Personal Development Plan - Essay Example

? Personal Development Plan Table of Contents Introduction 3 Personal Development Plan (PDP) 3 Reasons for engaging Personal Development Plan 3 Examples showing the benefits of Personal Development Plan 4 My Current Situation 4 My Goals 5 Personal Goal: Time Management 5 Personal Goal: Improving Oral and Written Presentation 6 Professional Goal 7 Short-term Goals 7 Long Term Goals 8 Review of the Goals 8 Conclusion 10 Reference list 11 Appendices 12 Appendix 1: Skill Auditing using SWOT Analysis 12 Appendix 2: Gantt chart 13 Introduction The graduation degree will provide new learning and experiencing opportunities to students like us where the teachers and professors will share their knowledge with us which would help us in fulfilling our future goals, both long term and short term. This report does not only discuss the analysis of my personal skills only, but it also covers the personal learning, which will be guiding me throughout my career. According to research scholars like Cope (2005), Politis (2005), Dollinger (2008) and Pandey and Tewary (2011), personal learning reflect the auditing skill helps an individual in understanding his/her personal strength as well as weaknesses. I think that their opinion is agreeable as personal learning reflection is always helpful for students who want to be future entrepreneur as well as students wishing to be in a remarkable position in a reputed organization in future. Personal Development Plan (PDP) PDP is a structured process often undertaken by the individuals for reflecting their learning, skills, performance and achievement in order to plan for their educational, personal and career development. In other words, it is a procedure that is undertaken by the learners for defining and exploring their goals and map out various ways for turning them into reality. It will help in articulating the skills which we develop now for opening up various opportunities in the future. Reasons for engaging Personal Development Plan According to the students, PDP gives us the opportunities to make prospective plans for our future. The PDP helps us in planning our university life in an efficient manner by guiding us to start thinking about the personal development and how far can it be taken. It is of great use as it helps us to analyse the strengths and skills and also assess the points where we should improve. Examples showing the benefits of Personal Development Plan PDP helps in assessing own activities. Suppose I do not have time for any extracurricular activities after completing my work and family responsibilities, at that point of time analysing my own strengths and skills by juggling the family life and the studies helps in assessing my future commitment towards the organization, time management capability and adaptability of all the important skills. My Current Situation This portion of the report will show an assessment of my skills, displaying my personal as well as professional skills. This portion will reflect a SWOT analysis of my skills representing my strengths and weaknesses based on which the future opportunities and threats of achieving the goals are dependant. Before presenting a SWOT analysis of the present skills, one must know the exact definition of skills. Skills are personal traits within any individual which helps in thinking about things which he/she can do rather than thinking about activities he/she cannot do. The personal skill audit has helped me in my personal skill management as well as personal development planning. After performing my skill audit, I found that my main strength areas are that I am hard working, punctual and can do anything for achieving my desired goals. Moreover, I possess leadership skills and management ability, which will help me in becoming a successful entrepreneur in future. Moreover, I believe in team-spirit. According to me, building relationship is one of the most important activities for achieving success at any point of time in life. In each and every aspect of our lives, be it involving myself in any social activities or creating career path, involvement and interaction with various individuals is a necessary activity (L. C. Sobell and M. B. Sobell, 2011; Cragan, Wright and Kasch, 2008). It also helps in developing good communication skills. These strengths will provide opportunities to achieve success as an entrepreneur in my long term goal setting. My hard working nature will increase my acceptance capability to accept any unfavourable condition and work even better to change those unfavourable conditions into favourable ones. My weaknesses are lack of oral and written presentation skills and lack of knowledge in quantitative aptitudes. This would increase barriers in work life. After doing the SWOT analysis, it was clear that I possess leadership capability and prefer learning and gathering more experience. On the basis of these findings I decided to take part in various learning activities and increase my skills in role playing, giving presentations etc. Participation in the management programs in the University will help in developing skills although there is no guarantee that all the skills will be utilised in the professional field. There might be various cases where the learning experience would not be given importance in the professional field. But in spite of this fact the performance of skill auditing is important at regular intervals as it would ensure a sustainable flow of personal learning experiences. The time management skill will be helpful in managing the progress of the learning experiencing along with the strengthening of the existing skills. My Goals Personal Goal: Time Management Time management is the procedure of exercise, planning and control of the total amount of time that is spent on some activity (Forsyth, 2013; Roberts, 1998). Time management provides direction for the best utilisation of time to give best output of the activity which is being performed at that time. According to me, time management is one of the necessary steps that are required by an individual working in an organization or an entrepreneur for starting his own business. Time management is one of my objectives in the personal skill development planning. It involves the following steps: Making list: Management of time in an effective manner needs proper scheduling of all the activities. I have planned to make one list for all the activities where I will be allotting a specific time for every individual activity. This will require preparation of one Gantt chart. Monitoring: After scheduling of all the activities and allocation of specific time for each activity, another important task is to ensure that all the planned activities get completed within the specific time period, as decided in the Gantt chart. Sometimes due to mismanagement of the time factor the set of activities do not complete within the decided time frame. It is due to this reason that monitoring of the time management procedure becomes very important. Personal Goal: Improving Oral and Written Presentation Effective oral or written presentations not only help in developing the communication skills but at the same time help in building and strengthening the self confidence. I strongly believe that polishing my skills in making oral and written presentation will help in increasing the leadership skills (Whetten and Cameron, 2011). It is due to this reason that I would like to increase my oral and writing presentation skills as an important part of the professional