Assignment on Important learning skills for personal development and employability

Introduction:

          Today’s world is very competitive and everyone is doing hard word to reach the zenith position of his organization or related field. Now every big and reputed organization is looking for skilled persons or who are too much willing to learn. Personal development and employability is very important in present day life. Personal development means developing potential and talent, improving identity and awareness, build facilitates employability and human capital, increase excellence of life and contribute to the understanding of aspirations and dreams.
Personal development includes improving self-awareness, self-knowledge, wealth, health and social abilities, building identity, employability, spirituality, developing talent. Employability means the capability of an individual to move self-sufficiently in the job market to understand prospective through sustainable employment. It depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities of the individual. Employability means how an individual use those and present those to employers. Here I will describe what the meaning of personal development and employability and how to improve those in various ways.

Responsibility for own personal and professional development: 

My current skills and competencies:

             I am able to take responsibility. Responsibility makes a man powerful. If anyone doesn’t feel any responsibility to any work or his family or any organization he can’t do his part properly, he will be victim of others. I am very responsible to my-self, my family and my working organization and it comes inherently. I give thanks to God because He gives this tribute.

            Previously I used to take any decision very quickly without justifying and observing, for that reason I suffered some times in my life. But now I am very much practical and object oriented. Now I justify and observe the matter or take a good look on the topic. Before taking any decision I consider some things like purpose of my decision, gathering information, identity the principles to judge the alternatives, brainstorming and listing different possible choices, evaluating each choice in terms of its consequences, determining the best alternatives, put the decision into action and evaluating the outcomes of my decision and actions steps.

            Training is very important for a corporate life. Some training is very essential like marketing and management training, IT training, Sales training, team building course and so on. I have some training on IT but they want team building and management training. Everyone needs to know some basic computer skills to access computer for inputting data or retrieving information. So I need to do training on team building and management training.

            SWOT analysis: Strength: I have those qualities:

·         Hard working

·         Dedicated to work

·         Patience

·         Persistence

·         Risk taking abilities

·         Having good physics

·         Motivated to learn new things and welcome opportunities

·         Good analytical power

            Weakness:

·         Lack of self-confidence sometimes

·         Lacking of team working abilities

·         Don’t able to cope up with various environment

·         Volatile memory

·         Can’t tolerate any kind of discrepancy

Opportunities:

            Having strong believed on God one day he will help to reach my destination. God has immense power and he gives me strength to learn and seek knowledge. Everyday every moment I am doing hard work then one day my luck will click. Luck do not click to those who do not work hard.

Treats:

            The great threat in our life is taking risk to face giant event and going forward. When one door of opportunities is closed another one is opened but most of the time we are thinking about the close one so we do not see the new one. When we see the new one it is too late. So if we face any treat in our life, don’t be afraid, need to do fighting, if we fail try to learn from them and if we win don’t forget the wining procedure. My big threat is my present circumstances which is going in diverse way what I deserve.

Development needs and activities required

              After SWOT analysis I think those think I need to develop:

·        Increase more self-confidence and courage

·        Control my temper and not get worked up so quickly

·        Learn to be assertive

Required activities:

·        Need to talk very frequently with confident regardless of whom am I talking or what the situation? Need to voice out my opinions and ideas without any fear and take some risk and willing to try new things. Don’t use the common path and take different opportunities. Inspire and motivate others at regular basis to show my confidence.  

·        Need to be assertive in nature and control myself in any situation. Need to press my recommendation, decisions and ideas when I am in a meeting with others or in a team working activities. Need to say no firmly. Previously I agreed any matter without thinking now I want to influence and control others. Need to build some leadership.

·        Need to be calm and access any situation very politely. Try to act positively to any odd-situation and find out a way to get rid of it or turn it in a positive way.

Devise a personal and professional development plan:

            Short term plans:

·         Reading some books to build up confidence and apply those techniques

·         Give some proposal to my home and workplace and make it relevant to accept by them

·         Attending and completing anger management class

Long term plans:

·        Building confidence by doing regular practice and attending seminar at regular basis, talk various people, grow some ideas and enhance my knowledge, not thinking I am inferior to him/her

·        Trying to convince people and make a rapport with others. Behave politely and gently with people all times and never be too much excited

·        Meditating everyday in the morning and evening 10 min each, try to be cool in nature and act calmly whatever the situation.

