Personal Development Plan for Pragmatist

Introduction: This study report covering various aspects of personal and professional development of the professional student, who is going to practise all the skills and abilities in the real business world at very next step when student completes professional degree course. This report aims to fulfil the requirement the student to be professional in reality presenting the views of student on the basis of research using books, lecture notes understanding and online study material from various websites. It helps a student how to run the cycle of continuous personal and professional improvement and development to compete the globalisation. It suggest the personal development plan using time logs and carry out certain regular exercise to monitor the progress like filling questionnaire, maintain task diary and records, seeking feedback using 360 degree assessment. Professional and personal development support the body of a career and profession progression like a backbone, enabling the person to stand and touch and maintain the highest position in their working area. It can only ensured by continuous learning and observation process. Learning and observation process makes aware the person about his values, abilities, skills, attitude, learning style and hidden talents and how to use it for excellent performance. Professional and personal development and learning process starts with identifying the personality, position and learning style of the person. I would like to presents the views that how a student can be effective leader or manager acquiring professional skills namely time management, meeting, presentation and stress management. Leader/Manager: Successful professional should be effective leader and effective manager to lead positively to grow the profession and goodwill by competing with global challenges. In every organisation, each level of the hierarchical structure have leaders and managers. Managers and leaders are distinct personality with ultimate goal is to achieve organisational goals. A leader and A manager can be identified as per Waston (1983) and Hollingsworth (1999) suggestions with four distinct styles: A leader is a person who emphasis the right way of work focusing on people, sharing goals with them using their skills, inspire them to innovate and develop new style and skill which supports to achieve own as well as organisational objectives. A manager concentrating on the subordinates, system and composition, administer and manage them by controlling them to achieve the strategic objectives set by the management of the organisation. A manager stress on doing the appropriate task by result oriented strategies and systems. The Autocratic Leader/Manager: He does not value the subordinates’ skills and opinions. He has centralised power to ascertain dilemma, makes decisions and tells it to subordinate to execute task. The Semi-Autocratic Leader/Manger: He is partially autocratic, but seek some reflection from the subordinates who are going to practices it and try to convince to follow his decisions. The Democratic Leader/Manager: He just identifies the problems and seeks suggestions and recommendations from the group and then decide the solution. The Laissey-Faire Leader/Manager: He identifies the problems and set boundary within which decision must be fall and pass it to the performing group and make the correct suitable decision being with them. Democratic and Laissey faire leadership style is preferred in this globalisation and dynamic business world. Professional Skills: Time Management: Time is a money once you spent it you will never get back so right job at right time yields better fruits. Evaluation: Ask following questions to yourself: Have you followed your prioritised to-do list? Have you meet the deadlines? What effects on the final result due to incomplete task? Have you got the full participation colleagues and subordinates as per the job assigned? Do you have any spare time for contingency and further planning? If most of the answers is no, then start finding the gaps and lacking to use time effectively. Gap finds because of not exercising following activities. Acquisition: Habit to prepare and analyse the workload and prioritize it daily and weekly by preparing to-do list categorising the task as must do, should do and would like to do. Therefore, flitting will be less. (appendix 1) Set the deadlines and stick to it to complete the task, which helps him to allocate enough time to other task and be stress free as the task finish along with the spare time to plan further or allocate it to any unfinished task or contingency. Identify the best time and do hard and important task within best time. Divide the job into small discrete part and delegate it to the suitable person with all the necessary guidance and information specifying the rewards. It will motivate the subordinates by participation and decrease the workload and stress level of delegator which saves his time and energy. Conduct meetings for monitoring the progress of work as and when necessary. Avoid procrastination and time wasters which ensures needed attention to the work. Do not spent long time for perfection of the job on the cost of other activities. Maintain proper records by backup and filling, which can be used as vital tool while planning next time. Understanding about the assigned job and take responsibility as per the calibre to complete