Personal And Professional Development Through Self-Managed Learning

Approaches to Self-Managed Learning

Personal development means improving skills with the help of activities like increasing confidence, wealth building and self-observing. (Cottrell, 2015). Personal development is very useful for the organization development. Personal development results in the success of the professional and personal life. With the help of different ways of learning individual can develop its personal skills. Professional development means enhancing skills and increasing capabilities of the employees of the organization. Professional development help employees in improving their performance, they get motivated and confident this will result in attracting skilled employees (Education forum. 2013). The employee becomes expert in his/her subject. This assignment involves three task.

Task 1 explains that how people can improve their performance and can increase their knowledge and capabilities by adopting the approaches of self-managed learning. To prove this evaluation is done of different approaches to self-managed learning. Different ways are specified by which life-long learning can be promoted in professional and personal context. Self-managed learning benefits to the individual and to the organization are evaluated. Task will explain process and activities required to implement the development plan, undertake and document development activities as planned, Reflect critically on own learning against original aims and objectives set in the development plan and update the development plan based on feedback and evaluation and task 3 involve my experience in the organization about a problem and its solution, explanation of the variety of styles of communication in the organization, Use of effective time management strategies and its evaluation.  

Personal and professional development is influenced by the self-managed learning. Self-managed learning is a process of managing own learning by an individual. Organizations should be engaged in the programs of self-managed learning which is beneficial for the organization and development of staff can be done (Puckering, 2017).

Self-managed learning is method in which an individual work to increase his skills, capabilities, and knowledge in the subject he is related and wants to gain success. An individual can adopt any of the self-managed learning approach (Cunningham, 2017). Self-managed learning can be encouraged with one of the main approach i.e. visionary approach. The visionary approach means having a clear idea about activities to be done in future or the future goal. If visionary approach is followed by an individual then it can help in developing self-managed learning and in recognizing the trend of future (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2002). Capabilities can be raised through visionary approach as it helps in recognizing the requirements of the future by an individual. Self-managed learning has another strategy named as Goals were setting. Visionary approach and setting the goals have one difference that is visionary approach is focused on the trend of future whether setting the goals strategy to involve individual focused towards particular aspects. One of the important aspects of visionary approach for self-managed learning is that it makes an individual very flexible.

Benefits of Self-Managed Learning

Self-managed learning’s another important approach is being an opportunistic. The opportunistic approach means taking things as they come or using immediate opportunities. Being an opportunistic can help an individual in increasing the learning in huge scale (Bennett, 2004). Important aspects of the environment can be learned by anyone it can be teacher, parents, situations of the environment and friends. The opportunistic approach is important as it develops the feeling of respect for others. These approaches are very helpful in the sector of travel and tourism as it leads to increase the motivation and confidence. In the end, it can be said that self-managed learning approaches contribute to personal as well as professional learning.

Various ways are available for boosting personal and professional learning by an individual. An individual should set short term and long term goals for boosting the life-long learning to receive an advantage on capabilities and potentials with increased life-long learning scope (Siminica and Dumitru, 2013). Goals, whether it is short term or long term, shows us the navigation to an individual towards achieving the goals and opens the path of life-long learning for longer period (Attwell, 2007). The segment of tourism is interesting as well as dynamic so it helps person to stay with lifelong learning. According to a research capacity of learning increase with the increase in the working pressure and motivate an individual to get involved in the process of learning which is natural. However, an individual himself set the challenge that will help him in long-term learning. Learning attitude can be developed through this practice. Life-long learning can be encouraged through another excellent technique is to involve in a healthy competition. Healthy competition is initiated for the personal development (Olsen, 2015). Therefore, these practices could be very helpful in professional and personal context for encouraging the approach of lifelong learning.  

The benefit of self-managed learning for individual is that it helps them to achieve their set goals in different phases of life. Competitiveness of the individual increases who have the attitude of self-managed learning. Those individuals reach the highest position in the organization. Confidence and intellect of the individual increases that leads to the improvement in the capabilities and they receive a lot of opportunities compared to other individuals (Cunningham and Bennett, 2017). Another major benefit of self-managed learning is that individual receives maximum growth in the organization with minimization of their errors and professional life. Thus, improvement can be shown in professional and personal life that is considered to be the self-managed learning advantage.

Development Plan for Improving Communication and Management Skills

The dedicated and responsible workforce is the advantage of self-managed learning to the organization as allocated responsibilities (completion of target, maintaining the decorum of the team, etc.) can be handled by them, can improve and take the accountability of the duties assigned to them (Mossman, 1987). The benefit can be availed by the tourism sector as they can get the dynamic employees with the knowledge of various fields. Therefore, business can trust these employees and can involve them in the decision-making process. Those companies who have employees of the attitude of self-managed learning will be benefited with the improved capability and can create their brand in the market as a leader. Further, innovations can be done and they can represent their brand s innovative brand. Employees with attitude of self-managed learning can receive promotion in the organization and can motivate other employees by becoming the role model for them for developing the attitude of self-managed learning. All these benefits to the organization of self-managed learning.

