Report on the Personal Development Planning

37

Requirement

Write a Report on Personal Development Planning and explain the self-awareness and self reliance. Explain on the personal and professional grounds how a individual can analyze while planning the personal development plan.

Solution

Introduction

Personal development planning is a step that every individual must initiate to ensure effective self-awareness and self-reliance. The professional and personal grounds of an individual are analyzed while developing personal development planning. The process of personal development planning includes review and evaluation of the achievements. I have understood that from the PDP the review and re-setting of future objectives and plans, self-assessment of identify and the areas of strengths and weaknesses have been identified. It is important that the help of the third person can be taken for better evaluation lead to effective framing of personal development plan. As per the PDP I have realized that I am good at communication and analytical skills but I have also realized that I need to work on improving my listening skills (Macy, 2009). 
In my life first of all I want to be a responsible individual and a good human being. I have the aim of becoming a successful entrepreneur in future. I want to have a business of my own. To achieve the goals of my life I want to be competent in the business environment and to gather knowledge in the field and to become more skilful I need some practical experiences and capabilities of handling real life business resources. Hence I want to join one of the leading business organizations and to grow my talents and develop the required skills to get them matching and suitable for becoming an entrepreneur in future. 
I want to achieve the required educational qualification needed for the achievement of the long term objectives of my professional and personal life. I need to acquire every kind of education in business management that will help me in becoming successful in my ambition. I want to work on my weaknesses and within coming 6 months I hope I will be able to overcome the weaknesses I have. I need to improve my performances in every aspect of my professional and personal life. I need to be a good listener (myrkothum, 2013). 

Personal Development Plan as a tool for self-review

The personal development Plan is an important tool for the analysis of one’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It comes up with the findings of self-review and helps the individual to find the areas where he or she needs to be improved. In my case the PDP has served a significant role in identifying the required skills and talents and the areas where I am weaker and need to work on to improve. PDP is the structured plan which has helped me to understand myself through self- review. It has also assisted me in setting goals. I have been able to define the goals specifically in clear and measurable terms which have highlighted the areas which I want to achieve. PDP has shown me the steps of achieving the goals. I have been able to figure out the gaps in my skills and experiences. It has led me to prepare a sound action plan that can make me to fill the skill-gaps feasibly and enabled me to proceed towards my final goals. In setting future goals and recognition of the benefits that an individual can achieve while successfully fulfilling the goals. The growth and development of the individuals is dependent on the identification of the skills and weaknesses. Self-review is the most important aspect in anyone’s life. It is important that I must be able to understand.

Personal
After the usage of the PDP as a tool for self-review, I have been able to identify my ways of learning. I have observed that I often tend to lose concentration while listening and often speak out before my teacher has completed the speech. This has been a negative side of my personal learning that I need to work upon through enhancing my patience to listen fully to the speaker before I answer back (Institute of Financial Advisers, 2011).

Academic
The academic teachings in classroom and the course programme has helped me understand the key traits of a good employee in terms of the knowledge, skills and character he should possess. My ambition is to become an entrepreneur few years down the line and the course has offered valuable insights on the virtues and positive employability skills that I need to develop such as becoming a good listener rather than a good speaker at first and enhancing my knowledge on working with computer program such as MS Excel. I need to be much proficient in using MS Excel software as an entrepreneur as I will have to make all the calculations and keep all the data related to my business and the employees in excel spread sheets. Hence, this is an area of focus that I have identified where I need to enhance my skills and knowledge.

Career
As a part of the self-review I have identified that my key career skills are my sincerity, loyalty and perseverance behind my aims and objectives in career. I have determined through self-analysis that I need to work hard on my listening ability and tenacity that is extremely important in order to be successful as an entrepreneur as patience and good listening power is indispensable for an entrepreneur to ensure success in his profession (Wrench, 2014). In order to enhance my listening power I will consciously ask one of my peers to help me with this skill development. I will ask him to deliver a speech on any topic and I will try to retain the majority of his speech before I interfere or raise my question to him. In this way I expect to learn slowly on how to enhance my retention skills and then it will make be a better professional in the long run.

Indicators of success

An individual needs to be successful in his or her life both at the professional and personal fronts (Kent, 2017). I think that in order to be able to achieve my long-term desire of becoming an entrepreneur to start up a new business, I need to plan my success as per my priority. I can list those priorities as follows:

1. •    My first priority is completing my educational course successfully.

2. •    Next, I look to seek a job in an organization that will provide me with the practical experience and working there for few years to develop my experience and professional competence.

3. •    After that I will try to start up my own business as by that time I expect to have substantial knowledge and experience in the job market.