it within deadlines. It helps him to manage stress and utilize time productively. Running successful Meetings: Evaluation: Ask following questions to yourself: Have you met the goals set? Has meeting was enjoyed by the members and equally participated to express their views? Did all the mentioned agenda discussed and come to the solution? Did the meeting follows the time allocation and rules like quorum? Did the minutes recorded properly? Did you have announced the next meeting date and when members get the former meeting details? If most of the answers is no, then start finding the gaps and lacking to run meeting effectively. Gap finds because of not exercising following activities: Acquisition: Set the purpose, time, date, right place with proper infrastructural and refreshment arrangements with meeting start and end time. Prepare agenda mentioning required items with next meeting date. (appendix 2) Inform members about the purpose and agenda of the meeting well in advance. Allot sufficient time to each agenda including hidden agenda and stick to it. Specify the chair person and ensure the opportunity to express opinions. Be sure about the technology and tools used in meeting Arrange minute recording and procedure to sent to the members of the meeting. Set the disciplinary rules to be followed by members during meeting. Ensure the chair person being unbiased and objective having ability to control and negotiate. This way manager can conduct fruitful meeting which enables the organisation to achieve the objectives. The fruitful meeting will increase the morale and productivity of members saves time and efforts by proper attention to each item. Effective Presentation: Evaluation: Ask following questions to yourself: Have you met the goals set? Did your audience enjoyed and gained knowledge presentation? Did it organised in terms of matter, tools used and time bound? Did your body language and communication style attract the audience? Have you allowed audience to participate? If most of the answers is no, then start finding the gaps and lacking to present attractively. Gap finds because of not exercising following activities: Acquisition: Set the time, date, place, topic of presentation. Identify the audience and its expectations Be prepared and rehearse, support the matter with authentic data Be sure about the tools and facilities required Have confident and friendly body language with smiley face Stick to time and spare time for Q/A from audience For effective presentation, nerve control is vital because it fails the presentation no matter how strong paperwork or other skills you have. Stress Management: Evaluation: Ask following questions to yourself: Have you facing any physical or habitual disorder? Is there any financial or family problem which adversely affect your performance? Are you facing problem to deal with technology and people? Have you adjusted yourself in this working environment? Are you aware about your ability, skills, role and responsibilities? If answer of first 3 question is yes, then identify stressors and try to accept it and be free from it by following ways: Acquisition: Prime necessity is to accept the stress problem Identify the stressors and take steps to reduce it and remove it. Have some refreshment activity like change task, eat food, listen music Some concrete steps which may take long time like redesign the task/role/work environment, encourage subordinate involvement, set flexible employee friendly policy, provide social support and share reward Undergo some psychological exercise as per expert opinion like workshops, seminars Conclusion: Each above mentioned skills are interconnected with each other like, proper time management reduce the stress, increase productivity, Participation of employees in meeting and presentation encourage them to take initiatives with high moral. Personal Skill Audit The further step is how I can apply professional skills discussed in previous section to be very profitable and easy going personality. The application can be done in better and accurate way by findings positive and negative points of his personal qualities and skills. Hence, personal skill audit comes into the picture of personal development. Personal skill audit refers to the findings about the personal skills. It can be done by identifying strengths and weaknesses of the person. For that, which learning style the person have must be identified. To identify the learning style of the person, there is some tools like questionnaire and learning surveys by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford(ARPT), David Kolb(VAK), Carl Jugg and Mybers Briggs(type E/I,S/N,T/F,J/P). The student has followed Learning Style Questionnaire by Peter and Alan(appendix 3), on the basis of that the student identified his learning style ‘Pragmatist’: Strengths: Eager to try out ideas, concepts Realistic, and practical, Likes experiments Strive to meet preset goals Works autonomously Go through available options and assess it Weakness: Task oriented, does not value people Impatient ant centralize power work without any precaution tendency to take over others’ task independent working style do not involve the people Pragmatist can develop by exercising the work where person is: Problem and chances to progress is attached with the job Show the practical techniques to do right thing at a time Take chance to try out theories in practice supported by feedback from