goal planning. I would try to acquire the above mentioned skills within next two years by participating in various presentation programs. For acquiring such skills I would perform the following set of activities: For improving my presentation skills, it is very important that I look confident while giving the presentation. For this I need to increase my speaking ability. Moreover, for strengthening my oral as well as written presentations I have decided to take special training courses so that it increases my self confidence. I would read magazines and newspapers daily for getting an in depth knowledge about all the important presentation techniques. I would collect all the important current affairs happening all around the world and make presentations ready (both oral and written) to improve the quality of the presentation. Professional Goal My professional Goal is similar to my long term goal where I have planned to secure a management job in a reputed company followed by opening own firm in future course of time. Short-term Goals My short term goal is to complete my Graduation securing good marks. Short term goals are very important to seek opportunities from the current favourable situations. I have planned to perform following activities for achieving my short term goal: Attending classes regularly to follow the professor’s lectures attentively. Collecting regular class notes and preparing all the important assignments in time. Preparing myself for the semester examinations very seriously in order to secure good marks in every semester. Long Term Goals Long term goals are set by an individual keeping in mind that they will be achieved in longer span of time. I have set some of the long term goals for myself as well. The long term goals are securing a good management job and then opening own business in future course of time. For achieving the long term goals I have planned for different ways of achieving these goals which include: Effective listening capability, critically thinking and decision making capability along with ability and the leadership skill to lead a group. Effective time management capability and ability to influence the subordinates or followers. Review of the Goals I have already stated that time management skill is very important for achieving success in any activity that is being performed. The advantages associated with time management are effective planning process, proper setting of the objectives and goals, delegation of all the responsibilities, prioritizing all the activities to be performed according to their level of significance or importance. Effective time management helps us to assign a particular time slot to a set of activity based on its level of importance. I have used Gantt chart for scheduling the activities in a proper manner. Gantt chart is an important chart used for scheduling a set of activities (Pyron, 2004; Taylor, 2007). Utilisation of this tool has helped me to a great extent in the effective time management process. I have set my personal goal as improvement of oral and written presentation skills for increasing leadership skill. I realised that it would be great if I do a certified course for strengthening these skills. Moreover, I felt that reading newspapers and magazines on a daily basis will add to it. I have also decided to prepare presentations related to all the important current affairs taking place all around the world. This would increase the quality of content of the presentations in future. This approach will allow me to learn how the contents should be presented to reveal their importance and increase their attractiveness in front of the targeted audience. Reading newspapers and magazines have also helped me in improving my writing quality. I have already started practising all the above mentioned steps for achieving my personal goals. I had a presentation some days ago on one of the most important topic presently i.e. economic recession. I can feel that I have improved to a great extent both in speaking as well as the content writing. Practising the above mentioned steps has increased my confidence. My short term goals are to secure good marks and complete my graduation. My long term goal is to seek a management job in a reputed company followed by opening a business in the future. For achieving both long term and short term goals I have planned for a number of activities that should be performed in a systematic manner. Attending regular classes, preparing assignments daily, preparing for the examinations very seriously will help in achieving the short term goals. The long term goals will be achieved by Effective listening capability, critically thinking and decision making capability along with ability and the leadership skill to lead a group. For maintaining a track on the progress of my personal, professional, short term and long term goals I have maintained a tracer where I update my progress towards the achievement of my goals. I also note the teacher’s remarks in that tracker to keep a note on the fact that whether the progress is in the positive direction or not. Conclusion The report was related to personal development planning in order to achieve the targeted personal, professional, short term and long term goals. In this context my goals were gaining time management skills, oral and written presentation skills, securing good marks and completing my graduation and finally getting a good management job in a reputed firm followed by opening own business in future. I have decided to perform a number of activities for achieving these goals. Proper management of time will help in achieving the goals within the desired time period. Reference list Cope, J., 2005. Toward a dynamic learning perspective of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 29(4), pp. 373-398. Cragan, J. F., Wright, D. W., and Kasch, C. R., 2008. Communication in small groups: Theory, process, skills. 7th ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Dollinger, M. J., 2008. Entrepreneurship: Strategic resources. 4th ed. Lombard, IL: Marsh Publications. Forsyth, P., 2013. Successful time management. 3rd ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Pandey, J. and Tewary, N. B., 2011. Locus of control and achievement values of entrepreneurs. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 52(2), pp. 107-111. Politis, D., 2005. The process of entrepreneurial learning: A conceptual framework. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 29(4), pp. 399-424. 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., 2011. Developing management skills. London: Prentice Hall. Appendices Appendix 1: Skill Auditing using SWOT Analysis SWOT Analysis Leadership skills * Quantitative research Management ability * Lack of oral and written skills Group Working Time management Good opportunities As mangers in job sector * Fear of development of barriers in the professional world Appendix 2: Gantt chart Activity/Timeline Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8 Month 9 Month 10 Month 11 Month 12 Time scheduling                         Monitoring of the progress in planned activities                         Seeking Time Management Skills                         Group Working Practises                         Oral and written presentation Skill development                         Strengthening Presentation skills                         Magazines and Newspaper study                         Implementing the acquired skills into real world practice                         Read More