Professional and personal development ideas are changing regularly. New and updated schemes are the focus of organizations to execute professional and personal development (Kumar, 2016). For implementing the development plan required process and activities are as follows.

The scope of professional/personal development plan- Personal development plan can be used by any person whether it is a student or an employee of the organization (Krueger and Casey, 2014). For the development of professional and personal skills different objectives are decided as shown below in the table- Diploma in hospitality, Coaching, learning through research, self-managed learning, to improve communication skills and to improve management skills. According to the needs of the development, a person receives help from these objectives or guidelines.

Execution and support- Two issues can be faced regarding executing and support in implementing a professional/personal development plan. First, there will be need of effective communication while implementing the plan. Second, self-managed learning; occasionally employees need to upkeep in rational their own decision (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). Support is needed in both the cases for encouraging development planning.

Influence- Professional/personal development leads to change in the culture of the organization. Employees are the one who takes the accountability for their own professional and personal development. Development plan will help in improving the skills of employees and can see the final results of the plan such as improvement in his/her communication skills, effective management of activities,  time management skills, etc. Activities and process of development plan are given below (Parmenter, 2015).  

S. No.	Objectives	Present position	Target	Available development opportunities	Judgment Criteria	Time scale
1	Diploma in Hospitality	1st year completed	Score distinction marks	Attentive in the class	Good grades	1 year
2	Coaching	Half course completed	Course learning	Regularly attending classes	Good grades in the practice paper.	1 year
3	Learning through research	Collecting the data for the research	Attaining the research objectives.	One year time is available	Result of research question.	1 year
4	Self-managed learning	Poor in time management	Self –development	Adopt approaches of self-managed learning	Development of time management skills.	6 months
5	To improve communication skills	Poor presentation skills.	Boosting the confidence.	Reading books	Confident while speaking.	1 year
6	To improve management skills	Lack in managing task and responsibilities.	Management expert	Work on assignment provided by the tutors.	Effective management of different activities.	1 year

There are many activities to undertake and document development. Requirements that are specific does not contain any specific activities. Thus, activities that are related to the specific requirements should be performed properly. For preparing the development document some of the important points that must be considered are-

• Generate the idea or thought, collect all the relevant information for the document and add in the document.
• A decision that has been made and all the notes of the meeting must be included in the document.
• Recheck the document that has been drafted for finding the problems and rectifying them in the final document (Hayek, 2014).

Preparation of the first meeting: At all the levels i.e. academic, professional or personal level preparation is must. Balancing the expectations of the team members is the biggest reason for the preparation (McMurray, 2017).

Past practice and awareness: Work becomes easy when we have the practice and awareness of the development plan that also boosts the confidence in the individual (Bratt, 2013).

Motivation and anticipation: For professional and personal development expectation level is very important to know. Type of skill required can find out through the expectation level, future objectives can also be identified about the professional and personal development and short-term and long-term goals can be defined through this (King, 2014). Criteria for motivation can be derived from the expectation of the employees.

Update the development plan based on feedback and Evaluation.

Feedback can be taken from employees in the organization and for defining the proficiency of the development plan evaluation of the employees can be done. Development plan with feedback and evaluation can be updated, for this, there is a process.   

Planning- For achieving the objectives planning is important and need to identify the information about the development plan. Objectives and goals can be easily defined with the help of useful resources and it can give a fresh start. Results and future events can be analyzed and identified with the defined goals (Cummings and Worley, 2014). Thus, it shows that planning and defining the goal are very important aspects and should be done very carefully.

Revising- Planning and implementation make the work easy but revising can make the work more specified and flaws can be minimized. For understanding the professional and personal development effectively process should be revised properly and carefully. It will help organization to find out their strength and weakness and how much expectations have been achieved. A Clear image can be seen in the development plan and will be helpful in the present scenario as well as in the coming future.

Work-based problems are faced by the employees in the organization regularly. These problems should be solved by the employees so that flow of the work in the organization can be maintained. Employees solve these problems with zeal as they consider these problems as a challenge. Many times different skills are evaluated of the employees like self-learning through these work-based problems. Examination of the work based problem and its solution are discussed below.

Examination of the work based problem- Normally in my organization we face problems of teamwork between the employees even when they are working on important task or event they do not work in a single team and the major problem is about the difference in the salary of the employees because of the target of the sales. Rewards are awarded to those employees who perform excellently in the organization and complete the targets in the organization but transparency in the issues was lacking for a certain period.    

