Understanding For The Purpose Of Professional Development

Personal and Professional Development within the workplace

Describe about the understand for the purpose of professional development ?

Employability and Professional development refers to the continuous process of regulating the responses and reflecting the current working ability of the individuals. The activities of this process help the employees to have better growth in their carrier by understanding the abilities and limitations in the workplaces (Alirezaei, 2013). In these activities the strengths and weaknesses in the current job position are evaluated. After evaluating these factors, the aim of the individuals is to eliminate the limitations or weaknesses and then increase the abilities to give better performances in the workplaces (Fischer and Boer, 2014).

This report is based on the reflection of the experiences gathered in the current job position in a computer software development company. The company is providing the ERP software and cloud computing platform to the different business industries. The working ability, weaknesses and other activities like the team work, problem solving etc. will be evaluated through this report.

Personal and professional development is the key to get success in the future. In this process the ability and weaknesses are evaluated by the analysis of the different working situations and reflecting the experience as an individual and as a group member. The motivational factors of the Roger’s theory and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs brought the clarity regarding the skills of carrying out the responsibilities within the workplace (Coombs and Sorensen, 2010). In order to analyze the different strengths and weaknesses of the analytical skills and the emotional intelligences have to be clarified. The skill audit matrix will help to understand the factors at a glance (refer to appendix 1).

Active learning:  One of the greatest strength of my professional field is the activeness in learning. I like to learn new methods and techniques with more advanced tools for achieving the goal in the workplace (Arthur, 2010).

Spirit of taking the initiatives: I am always ready to take the initiatives for every type of tasks and other activities within the workplace. Whenever any new type of responsibilities came, I am there to take it where maximum people are scared (Benson, 2014).

Abilities of critical thinking: I have the ability of critically think about the factors of the tasks that are needed to be done. It gives me more power to efficiently complete the task (Jones, 2013).

Ability of achieving the target by focusing on the goal: Whenever engaged in any type of job in the workplace I only focus at the goal of the job. It helps me to achieve the desired target. Any type of side focusing may be the cause of distracting from the main objective (Gasbarri and Tomaz, 2012).

Interpersonal and transferable skills within the workplace

Developing innovative ideas: There are various types of jobs in the field of the software development that can be managed more efficiently by adopting some new innovative ideas. There are many examples of jobs where some innovative ideas are used which were developed by me (Haasler, 2013).

Leadership: I am able to take the leadership within the workplace.  Now I am working as a team member of the development team, but in some days I had to manage the team as a leader. The experience if these are not so bad as the result of the job was good (Belbin, 2012).

The above strengths are very helpful to me for giving the best performances within the workplace. These abilities are very important in the area of the software development job. Besides the above mentioned strengths I have also found some weaknesses in my performances. The weaknesses are as follows:

Impatient: The worst factor of my behavior is the impatience. I cannot wait too long for anything. I am always in hurry, trying to finish the job without any delay. Because of this reason, I faced some problems within the workplace (Laughton, 2011).

Impulsive behavior: While analyzing my weaknesses with the help of my working experiences in the workplace, I found some impulsive nature in my behavior. It happened because of the eagerness of doing something which I supposed to do but I was not permitted. It is not s good as I observed that the supervisors and the team members were not happy in such incidents (Manchester, 2013).

Lack of planning: There were some lacks of planning at the time of doing some jobs, because of more focusing on the main goal of the task. There are some additional tasks associated with any big jobs. Sometimes, I missed out some of these tasks due to the lack of planning (Meybodi, 2009).

Lack of some social skills: Although my social skills are not so bad, but I found that some social skills have to be improvised for delivering a better attitude within the workplace (Miller et al. 2013).

Over powering to team members: As I am able to lead a team and I have done this many time as a senior employee, I used to overpowering to some team members in some cases. It is not intended, I should minimize this factor of my behavior (Urosevic and Milijic, 2012).

Using the trial and error method: Due to the impatient behavior, I used to follow the concept of “Think less – Do more”. Because of this, I always use the trial and error method instead of concrete plan for the tasks within the workplace (Saunders and Zuzel, 2010).