expert Showing the experts and models to follow them Equipped with techniques and knowledge useful for job Offer opportunity for progression and experiments Focus on practical matters by suggestions, tips Pragmatist find difficulties to improve his skills, where Job is not related to identified important requirement or not any practical gain Learning is far from real practical issues just theoretical concepts without clear guidance People not getting any point just going round and round Political diplomatic personal bias barriers to put thing into practice No proper reward for outstanding performance Some findings helps me to be effective and role demanding personality like using people by delegating task can manage the time and stress fruitfully. Giving values to the people in organisation can ensure high moral and motivation to work. Forecast the possible results of experiments before acting and use if it is beneficial to the organisation and people who practices it. Autocratic way to manage the people is discouraging, so its better to be a democratic or a member of the performing group. Team approach helps me to overcome from impatient and self centric personality by working in team and respecting human values and ability. Once finds out the lacking and gaps , he can use detective skills to find the ways to fill it. And come up with best suitable method by evaluating each available options to him, as very keen to use techniques, apply it to job to make it easy, speedy and accurate and recognise the use of the advance resources applicable in job. Strive to meet the specified goals and act accordingly is the great strength which differentiate his personality. He learn from the trail and error by experimenting various concepts in practice. To delegate the job to subordinates, he shows his skills of persuading presentation of idea and conduct meeting to convince the subordinate to work on it to meet the targets. Like this way, interconnecting his strengths to overcome his weaknesses he can be prove himself as effective personality at work place or anywhere. Thus, I would like to focus on the team work approach, learn to delegate the task and value others being diversified personality. At the end, knowledgeable, team friendly, stress free, happy, open and flexible, initiative and motivating work approach gives ripe fruits to individual and the organisation. Personal Development Plan: As per the discussion in previous sections, now I am going ahead to develop the own personality development plan. Where learning style identified is key to design personal development plan with the professional skills required to gain from the global challenges. In today’s ever-changing world, to be an effective manager core skills namely effective time management, running successful meetings, making effective presentation and managing stress tactfully is prime necessity. As per the previous discussion, now I am well aware about my strengths and weaknesses as a pragmatist regarding the achievement of organisational and personal objectives to ensure continuous growth. For deep understanding about my learning style and personal traits, i would like to do SWOT analysis of my personal traits. SMART objectives will help me to use the SWOT beneficially in practice. Using SWOT analysis, I analyse my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the personal skills and traits considering four core competent skills discussed in first section. At the end, I present a personal development plan to use, which suggest the practical way to utilize the personal attributes profitably and draw attractive picture of my personality and organisation as a whole. In section two, I have already identified my strengths and weaknesses to put the things into practice and achieve desired result. Strengths and weaknesses are the own internal favourable and unfavourable points which helps the person to rise up. It can only improved by self observation and improvement. The analysis introduce my following strengths and weaknesses: Strengths: Practical and realistic way to solve the problems by evaluating all the possible alternatives Like to experiment different theories and ideas ascertained using detective skills Set the goals and work autonomously to act upon Weaknesses: Being self centric and impatient under values other people and their ability to perform better Strive to do other’s work without taking into account the personal feelings Work independently without seeking participation of others Not arrive at the possible results and like to experiment proves wrong Being a task oriented does not take care of personal feelings Opportunity and Threat are external forces influencing the personality positively as well as negatively. This has connection with internal forces like strengths and weaknesses of the person to attain personal and organisational objectives as well. As a result of this analysis, now, I know my following would be opportunities and threats: Opportunity: Chance to get and test knowledge in business world. Learn by experiments and arrive at the best suitable practical solution to make easy business complexity Less chance of work error as work independently, evaluating PESTAL factor Chance to use advanced technology in practice Chance to undertake other projects and explore gaps to use it profitable as I have time bound working style Drive all the forces to attain preset goals and emerge with distinct personality