I have been inspired by my father who has always been my mentor in various aspects. I have learnt about the traits of a good person both in professional and personal domains by observing his sincerity, ethics and dedication behind his objectives. I resort to him very often for his knowledge and guidance on my education and for learning the ways to develop my skills to be a successful professional.

Personal insights

Academic skills I need further development:
Adequate knowledge on the management is very essential to be acquired. This knowledge can be obtained from the theoretical and practical education. In the course of learning internships are important where the touch of practical practices will be there. I have to be an effective learning. I have to know the principles of management and different theories that I can apply in my professional fields. To be an entrepreneur I need to gather knowledge about the entrepreneurship skills and talents. I must also possess practical knowledge. I have to learn the application of the academic knowledge and theories in practical fields. 

Career-related skills I need further development
I need to improvement my knowledge in communication, working in teams, capabilities of solving problems, leadership qualities, awareness on commercial grounds, negotiation and persuasion, organizing the resources, motivation, working under pressure, confidence and handling challenges. These areas are much vital for my career development and I have to improve these areas (Doyle, 2017). 

Importance of developing your academic and career oriented skills

The evaluation of the skills and competencies is an important task not only for the professional life and career building also for the personal life. The strengths if get identified the weaknesses can be fought back. The issues and problems that can be faced during the achievement of the mission and goals must get addressed. The skills are very important to be recognized. These aspects are taken care of by the personal development plan. The determination of the mission, vision and goals help an individual to remain focused in life. This focus is essential to remain motivated and finally to achieve the goals. The required strengths and skills for the achievement of the goals can be identified through self-analysis and self-awareness. Every person needs to develop personal development plan and so as to remain achieve the short and long term objectives of personal and professional life. Every individual needs to take care of the overall growth when they plan for their future. Every individual should be aware of his or her strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities that are there to be availed of. Self-review is needed for the identification and analysis of the strengths and weaknesses. I should know where I am good and where I am weak. I have analyzed my skills before preparing for Personal development plan and I have identified that my communication skills are excellent (Madden, 2016).

Important aspects of academic and career-oriented skills I need to consider to further develop myself to fit my career pathway
I have analyzed myself and have found that I am quite good at communication and analytical skills. These two elements are important for any individual to be successful in professional and personal life. I have the tenacity to learn from every situation of life. I believe that mistakes teach us lot in life. I am open to the views and opinions of others and I like to take decisions after I analyze the situations very well. I give value to sincerity, loyalty and dedications. I also possess ample analytical power. I can motivate others very well. I can accept challenges and try to overcome them on my own. I am polite by nature but not introvert. I can control my emotions and that makes me very popular among my close ones. I believe that communication is an important element that helps in eliminating the conflicts and can solve any difficult issue. I will initiate self-evaluation and will identify the ways of improving my skills to make myself competent for the professional and personal achievements. I have to work on my listening power and have to assure that I become a good listener. This will help me in achieving my goals. To achieve my academic and career-oriented skills I have to be good learner. I have to consider every aspect of my professional and personal life as a ground for learning and gaining knowledge. I would take my mistakes as a part of the learning. The required skills can be grown and developed from practical and theoretical fields. 
The knowledge that I will gather from academic courses have to be applied successfully in practical fields. The learning has to come from both practical and theoretical fields. I should make myself competent for the professional fields. I have to possess knowledge on the subject area of my domain. I have to be honest and ethical. I have to be dedicated and determined. I have to ensure the growth of my career and that of the organizations where I will be working. 

Improvement in PDP
PDP is considered to be one of the most essential tools in learning and self-development. It has helped me to identify the strengths and weaknesses in my attitude, skills and learning process in classroom. To improve the PDP class the training on continuous basis is needed. The learning and analysis of the various important elements of the PDP has to be improved. The self-review and self-analysis has to be considered to be very important and the students must be able to conduct that correct understanding of the PDP and its benefits in the overall growth of the career and academic skills. 

Future Plans

Identifying personal development needs
After analysing the strengths and weaknesses of myself as an individual and as a professional, I have come to realize that I need to develop my listening skills as through my previous experiences in personal, academic life I have found that I often tend to speak up before the other person has completed speaking. This has often brought me criticisms from my teachers and also my family members. In the various projects in my institution I have been a good speaker and often been able to lead my peers with success in various projects. But, as told by some of my seniors that I have the problem of not being a good listener due to which I often tend to miss out on crucial information and points those have restricted my potential of becoming more successful as a student and also as a future professional.