Demonstrate acquired interpersonal and transferable skills:

Communicate in a variety of styles and appropriate manner at various levels:

Report writing: as an employee I have to write a report about my monthly activities, now I am writing the report.

Goal: the goal of this report is to give full details of my last month achievement, what activities I did, the problems I faced and most probable solution of those   

Activities:

·         I attended the seminar called ‘The vision of BT for the next 5 years’

·         I came to work on every working day and stay more than 1 hour of my working hours.

·         I attended three training course and 2 seminars.

·         I consulted my senior officers to learn new things and how to be more effective and efficient.

·         On my weekend I spent some time to analyze my activities.

Achievement:

·       Got a details idea about customer care service

·       Got a brief idea about management activities

·       Got a details idea about time management system and how to use it in our everyday life.

·       Got some knowledge about BT vision and mission for the next 5 years

·       Got knowledge how to work in office environment in an effective and efficient ways

·       Got knowledge how to make good rapport with customer and office mates.

Problem:  

·       Some office mates are not willing to help

·       In management training course I cannot understand few topics so need to recover those things again.

·       Having some problem on time management skills as I am not used to this kind of technique before.

Probable solutions:

·         I will give more times on making rapport in my office arena.

·         I will help my senior office stuffs to their work, then they will be willing to help

·         I will spend some time every day how to learn some management quality and note down those things and take some steps to improve myself.

·         I will learn some techniques regarding proper time management and try to use them in my everyday activities. If I use time management in my everyday work, it will be easy to cope up my office activities as well.

 At last I want to say my upper bosses and senior officers will help me to learn more official activities and overcome my problems. In the next month I will take some activities regarding my problems and I will participate another 2 courses like Computer skills and ICT programs. [1]

Presentation: In presentation session I have to give a presentation regarding my activities, achievement, problems and probable solutions. I have to give this presentation in front of my top bosses so I will prepare well for the presentation. I will prepare my slides very effectively and here I am presenting 3 of them.   

[2 ]                      

Effective time management strategies:

            Effective time management is very important to accomplish any task and it helps us to make our task easy and meaningful. We can’t change our habit overnight but we can change our attitude any time. Those things are in timer management system:

Set and define goals: I need to retrieve the last 10 years sales history along with my regular work activities.  

Determine the tasks: I will do my regular work first, then I will minimize my lunch break and I will spend some extra hours to do my extra jobs and I will come office at weekends as well to complete my tasks for my newly appointed tasks.

Pick the priorities: then I will make a list of my tasks and make them a list and mark them ABC. A- Tasks are most important and urgent (-today) I will do my regular sales activities, B- tasks are important but not urgent-collect the sales history of last 10 years, C- tasks are neither important nor urgent-consult with my senior officers and bosses as I am really busy in my suddenly appointed work.  

Allocation of time and scheduling- after determining the tasks I will set some time to each task and scheduling those. I will spend more time which one is hard and important. Every day I will go to my work at 9o’clolck, lunch hour is 1pm to 2pm here I will minimize my lunch hour and spend half an hour in collecting data. My scheduled office closing at 5o’clock but I will spend another two hours for my extra hours with half an hour break. I will spend I weekend both on Saturday and Sunday for 8 hours each to finish my extra job. 

Monitoring: proper monitoring is very urgent in time management. I will monitor how I am progressing and how swiftly my tasks are going on. After collecting every year data I will submit to my boss. I will submit each year data separately to my boss.  

Time out- I have to finish this task within 7 days so I need to be quick and efficient otherwise it is tough to finish this task. But breaks and time outs are important as like my tasks. I will put some time for relaxation and enjoyment otherwise I will feel bore and loose my patience to work. [2]

The dynamics working with others:

Team work and the way to achieve a goal:

·         Listening: every team member has to listen very carefully and make out the key points how to achieve the goal.

·         Sacrifice: every team member will have the tendency to sacrifice to their time, resources, power on behalf of the team

·         Sharing: every team member must share their knowledge, skills and tasks.

·         Communication: without proper communication it is really tough to achieve a goal and every team member must take equal responsibility to reach their goal.

·         Language: Language must be same and polite. Everyone will show positive attitude.

·         Hard work: Everyone must do hard work and there will be a one team leader, every team member will respect him and obey his command.