Less chance to fail in planning due to practical and realistic work practice considering all the available alternatives Threats: Be frustrate and nervous if goals are not attain within time frame due to impatient attribute. As working autonomously sometimes decisions or analysis may prove wrong Diversified market needs and expectation of global business world Emerging business complexity and customer awareness Now, after performing self appraisal, I have a feasible knowledge of my positive and negative points to be an effective administrator or an effective manager to face the global challenges and create my own value in the organisation and business market as well. At this stage, SMART will help me as powerful tool to overcome my weaknesses and turn them into positive force to touch the sky of business world. S-Specific: On the basis of the weaknesses, i arrived at the solution that although I have practical and realistic work approach, sometimes decisions proves wrong and cannot complete the task within time limit set. This can be improved by adapting team working style emphasising on co-ordination and co-operation with and of colleagues and subordinates in the organisation. Therefore, focus on work delegation and team work is necessary to work within deadlines and try to get optimum using all the available resources. M-Measurable: to delegate the job, it is necessary to design proper job description and draw the skills required to perform it by using various techniques like feedback of the colleagues, looking at other company. Set the system and ways to measure the performance of people and the system laid down to achieve the objectives. So, it ensures active participation with clear understanding of job and achievements. A-Achievable: To do the task within time frame the right job should be assigned to a right person,. For that, I have to value the other person’s ability to perform specific job and assigned him that job with required guidelines and data to perform productively. The meeting and effective presentation of the delegated job to each subordinates and colleagues is necessary to achieve the goals. So here comes the presentation and meeting skills to convey the idea and communicate regarding the role they have to play to drive towards the achievements of objectives. So, here I have to concentrate on my interpersonal skills and getting co-operation and co-ordination with colleagues and subordinates to perform time bound duties. R-Relevant: It should be take care that subordinate have no ambiguity relating to his roles and targets to be met as a team member and organisational goals. Therefore, all the efforts must be towards the achievement of organisational objectives. The roles and targets can be communicate by way of successful meeting and effective presentation by the manager. As it saves time, efforts, money of people and organisation as well. T-Time Defined: If all the things are right doing in right way by the right person, it is also necessary that it should be complete within time defined. Because time is money, and to be successful it should be utilize effectively by allocating sufficient time to each an every activity as per its importance to do. Evidence of Monitoring and Feedback: As per the outcome of the SWOT and SMART, I have to follow the diary and records of the subordinates and colleagues achievements and skills to perform better. Other necessary thing is to is maintain and analyse time log until I follow the proper time schedule as prepared. Periodic performance review by 360 degree assessment which aware me about my improvements and necessity to improve. With all this, unbiased regular self assessment using SWOT helps me to ride the cycle of continuous development. Likewise, I can get measurable, achievable, relevant time bound active participation of the specific subordinates. I am following time log daily as well as weekly when i was explained in class lecture and now at the end of this 9th week I found that I am very much nearer to follow the time schedule set weekly. And I followed daily time log and I achieved time frame in working day not in weekends and I am trying to achieve it. I am taking feedback at workplace using 360 degree assessment when I finished one project and before starting new project and from my family members that how I am successful to meet their expectations. Without such monitoring and feedback one cannot have a clear idea about his improvement and progress. This is the vital axes of the progress chart of personal skill development. Review and Conclusion: At the end of the personal development process, I noticed that above discussed matter draw the conclusion that time management, stress management, running meetings and presentations are supportive pillars of the building effective personality and achieve personal and organisational goals. This is the basic necessity of today’s global dynamic business market and learned customers. This report reveals the successful professional career as an effective manger can be ensured by aligning personal objectives with organisation’s objectives. Reference: Pedler Mike, Burgoyne John and Boydell Tom,(2001), A Manger’s Guide to Self Development, 4th edition, McGraw-Hill,ISBN-0-07-709830-7 www. decs. sa. gov. au(Accessed on 27/10/2009) www. nwlink. com (Accessed on 27/10/2009) Appendix 1 Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire This questionnaire is designed to find