Undertaking the needed development:
After I have analysed that I need to develop my listening skills in order to be successful in my academic, career and personal lives, I have made the Personal Development Plan in order to work on improving this weakness of mine. I believe that the most effective manner in which I could improve my listening skills is through practical experience. For this, I would take the help of my father, my colleagues in the institution and my teacher and would request them to help with this skill development. I would arrange for mock discussions with my father at home or my peers at the institute and I would initiate discussion on a topic. I would try to listen completely to the other party before putting forward my personal views and comments. I would ask for their views and honest feedbacks as to my ability of remaining a patient listener. Then, I will try to recall the topic of the discussion and re-iterate the major points of discussion in order to check how much I am able to retain. I need to undergo sessions like this regularly, so that I can overcome this drawback and become a good listener that will automatically make me an even better orator and most importantly help me become a much prudent professional in academic, careerist and personal lives (SPCH, 2017).

Looking at and valuing development opportunities:
I personally value the need for self-development very high. I think that every human being has some positive and negative traits in character. But, it is highly important for the individual to ensure that he starts working on determining his key strengths and weaknesses from a very early stage. This helps in getting rid of the drawbacks at the initial stages such that they do not act as bottlenecks to personal, academic and career development and growth of the individual. This habit is good to start at the very beginning of academic and career. This is the reason I have decided to analyse my personal strengths and weaknesses in academic, professional and careerist domains of life.

Formulating achievable action plan:

The action plan that I have developed is depicted as follows:

1. •    At first, I will undergo group discussion sessions on mock topics with my father who has been my mentor at home and also with one of my close peers at the institute who will help me out with this skill development. I will also take the help of my teacher and request him to guide me in developing my skill. They will critique on my listening skills in those sessions. This will be my plan for the next 6 months initially.

2. •    Apart from the practical skill development, I will read various articles, periodicals and reports available on the internet on developing listening skills. This will be a regular feature of my self-development plan for next 1 year at least.

Recording and sharing feasible outcomes

As a part of my personal development plan, I will have to keep track of my progress on a routine basis.  I will maintain a notebook with date and description of the activities I have done every day as a part of my listening skills development endeavour. I will put down my own comments along with those of my assessors. I will try to find out the differences between my own observations about myself and those of my assessors. This will help me in closing the gaps between their findings and my own. I will share the outcomes of my personal development weekly with my assessors and seek for their feedbacks. 

Continuing review and evaluation of learning process

The most important stage of the future planning is to ensure that the designed personal development plan is a long-term one. There needs to be regular reviews and evaluation of my planning in order to understand whether the plan is able to achieve the daily learning outcomes or not. Thus, in order to ensure success of the planning, it needs to be reviewed by myself and also by my mentors.

Conclusion

On a concluding note to this report, it can be said that it is extremely essential for a person to form clear goals and objectives in academic, personal and careerist endeavours. To become successful in the long run as a professional, it is very important to be able to determine one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Through this PDP module I have been able to develop a similar plan and I expect that it will help me in developing my skill of lack of listening ability that has been identified to be my major drawback in personality. Through the PDP I expect to achieve success in career, academic and personal fronts. I hope that my endeavour to become a successful entrepreneur in the long run will reach culmination only through this habit of developing personal development plans with clear goals and objectives from time to time. This will help me achieve my dreams in future if I can successfully keep on identifying my professional strengths and weaknesses as I move ahead in my career.

References

• Doyle, A. (2017, august 24). What Are Job Specific Skills? Retrieved from thebalance: https://www.thebalance.com/what-are-job-specific-skills-2063755

• Institute of Financial Advisers. (2011). Professional Development Planning Self Assessment Guide. IFA Professional Development , 1-30.

• Kent. (2017). Identifying my Career Priorities Aim. Retrieved from https://www.kent.ac.uk/human-resources/athenaswan/awareness-days/resources/pre-2014/identifying-my-career-priorities.pdf

• Macy, B. (2009, may 12). The Importance of Self-Assessment. Retrieved from personalbrandingblog: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/the-importance-of-self-assessment/

• Madden, S. (2016, September 30). How a personal development plan can benefit your business. Retrieved from https://www.lexisclick.com/blog/how-a-personal-development-plan-can-benefit-your-business 

• myrkothum. (2013, march 5). What Are Your Personal Strengths and Weaknesses? Retrieved from myrkothum.

• SPCH. (2017). The Importance of Listening. Retrieved from https://lumen.instructure.com/courses/218897/pages/linkedtext54152

• Wrench, D. J. (2014). The Importance of Listening in Effective Communication. Retrieved from http://brewminate.com/the-importance-of-listening-in-effective-communication