These are the main weaknesses as I found in the analysis by observing my past working experiences within the workplace. In order to achieve a well development in my personal and professional skills I have to increase the strengths I have and eliminate the weaknesses. This is not so easy task as I say and I have done. A good strategy is needed for this task. In order to achieve the better personal and professional development an action plan has to be developed as shown in the appendix 2. The action plan for this purpose is often called as the Personal Development Plan (PDP). In order to develop and then using the PDP, the factors which need more improvisation have to be identified. As per the above analysis and skill audit matrix, the various factors of my skills that need more improvisation are as follows:

Communication Skill:  After summarizing the results of the weakness analysis, I found that some areas of my communication skills have to be improved for giving better performances within the workplace (Bush, 2014).

Cognitive Behavior: I have to change the way if thinking in some cases. The cognitive behavior therapy will help me to improve this section of my behavior (Takano et al.2011).

Planning: More planning is needed rather than the use of trial and error method while doing any job in the workplace (Thompson, 2010).

Behavior with the team member: I have to behave gentle with all the team members. Although I am a senior employee, but I have to treat the team members with equality as we are all in the same level (Trivellas and Reklitis, 2014).

Negotiation Skill: Another area of my behavior which needs a lot of improvisation is the skill of negotiating in the different issues with the team members and the supervisors (Gasbarr and Tomaz, 2012).

The understanding of the weaknesses in the previous section helped me to identify these factors for planning my future development where the identification of the strengths gave me the idea regarding my future prospects with more clarifications.

At the present situation, when the world of employment is highly associated with the high level of turnover and mobility, the interpersonal and transferable skills are very important to give the opportunity of getting a better place in the same organization or in some other organizations. These are the skills that employers are finding at the time of interviewing for the recruitment purpose. Self awareness is very important for identifying the interpersonal and transferrable skills. These skills are developed through evaluating the previous working experiences (Cabanis-Brewin, 2011).

The interpersonal and transferrable skills will be identified by the examples of the previous work done in the workplace. According to my previous performances, delegating power and listening power are the most effective two skills within the context of the Soft skills (Forman et al. 2014). In the analytical skills, I have the power of doing the research, data collection and data analysis very well. The tasks of the company are duly associated with the technical skills. The software development is fully dependent on the technical skill i.e., the language development, SQL queries and other coding. As I am a senior employee of the company, I have the sufficient technical skills needed in this field. Our work within the workplace is purely teamwork. Therefore, I used to work within a team for completing any jobs in the workplace.

Some examples of the previous works are discussed in the section below, which are indicating my interpersonal and transferrable skills with references to my social role within the workplace.

Dealing with a customer: One day there were some queries regarding the order raised by a customer. The manger was dealing with him, but he wanted to know some specific elements of the product and the actual status of the job. As I was working on the project, the manger referred me to deal with that customer. Then I have talked with him and answered all the questions he asked. The customer was satisfied and my manger appreciated me for the job.

Team leading: I also have the experience of leading the team when my supervisor was absent. As I am a senior employee in the workplace, I have the responsibility of leading the team when the supervisors were not present to lead the team. The experiences of these incidents are very good. The days in which I managed the work of the whole team, no issues raised regarding t he quality and management of the work.

Communicate with the colleagues: As the whole work is basically teamwork, I used to communicate with my colleagues or the team members. I have the ability of co-operating with the team members by communicating with them in a gentle manner.

Meeting with the manager: I used to talk to the manager regarding the various responsibilities of the jobs and some other social issues. I think that the way of communicating with the manager is not bad as I don’t have any bad experience with him.