out your preferred learning style(s). Over the years you have probably developed learning â€Å"habits† that help you benefit more from some experiences than from others. Since you are probably unaware of this, this questionnaire will help you pinpoint your learning preferences so that you are in a better position to select learning experiences that suit your style and having a greater understanding of those that suit the style of others. There is no time limit to this questionnaire. It will probably take you 10-15 minutes. The accuracy of the results depends on how honest you can be. There are no right or wrong answers. If you agree more than you disagree with a statement put a tick by it. If you disagree more than you agree put a cross by it. Be sure to mark each item with either a tick or cross. Scoring And Interpreting The Learning Styles Questionnaire The Questionnaire is scored by awarding one point for each ticked item. There are no points for crossed items. Simply indicate on the lists below which items were ticked by circling the appropriate question number. TOTALS *Activist Reflector * Theorist Pragmatist Learning Styles Questionnaire Profile Based on General Norms for 1302 People Learning Styles – General Descriptions Activists Activists involve themselves fully and without bias in new experiences. They enjoy the here and now and are happy to be dominated by immediate experiences. They are open-minded, not skeptical, and this tends to make them enthusiastic about anything new. Their philosophy is: â€Å"I'll try anything once†. They tend to act first and consider the consequences afterwards. Their days are filled with activity. They tackle problems by brainstorming. As soon as the excitement from one activity has died down they are busy looking for the next. They tend to thrive on the challenge of new experiences but are bored with implementation and longer-term consolidation. They are gregarious people constantly involving themselves with others but in doing so; they seek to centre all activities on themselves. Reflectors 90997322447 Reflectors like to stand back to ponder experiences and observe them from many different perspectives. They collect data, both first hand and from others, and prefer to think about it thoroughly before coming to any conclusion. The thorough collection and analysis of data about experiences and events is what counts so they tend to postpone reaching definitive conclusions for as long as possible. Their philosophy is to be cautious. They are thoughtful people who like to consider all possible angles and implications before making a move. They prefer to take a back seat in meetings and discussions. They enjoy observing other people in action. They listen to others and get the drift of the discussion before making their own points. They tend to adopt a low profile and have a slightly distant, tolerant unruffled air about them. When they act it is part of a wide picture which includes the past as well as the present and others' observations as well as their own. Theorists Theorists adapt and integrate observations into complex but logically sound theories. They think problems through in a vertical, step-by-step logical way. They assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories. They tend to be perfectionists who won't rest easy until things are tidy and fit into a rational scheme. They like to analyse and synthesise. They are keen on basic assumptions, principles, theories models and systems thinking. Their philosophy prizes rationality and logic. â€Å"If it's logical it's good†. Questions they frequently ask are: â€Å"Does it make sense? â€Å"How does this fit with that? † â€Å"What are the basic assumptions? † They tend to be detached, analytical and dedicated to rational objectivity rather than anything subjective or ambiguous. Their approach to problems is consistently logical. This is their â€Å"mental set† and they rigidly reject anything that doesn't fit with it. They prefer to maximise certainty and feel uncomfortable with subjective judgments, lateral thinking and anything flippant. Pragmatists Pragmatists are keen on trying out ideas, theories and techniques to see if they work in practice. They positively search out new ideas and take the first opportunity to experiment with applications. They are the sorts of people who return from management courses brimming with new ideas that they want to try out in practice. They like to get on with things and act quickly and confidently on ideas that attract them. They tend to be impatient with ruminating and open-ended discussions. They are essentially practical, down to earth pile who like making practical decisions and solving problems. They respond to problems and opportunities â€Å"as a challenge†. Their philosophy is: â€Å"There is always a better way† and â€Å"if it works it's good†. In descending order of likelihood, the most common combinations are: 1st Reflector/Theorist 2†³d Theorist/ Pragmatist 3rd Reflector/Pragmatist 4th Activist/Pragmatist Appendix 2 Time Log {draw:frame} Activitists (Do) Immerse themselves fully in new experiences Enjoy here and now Open minded, enthusiastic, flexible Act first, consider consequences later Seek to centre activity around themselves http://www. archives. org. uk/careerdevelopment/continuingprofessionaldevelopment/professionaldevelopmentplan. html http://www. thegateway. org/browse/17801 http://www. excellencegateway. org. uk/page. aspx? o=152477