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Personal & Professional Development Self-Learning
Pearson BTEC (HND) Business
Richard Docc
Self - managed learning as the name suggests is defined as skills and abilities developed by learning done by own. In the today’s world this is really very necessary as the world is so competent and people don’t have time to do professional development training for everything.
Introduction
Self - managed learning as the name suggests is defined as skills and abilities developed by learning done by own. In the today’s world this is really very necessary as the world is so competent and people don’t have time to do professional development training for everything. This self managed learning can be helpful in both professional as well as personal life. And self managed learning can help in enhancing lifelong development.
LO1 Understand how self- managed learning can enhance lifelong development.1.1 Evaluate approaches to self-managed learning.
These are many approaches through which self managed learning can be acquired. Some of these are seminars, conferences, group discussion, debates, social networking, internet, etc. We will discuss some of them here:
Seminar and Conferences: This is one of the most effective ways of self managed learning. People who do not have proper communication skills and who have public speaking phobia should indulge in more of these seminars and conferences so that they can develop their communication skills. This is also a wonderful platform for people to share their knowledge, their views, their different perspectives towards things, etc.
Group discussions, debates: in group discussion and debates that are speaking on the same topic and everyone gets a chance to put on their own views. This gives different pictures of the same story. This people to grow and learn how to make their point in front of other people ( 1999). The group discussions and debates groom the personality of people and make them confident. It helps them to learn the skill of convincing others. This is a great boon for people to strengthen their communication skills.
Social networking: Today most of the people like to spend their time on social networking websites and almost everyone use it. People great a great opportunity to gain knowledge on the social networking websites where they can read what happening in the current world from other’s posts. They can communicate with other via chat, can
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post their views on different issues, they can follow people to know what is going in their life. The social networking sites are a great boon for self manages learning.
Internet: Internet has been transformed by a million times with the invention of Google. Any information is just a Google search away from everyone. Information on everything can be searched on Google and helps people to learn about different things. There a lot of books available online which can help in self managed learning, lot of blogs are available, millions of websites, discussion forums, etc.
1.2 Propose ways in which lifelong learning in personal and professional development context could be encouraged
Lifelong learning in personal and professional development context can be encouraged by many ways like doing a continuous SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities) analysis and self reflective learning. This should be done on a periodic basis so that there should be a continuous development for lifelong which will be helpful both in the personal and professional life. This can be done by constantly seeking feedback from people after working on some grey area and improving that to make sure that you are on the right track of development (Wilkins, 1997). By doing SWOT analysis, one come to know about what are the fields they are good at and which of them they need improvement in. This can also be encouraged if one speaks about their problems, their shortcomings with others, share them with others and seek for methods to overcome them and solve them. The encouragement can also be given by analyzing the performance of people on a graphical basis and try and understand the weak links and try to improve them. The SWOT analysis can be done by using various tools like Self Reflective learning and continuing professional development.
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1.3 Evaluate the benefits of self-managed learning to the individuals and organizations
There are lot of benefits of self managed learning to the individuals and the organization in which they are working. Self managed learning is really very effective as this is gained by own experience, hard work, learning, training. This is acquired without any professional help and has been developed by oneself so this remains for a long time and helps people in their personal and professional life. The performance of any organization depends on the performance of the employees working for it, hence of the employees are developing skills it will surely be beneficial for he organization itself and its performance will get better (West, 1997).
LO2 Be able to take responsibility for own personal and professional development2.1 Evaluate own current skills and competencies against professional standards and organization objectives
Currently I possess a lot of skills and competencies which is required in the professional life and I am perfectly fit to help organization to meet their objectives. Some of my current skills can be discussed as below:
Time management skills: I am good at managing time and I am always in time for all my classes. I finish all my assign work in time and before deadline. I always do proper planning to complete my work in time and work according to my plan.
Communication skills: I am good and an effective communicator. I can good at making a healthy conversation wit people but still I need some improvement in my language skills. I sometime make some grammatical mistakes which need to be improved. Also I need to improve on my public speaking skills.
Team skills: I am good at working in teams with the same objective and know how to help others to get the work done. I also know how to get the work done from others. I can gel with people very easily and make friends easily. I need to improve my team leading skills a little bit more.
Management: I am a good manager of things and have worked in organizing many events at college. I know hot to manage people and work properly. I need to get some professional degree on this as the management skills taught in our college in our course is limited and along with some professional experience some theory is also important to understand different aspects of management.
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2.2 Identify own development needs and the activities required to meet them
It can be improved by taking part in more seminars, conferences, debates, elocution, group discussions. This can also be improved by more and more reading. This can be improved by reading novels, newspaper and practicing to speak as you read.I an also improve my team leading skills by taking up new managerial roles and taking the responsibility to finish jobs form end to end. Team leading skills can be acquired by actually working in teams and taking the initiative to complete the work on self responsibility. I can also acquire some technical skills which I am not efficient in by reading some technical books, doing practical assignments, etc. It can also be achieved through proper training sessions (Hensley, 2003).
2.3 Identify development opportunities to meet current and future defined needs
There are a lot of development opportunities to meet the current and future needs. There are a lot of books available in the market which have lesion to improve the skills like time management skills, how to improve the communication skills, about developing different technical skills, How to become an effecti8ve team leader, etc. There also a lot of books where some of the great businessmen have shared their experiences and how they developed these skills with time and conditions. All these are of a great value to develop these skills for us. There also a lot of blogs wrote which can be found online where these things are taught with examples. Thousands of videos are available online to develop these skills.