Time effectiveness of the output is the most important part of any job. While doing any job, one has to be very conscious regarding the deadline of the job. In order to meet the deadline, proper planning is the key factor. I used to focus on the main goal of the task I have to complete. This is very helpful to complete the tasks without distracting from the streamline of work. Whenever a new project comes to the office, an analysis is being done by the team members who are associated with the task (French et al. 2011). After the initial level of analysis, the goal of the work and the deadline is being assigned to the task depending on the various tasks needed to be completed to fulfill the requirements of the total job as per the need of the customer. Likewise any other job, the jobs of this company have the main target to fulfill all the needs of the customers and providing the best services with a timely delivery of the products. In order to achieve the complete work within the deadline, I used to make a schedule of the total task I have to complete by splitting the total task into some sub parts and also by dividing the timeline into some smaller frame work (Fitjar et al. 2014). Then by completing each sub parts within the calculated time frame, I used to complete the total task within the time limit assigned for it. After completing the subparts by the team members the total task is combined to get the actual product for the customers. As a senior employee of the organization I have the responsibility of combining all the sub tasks done by the team members. This takes some time to be done and after combining the parts, the software has to be tested for the efficiency. Because of this issue, the initial deadline is set to a prior time than the customers’ deadline. This gives us the time for checking the product and then removing the errors. In this way I used to manage the time limit of the jobs.

In order to demonstrate the ability of the team work here is an example of team work within the workplace.

An order was placed to the company for developing an ERP system for a FMCG company. A team of eight employees was assigned to complete the total task. I was one of the eight team members in this project. The team members were assigned with different types of responsibilities for developing the software. I was assigned with the responsibility of doing the survey for identifying the needs of the customer and assisting the team. Distribution of the roles and participating in the team work was not easy at that time as all the tasks are interdependent. This particular project was tough to handle due to the diversifications of the client’s requirements and the limitation in the budget. We faced sum difficulties in understanding the actual requirements of the client, but we tried to give our best performance to meet the deadline and satisfy all the needs of the customer. Different opinions were given by the team members regarding the task which was very helpful for completing the total solution for the client. We delivered the final solution to the client one month later after testing it and doing the needed changes as per the requirement. The client was very happy as the final solution was able to meet the requirements. The team got appreciated by the supervisor and the manager for performing well in this project.

The project was a challenging task to be completed for every team member as the instructions were given to perform appropriate for achieving the best result. The total development process and the testing phase within the specified budget required a good strategy for being completed. We followed the theoretical frame work as suggested by Gratch (2014), for the group development process. We initiated a well strategy for communication and developed a supportive management within the team to perform accordingly. While linking the practical situation with the theory, I found there were both of the innovative members and adaptable members. The innovative members gave some new ideas for the development and the adaptable members followed the ideas. According to Bruhn and Zia (2013), I found myself acting as the Investigator in the team. I was very enthusiastic in my role and implemented some innovative ideas for efficiently completing the survey to understand the needs of the customer.

Interacting with different people in the survey and collecting information regarding the requirements was difficult to handle. The level of utilizing the abilities was same for all the team members. I was giving my best performance with the use of my creative thinking and knowledge while other team members were giving their best effort in the code development by using their technical skills. The executers and the testers were also giving their best effort in the tasks they have assigned. Some issues regarding the communicational behavior were observed in the behavior of the team members. By following the theory of Tarim (2014), I was able to eliminate the ego problems and some childish behaviors of the team members.

In the first phase of the testing the several problem were found in the newly developed ERP system. Then the theory of the communication cycle as stated by Venkateswarlu (2012), helped me a lot in understanding the reason behind the failure in the development. Some communication gaps were found among the team members. In order to achieve the success in the first attempt, more communication was needed among the team members (Yuen et al. 2015). I found some communication gap in my behavior also. The one-to-one communication was good but I faced some issues in the communication with groups. After understanding these issues by the analysis of the situation after the first testing phase, we were able to fix the problems and then the software was delivered to the client.

Here is another strategy suggested for the efficient team work. In this strategy, the abilities of the team members are analyzed first. Then the tasks are divided depending on the specialty of the team members (Evans and Hargreaves, 2010). After deciding the roles of different team members the feed backs will be taken from them to understand their viewpoints regarding the responsibilities they are given by the team leader or manager. According to Du Toit and Reissner (2012), if any team member is not satisfied with their role in the team work, then the result if the task cannot be efficient enough to reflect the business of the organization. After this stage if any unsatisfied team members are found then the cause of this situation should be analyzed and then the team member should be assigned with some other responsibilities depending on the situation and the ability of the member (Konradt, 2014). All the team members will be communicated with the importance of the responsibilities they have to complete the task. The team leader will use the way of face-to-face communication at the time of distributing the tasks and delivering any instruction. This will be very helpful for the monitoring process and evaluate the effective practice of the team work. After this assigning period is over, the status of the tasks should be checked periodically (Scott, 2010). The team leader will involved in the monitoring process and will ensure that the simultaneous activities of the team members are going well and are in the same level. All the communicational and other problems will be removed at the initial level in this method (Sonea, 2014). This is very helpful for getting a problem free work in the first attempt. This method of team work will help the organization to produce efficient software products in less time.