·         Persuade: Everyone should be optimistic to swap, defend and then eventually second thoughts their ideas[3]

During adverse weather condition, clients get a lot of problems such as facing difficulty in phone call, internet connection problem, satellite communication problem in digital broadcasting. So customer do enormous call to BT customer care services regarding their problem and ask them when it is going to fix. It is really tough to tell them when it will be fixed if they don’t have the information regarding engineering activities on the affected areas. So a direct connection is must between customer care executives and engineers. Like one area is affected by storm and internet and satellite connection is interrupted, one of the customer is calling to customer care regarding this two problems, at the mean time engineers are working on there and they are frequently giving the update to their system and executive passes this information to the customer when it is going to fix and do apology for service interruption. All the stuffs will work jointly and their aim will be give full coverage in customer service. They will request their extra executives and engineers come to work and help them as they can.

Alternative ways to complete tasks and achieve team goals:

If clients give too much call it is really hard to handle, that time they will forward their calls to their related call centers to do their part and inform the engineers to resolve the problem.

If it’s need to much time engineers will take other options like if the direct satellite connection is broken and its need too much time then they will provide virtual private network for network coverage, if they facing problem in telecommunication then they will check is there  any active operating channels then they will share it for a time being. Sometimes customer may be become angry but executives will handle the situation in cool head otherwise they will be very disappointed regarding BT service.

Develop strategies for solving problem:

Strategies for resolving a problem:

Problem solving is a mental process and it contains two parts like problem finding and problem shaping. I will discuss the eight disciplines problem solving method.

1.       The planning phase: here planning is prepared and identify the prerequisites

2.       Use a team: make a team with proper and adequate knowledge

3.       Define and describe the problem: for describing the problem I need to ask who, what, when, where, why, how and how many?

4.       Developing temporary control plan employ and verify temporary actions

5.       Determine and identify and verify main cause and escape points

6.       Choose and verify permanent corrective actions (PCAs) for main cause and escape point

7.       Implement and validate PCAs

8.       Prevent recurrence

9.       Congratulate my team[5]

First of all the problem is natural calamity destroy the communication system for a certain area, for solving the problem we need engineering team, good customer care service to convince people for interrupting service. Two teams are working jointly to solve the problem. The network infrastructures are totally collapse, its need too much time to replace the equipments and set up a new infrastructure. Engineers are working very hard and they are giving their best to solve the problem. On the other hand, customers are giving complain regarding network connection problems and executives are trying to convince them as they can and they are giving them assurance that when the connection will make they will give them a message or call. All the time executives are contacting with engineers and they are giving the feedback to the customers.

Potential impact on the business of Implementing the strategy:

          Here customer did not getting the connection until the engineering fix them all or set up the entire network. It is too much time consuming, internet and satellite broadcasting is very vital things because everyone use those in their everyday life and without it they are totally disconnected from outside world. I will tell the engineers to fix those as early as possible and provide them temporary feedback using VPN or sharing channel from other operators if is it possible to minimize public suffering. When everything will be fixed and every team member must appreciate each other for their collaboration and cooperation and they will get some bonus to handle this situation very nicely.

Conclusion:

            Personal development plan and employability is very important in life. Without proper skills it is really tough to get a job in present day situation. So we need to do some work on personal development plan and how to implement this plan. We will learn those skills which is very essential to employers. Communication skills is very much vital either it is verbal or non-verbal. Verbal communication is essential to make rapport with other and express myself on the other hand non-verbal or writing skills is essential for making good report and presentation. Time management is needed very badly to accomplish any task on time and make a task easy. Every day put some extra time for relaxation and meditation which will give harmony in life. Team work makes a task easier than usual. Cooperation, hard work, dedication, respect is very essential in team work otherwise it will lose its value and become a vengeful task. Problem solving capacity shows the way to solve a problem from various alternatives. Best alternatives give a better result but need to put some time to choose alternatives. If we have those characteristics we must obtain the employability which make us important asset for a company.    

Reference:

1.      Effective business report writing, Access on: 02-06-2011, Available on:   http://www.impactfactory.com/p/report_writing_skills_training/friends_1151-2105-94958.html

2.      Self Development Plan, Last modified: 08-07-2011, Access on: 02-06-2011, Available on: http://www.selfdevelopmentplan.com/

3.      Top 7 teamwork skills by Bert Icles, Access on: 02-06-2011, Available on:  http://www.tips4teamwork.com/top-7-teamwork-skills.htm

4.      Eight Disciplines Problem Solving, Last modified: 22-05-2011, Access on: 02-06-2011, Available on:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Disciplines_Problem_Solving