How I Improved My Professional Skills: A Journey Of Self-Evaluation And Improvement

Becoming a Professional: Enhancing Personality Attributes for the Corporate World

Becoming a professional is an important part of every student’s journey. In the world of cut throat competition it is imperative for people to consistently improvise themselves by enhancing their personality attributes in order to be better suited for competition that will be faced in the corporate world. The intensity of competition and growing demand of competent people has made it crucial that people start working upon their professional skills at an early stage. This curriculum helped me analyze various aspects of my personality and helped me gain a deeper insight about my abilities and weaknesses.

The first part of the assignment required us to perform a self-evaluation activity where I graded myself on different personality attributes. In the second part of the assignment I have put efforts in improving my presentation as well as leadership and team working skills. I had graded myself poorly and hence decided to work on these areas to improve my professional abilities. In this assignment I have submitted two evidences, first being a power point presentation and second being an example of my leadership and teamwork. Based upon my experience I have tried to list down my short term and medium term goals which I expect to modify with time.

Unfortunately, I always had a massive stage fear and often find it difficult to present my views in front of large audience. I was good at framing my opinions and writing them but presenting those same opinions to people did not come very naturally to me. Therefore I decided to change this attribute of my personality. In a professional career of my choice, it is largely required to interact with clients and present the company’s products and services to customers forming a large audience. Hence it was imperative for me to work upon this aspect of my personality.

My ambition is to work in sales and such a job often requires negotiation skills and the ability to develop trust simply by communicating with people. My friends and teachers were of the opinion that my ability to articulate thoughts was excellent. Hence I started making various reports and presentations on everyday topics and started giving presentations in front of the mirror. This helped me improve my body language and enhance confidence. This also enabled me to become eloquent in my speech. I asked my friends and family to ask me random questions so as to enhance my knowledge and ability to speak on the spot.

Working on Weaknesses: Improving Presentation, Leadership, and Teamwork Skills

Soon enough, I gained confidence and was given an opportunity to deliver a presentation in front of over 50 people. Through immense practice and transparent feedback I was able to deliver a great presentation in front of my audience. This power point presentation helped me enhance my ability to speak, get rid of my stage fear and enhanced my ability to articulate information on the spot and be able to respond quickly to questions. This helped me gain confidence and improved my professional capacity.

I had ranked myself low in the leadership qualities because I had never led a team before and I had no idea if I will ever be able to do it. Hence I first decided to gain an experience as a leader. I worked with a team of 12 people. Although we were all peers, I decided to take additional responsibility and act as an unsaid leader of the team. I started approaching people and helping them out with their problems. In case of a conflict, I tried to the best of my abilities to resolve the conflict and maintain peace and harmony in the team. I tried to finish my work early and was always punctual as I wanted to lead by example and not by position.

This experience has been a highly fruitful experience in my life as I now realize that I have good leadership as well as team work skills. This will help me in my professional capacity as most organizations require immense amount of team work. This exercise has also improved my ability to coordinate with different people at the same time. I hope to utilize these attributes in my career and gain a competitive edge over other employees of the firm.

Since the time I have joined the curriculum I have seen immense change in my personality. I have started being analytical about my personality traits and have been putting efforts in improving my personality in a professional capacity. I worked with many different kinds of people in this course who have helped me gain a feedback on my personality traits and style of working. I have become critical about my skills as well as my weaknesses.

In the beginning of the curriculum I ranked myself on various attributes of my personality including my writing skills, communicating skills, presenting skills, leadership skills, technical skills and many more.

I was always a sincere student in school. I have always been disciplined and try to always be on time and meet all my deadlines effectively. Hence I rated myself high on those attributes. But I had rated myself low on leadership qualities as well as presentation abilities. I have always had a massive stage fear and I become very nervous while presenting my thoughts and opinions to a large audience. Through this course I worked on changing that and was able to present a large piece of information to an audience of over 50 people. I have gained confidence and extensive articulation and presenting skills through this course which is sure to help me in my professional career.