Solution of the problem- Identified problem’s best solution is to create supervisor-led teams. The bonding and teamwork between the employees can be increased by making the small groups of employees consisting 5/6 members in each team. The goal of the team’s, problems recognizing and suggesting solutions for the problems can be identified with the help of the supervisor of the team. The system of rewarding will be defined and competition will increase by implementing the group of the employees. Time to time issues of the transparency will be solved. Besides this, working in the team have many advantages like there is a positive collaboration through supportive effort (Derry, Schunn and Gernsbacher, 2014). Self-evaluation and self-managed learning are encouraged to contest with people of different group. It will lead to the positive results like confidence of the employees will increase, excitement and passion within the employees, employees will work with more efficiency and cooperation with this they will be devoted towards their duties and responsibilities.

Communication is a process of transferring thoughts, imagination, emotions, ideas, feeling and information from one person to another through channel of communication. The process of communication involves different elements like sender, channel of communication, receiver and feedback (Communication studies. 2017). Different person has different style of communication and personality. Style of communication is not same it varies from person to person. In the places where people work they try to communicate with others in their own communication style. The communication styles that are considered to be important and common are explained below.

Controller style of communication- Communicators who are controller demand for the facts. They are focused toward completing the task and objectives, their goals and concepts are clear, specify objectives and solve the problems effectively. People in the organization who possess controller style of communication are chief executive officers, managing director (Christopher, et al 2015).

Promoter style of communication- Promoter are those people who are extrovert like to be socially involved and life of the party. These type of people like to have a long time period conversation and love to talk more and more on different topic. The personality of these type of people is very attractive, exciting and curious, they love to express their feelings in all the conditions.

Supporter style of communication- Supporter communication style people are those who have low personality. These type of people are very good in behavior have calm personality, they are patient and they believe in listening to others also. People who are generally included or have supportive communication style are as follows guard, workers, and all low-level employees (Delgadillo, 2015).

Analyzer style of communication- People who have analyzing style of communication collect the detailed information for setting the goals and objectives in the organization. These type of people are very straightforward and are very serious at the time when they are communicating with others. Generally, people who have analyzer style of communication work at the level of research in the organization (Hoffmann & Sap Se, 2017).       

Time can never be managed by anyone. Events can only be managed by people in their life which is in the relation of time. Time management means achieving the decided outcomes by utilizing time effectively (Adair & Allen. 2008). Self-motivation ability, level of self-confidence and individual’s personality are the aspects on which strategies of time management are dependent. Strategies evaluation is discussed below.

Time should be scheduled properly- Scheduling is very important for making time management effective. If scheduling will not be done properly then strategies of time management will not be effective besides the fact that person knows how time can be spent, priorities setting, organizing the task (Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell, 2013). Work of the person becomes easier with the proper scheduling it also increase the knowledge of the person with increase in his/her efficiency.  

Spending time- Time can be managed by keeping the records of time in which explanation will be given about the how much is used and where it is used. If record of the time will be maintained then it will help person to identify where he/she is lacking, which part is consuming more time and will help to define the important task.   

Organizing time- Results of the time management will be poor if it will be not organized properly. The task will not be completed and utilization of time will not be done properly if time management is disorganized. Thus, individual must be organized in time management as it is very important and useful.

A multi-tasking must be avoided at highest priority- If individual is involved in different task then strategies of time management will not show effective results. Many people think that working on different task at the same time is time-saving but research shows that working on different task at single time is not atoll time saving infect it is time-consuming.   

Priorities to be decided- Priorities can be set by the individual easily and can follow them if he/she maintain the records of time. Time will be consumed less if a task is completed according to the priorities set as it provides us planning to complete the task and finalize it (Pugh and Nathwani, 2017).

Conclusion

In the conclusion, it can be said that for successful life whether it is professional or personal professional and personal skills should be developed by every person which is proved in task 1. Influencing personality can be developed with the help of different approaches of life-long learning and self-managed learning. It will also help in adjusting smoothly in workplace as it will increase the level of understanding. Knowledge, capabilities, and skills can be developed with help of various approaches of self-managed learning like visionary approach and setting the goal approach. These approaches are very helpful in tourism sector as it increases the confidence and motivation. For this, a proper development plan should be established which is explained in task 2. Some important activities are required in development plan such as scope of professional/personal development plan, execution, and support, Influence.

When development plan is implemented it should be monitored and anticipated and changes in the plan should be done according to the time duration. Thus, it will be a better idea to implement flexible development plan so that update can be done in the development plan according to the feedback received. Task 3 involves a work based problem and its solution. Problem is teamwork spirit is lacking within the employees of the organization and difference in the salary due to the sales target. Solution of the problem was given that all the employees to be divided into different groups of 5/6 members in each team. This solution was given for raising the spirit of competition and teamwork. Styles of communication that are available at various level are Controller style of communication, promoter style of communication, supporter style of communication and analyzer style of communication. At the end, time management should be considered at the highest priority as without this effective plan cannot be developed for enhancing the professional and personal skills. Besides this, motivation, career development is the important points on which organizing ability, leaning way, learners development and performance improvement are dependent.

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