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2.4 Devise a personal and professional development plan based on identifies needs.
I can devise a proper plan to have a proper personal and professional development according to the identified needs in the above segment. I am planning to take part in more of such activities where I can take more responsibilities to do the work and get opportunity to learn these skills. I will be organizing events on my own and will proactively take part in the extracurricular activities. My plan from the current situation would be to go further and improve my technical skills and management skills. Here I would like to take on some more educational qualification on different skills like management skills in marketing. I also want to improve on my time management skills which will be helpful in me personal as well as professional life. I would be taking part in more management related tasks; I would read management related books where I can learn the skills and techniques to develop these skills. To improve my time management skills, I am planning to do more and more activities and try to prioritize my work accordingly.
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LO3 Be able to implement and continually revise own personal and professional development3.1 Discuss the process and activities required to implement the development plan.
There are many process and activities which are required to implement my development plan. Some of these activities can be discussed as below. While doing these learning and reading books, plan to study alone in a comfortable yet quiet environment. I will be setting up goads for myself and would monitor my performance accordingly on a regular basis to study the progress. I will be creating a connection the skills which I already acquire and new material and will try to understand the similarities between the things which I already know and the things in which I need improvement.These activities will also include certain training sessions, discussions with my colleagues and friends, taking part in seminars and conferences, and constantly read about great leaders and the valuable experiences, participate in presentations, attend more talk shows of different people, participate in groups to complete tasks, take more responsibilities, organize big events, manage people, etc.
3.2 Undertake and document development activities as planned
The development activities as planned can be documented and undertaken accordingly. This can be done on a time scale basis. So this can be done for a 6 months basis. In the first month I would like to critically analyze which are my shortcomings and try to find out possible solutions to overcome that. Then in the next three months I can just work on developing on these skills by selecting the best possible solutions to them. These can by done by taking up the activities as planned in the above segment. For the next month I will try to take proper feedback and try to analyze the improvements in my performance based on the activities undertaken to improve my weak skills. This will the feedback month. Here I will take the feedback from my friends, colleagues, family to understand if there was any improvement and if there are still some gray areas to work on. In the next and the last month of the development plan I will b doing the improvements according to the feedback received and try to overcome the weaknesses which was still there. This way on a half yearly basis the development plan can be developed which will be helpful to improve personal and professional skills which will be beneficial for them as well as for the organization for which they are working or will be working.
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3.3 Reflect critically on own learning against original aims and objectives set in the development plan
The activities which were planned in my development plan have very well served its objectives, my learning was at par with the original aims and the objectives of the development plan. The time management skills which were planned as in the plan has been effective in serving its purpose. The time management activities included to start the work as soon as the work is assigned, it also included breaking the big tasks into smaller sub tasks and assigning short deadlines to these sub tasks. It included to prioritize the work accordingly and completing the work as per the priority. All these were I have also reviewed my performance while undertaking the activities in my development plan and have critically analyzed my performance and have found out that the self-learning activities have helped to develop the skills which I was planning to develop.
3.4 Update the development plan based on the feedback and evaluation
Based on the feedback the development plan can be updated. According to the feedback I have got from my friends and colleagues, I need to improve my communication skills and my team leading skills. These can be improved by taking steps in this direction. In order to improve on the weaknesses and improvement area discussed above a lot of things can be done. The most important and effective way is self managed learning. I can achieve the above skills by taking part in more activities.
LO4 Be able to demonstrate acquired interpersonal and development skills4.1 Select solution to work base problem
In the case mentioned of Star Tel, a 3 star hotel in London, clearly the problem lies with the staff and inappropriate training to them. First of all as it is evident from the case itself that the staff at the reception is inadequate and more people should be recruited for the reception job as there is only one person who is attending customers, taking calls, doing bookings, etc. So there should be more staff appointed at the reception. Also the staffs are careless and not properly trained to attend the customers properly. So they need to undergo a proper training to develop proper skills to manage customers and serve them in an efficient way. Secondly the IT infrastructure is also poor. The payment process is creating problems; hence the company needs to take help from a renounced IT company to
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solve their IT problems and develop a robust payment process to satisfy the customers properly.
4.2 Evaluate and use effective time management strategies.
The effective time management skills are really very important to be developed for the success of any individual. In this world, everyone wants their work to be done in time and to develop such a situation, time management strategies play a crucial role. The job in the current times needs a lot of work to be done within deadlines and a lot of pressure is put in the employees. To be able to manage so much work at the same time and to complete them within deadline, it is really very important to strategize to manage time effectively. sThis time management skills will help the individuals to always be able to complete their work in time and will help them to prioritize their work effectively assign the priority to them so that all of them gets completed in their different deadlines.
Conclusion
There are many skills which is necessary to posses to lead a successful personal as well professional life. Some of these skills are proper time management skills, effective communication skills, good team working skills, managerial skills, etc. People can’t go for personal and professional courses for these skills to be acquired. All these can be achieved by proper self managed learning. People also needs to be creative in their approach and always should be on their forefront to develop new and creative things. Different people have different extent of these skills and they should work on their weaknesses to develop these skills and these are some of the most important recipe of success.
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