Overcoming Stage Fear and Developing Eloquence

Organizations are built up of a large number of people and hence it is only natural that employees would have to work in teams and often be able to lead teams. Possessing great leadership skills hence becomes a stepping stone for professional promotions as well as stepping ahead and growing in the business. I was never bad with my team abilities but I never grabbed any opportunity to lead a team. I decided to create an opportunity. Hence this time when I was working in a team of 12 people, I decided to take charge and become a leadership figure for that team. I started taking more responsibilities and working hard towards achieving the team goals. I also tried to establish open communication and take lead in team discussions. Soon enough people started approaching me with their problems and I tried my best to resolve them. Therefore, through this experience I realized my ability to lead a team. I was taught that leaders are born and not made. This is exactly what I experienced in this curriculum.

Throughout this course, I have grown and developed immensely. I have worked hard upon improving myself, learning new things and taking up new skills. I learnt how to grab opportunities and become a part of the team and I am certain that all these traits are sure to help in my professional journey. I have learnt the ability to continuously seek feedback and work towards improving myself. Earlier I used to consider negative feedback as demotivating criticism. Now I make sure that I seek feedback so that I can make the required changes and enhance my personality. The increasing competition in the job market have increased the demand for competent professionals. This is why I am glad I took this course at the beginning of my career and now I can apply these improved personality traits in order to accomplish my professional goals as well as prove to be a fruitful asset in the organization that I join.

At the beginning of this curriculum I clarified my short term and long term goals in order to get the best benefit out of this course. In the entire duration of this course, I modified this goals to suit my personality attributes and I have worked hard in attaining professional abilities to attain these goals. My short term and long term goals are as below

Becoming a Leader: Taking Responsibility and Improving Teamwork Skills

I have always wanted to work in sales in a reputed organization. My short term goal therefore is to get a job in sales and enhance my personality to suit the same. A sales job requires excellent communication skills, client interactions, customer relationship development ability and immense amount of persistence and patience. Through this course I have managed to improve upon my presentation skills which would be greatly required in my sales job. A sales job is important to me in order to earn money and start a career which leads to my future growth.

Personally, my goal is to participate in state level and national level presentations in order to completely overcome my stage fear and enhance my presentation and public speaking skills. This is important to me because it would play a major role in enhancing the quality of my professional and help me reach the highest rung in the ladder of professional success.

My medium term goals involve working hard in the organization where I start working. My goal is to become a sales manager and lead a team of 20-30 people of my department. In the process, I also wish to enhance my ability to communicate and establish long term relationships with my peers, subordinates and seniors. My aim would be align my personal goals with those of the organization. My efforts would be aimed at fulfilling organizational goals and proving to be an efficient employee for the company in which I enroll. This is important to me in order to develop a successful career and earn a reputed position in my organization. This is also important for me to gain financial security.

Personally, my goal is to improve and enhance my leadership and team building skills. This will help me in interacting with the people I encounter in my daily life. This is important for me to build and maintain fruitful and positive relationships in my personal life.

My medium term goal also include enhancing my knowledge by attaining a doctorate degree and gaining expertise in the subject of management and economics. More often, people tend to stop studying once they start a job, however I wish to have continued source of learning. This will help me enhance my value as a potential employee owing to an additional degree and also make me competent as a person. This is important for me to be able to negotiate a higher salary with my professional organization.

Conclusion

Through this course curriculum I have gained a much deeper insight upon my personality traits and abilities. The course required us to do various activities which helped my highlight those areas of my personalities which required improvement. The six aspects of my personalities that I targeted to improvise upon are my leadership abilities, team working ability, public speaking and presentation skills, cultural literacy, creative thinking and research skills.

From the six aspects shortlisted after the first assignment, I worked hard to improve upon them. I participated in presentations and took opportunities to work in a team. This largely impacted my leadership skills and helped me become a better presenter of thoughts, ideas and opinions. My work with the team also helped me coordinate with other people and enhance my communication ability with a group.

Overall, the course of largely beneficial and taught me various aspects of my personality which I was unaware of. I worked on my short term and long term goals and continued to evaluate my personal traits with the help of those around me. For the future, I want to continue working in the sales and marketing department of reputed organization and work towards establishing long term and productive relationships in my personal life. I want to begin and establish my career on a positive note and continue working hard in order to gain financial and job security in the longer run to fulfill deeper goals.