot knowledge and mind-set goals. He will open his own law firm in 2014. He already has a business plan for it, grants and a partner. He was the one who inspired me to have my own business too. Conclusion Planning is not just an effective strategy to ensure achievement of goals from the outside environment especially in an organization. Based on my experience, a plan has a significant impact on the achievement of personal objectives as well. In the case of professional and personal development plan, recognizing one’s mission, visions, goals and values is an important activity in order to guide the an individual into the right path that he or she would want to take. Furthermore, in a personal development plan, people will be able to evaluate one’s own strengths and weaknesses in order to maximize what is substantially good and even turn negative things into positive. All of these activities are in line with maximizing the achievement of future success by equipping a person to be equipped in everything prior to the achievement of goals. Reference Goleman, D. (2011). Working With Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group. Global Consulting (2012). Grow your business with Global. Retrieved March 23, 2012, from http://www.global-cn.com/articlelive. IDEA Health & Fitness. (2006). Successful Career Development for the Fitness Professional. San Diego, CA: IDEA Health & Fitness Association. Marston, W. M. (1999). Emotions of Normal People (Vols. 1-204). London: Routledge. Robert C. Benfari, Understanding and Changing Your Management Style. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 178-183. Sparrow, T., and Knight, A. (2009). Applied Emotional Intelligence: The Importance of Attitudes in Developing Emotional Intelligence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Read More