Working with a team within the workplaces is not an easy task. I faced many problems within the workplace which are really hard to be solved, but every time I got success in solving the problems. Here is an example of the workplace problem with the discussion regarding the solving method of the problem.

Seven new employees have joined the company four months ago. The candidates were from different countries. In the beginning they were facing some problems and lack of interests in the job because of the different language, culture, working behavior etc. I was appointed to give them cross-cultural training to develop more interest in their mind by understanding and habituated with the language and culture of the country. The issues regarding the culture and communication gap are very harmful for the company. In order to give them practical training and improving the communication skills of the new people, they were assigned to handle some customers belonging from different regions with different types of background with different types of cultures. I was instructed to give them proper training in these areas as well as on the functional areas of the company. After starting the training process I found that it is very tough to handle the training of these types of employees within the organization. I found some difficulties to communicate with them due to the differences in the languages and cultures. I gave instructions to introduce themselves to each other and to share the cultural values of the local culture they belong to. I trained them by giving them some trial tasks in practical. After a time period of only one month the new employees were ready to give their best effort to thee company. I was able to manage the problematic situation and then performed the task of a trainer very well.

I f aced some problems in individuals regarding their expressions due the differences in the culture and language. As stated by Watson, (2013), the organizational culture should be injected to the employees as the common work place culture. At the beginning level the new employees were feeling embarrassed as they were unable to understand the organizational values. I also faced some issues regarding their acceptances of the different factors of the organization and the value of my role. In order to remove this issue, I used the theory of SOLER as stated by Torrente et al. (2012), for analyzing their non-verbal communication styles for increasing the level of acceptance. As per the opinion of Oakley et al. (2012), the trial works are very helpful to understand the organizational values and the way of doing the jobs. Theory of the cultural dimension given by Yeadon-Lee and Hall, (2013), is saying that the value of individualism is higher than the value of PDI. In the training phase I have used the method of sharing the cultural values of the organization to the seven team members and also influenced them in two-way and the multi way communication for understanding their perspective regarding the culture (Moldovan, 2015).

There were some difficulties in my own communication. I used some trials to remove these implications. The team members were increasing their learning skills slowly but after the first week they were very enthusiastic about the learning. I also faced some problems regarding the time management because of some emotions were attached in the training of the cultural values. Brainstorming was used for developing some innovative ideas for helping the team members to build a good relationship among the as well as with the organization. As stated by Rosa et al. (2011), communication phases helped me a lot to manage the linguistic issues within the team. The team members were individually motivated to develop their linguistic skills and the need of acceptance of the organizational culture (Westerlund, 2011).

This task was very helpful for understanding my own ability of handling the value of different culture and the pattern of my own behavior through my self-image. The team members helped me a lot to remove some negative implications regarding the rural culture. After the training was over, the team members were well trained for serving the customers and performing well in the different types of jobs. The level of improvements was reflected in the behaviors of the team members. After a few days they were very happy to learn the different aspects of the organizational culture.

Conclusion:

The employment skills are very important to understand for the purpose of professional development. The different strengths and weaknesses of the current skills are analyzed with the help of the attached skills audit matrix and then the action plan is given in the attached PDP for the further improvement of the professional skills. The strengths of the current skills have to be increased where the weaknesses have to be minimized for giving more effective performances within the workplace. After analyzing the different factors of the previous working experiences within the workplace the ability of team leading and the technical skills are most important interpersonal and transferrable skills. Many types can arise in the workplace. In order to solve the problems efficient team work and the innovative thinking are the key elements. Training is the most important part of developing the professional kills.  An example of the problem solving is given in this assignment with reference to a training process. In the training process, different theories and concepts should be adopted for this purpose.

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