LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY LEEDS BUSINESS SCHOOL

Name of the Candidate: Neeraj Sharma

Module Title: Personal Effectiveness

Student ID: Date of submission: 1st April 2011

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Executive summary

The report depicts the necessary skills that are required to be a competent manager. The skills are explained with appropriate example from past experience how its being developed or in case of non- accomplishment, it provides justification foe incomplete achievement of developmental objectives.

The report specifies the aim and objectives of the author along with the strategy developed to achieve those aim and objectives. This strategy is design taking into consideration tools like SWOT analysis and SWAN analysis which states what needs to overcome.

The concept of experiential learning and self -development are used to develop personal and professional competencies.

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Task- Explore and reflect upon your learning and development since starting the masters programme

Introduction

Personal effectiveness refers to making optimum utilisation of personal resources like personal skills, talent and competencies, time and energy for the activities which are of utmost significance to personal and professional development (Chopra, 2004). The concept of personal effectiveness is similar to money management where an individual would like to have best rate of returns out of investment (resources). The personal effectiveness is not opportunism to be super organised or sacrificing spontaneity but personal effectiveness is all about taking appropriate steps to fit according to ones own style to give the feelings that one is doing best of his ability, making best possible use of his talent, time and energy. For some the success means satisfying personal life while for some, it means having successful career that drives them. However, the success is the one what makes him or her happy.

Personal effectiveness deals with self-responsibility, accountability, improving personal and professional skills, achieving goals, management and leadership. The concept of personal effectiveness guides an individual about their actions and attitude. (Kashdan, 2009) The personal effectiveness can inform an individual where he is now, how growth & changes occurs and how one can acquire new attitude or behaviour to get the desired result in more effective manner.

The significance of personal effectiveness can be understood from the benefits derived by an individual and organisation. It helps an individual to increase personal responsibility for behaviour and actions, to comprehend managerial dilemmas and conflicts positively, accomplishment of goals that results in growth, increased effectiveness and change. It also helps in understanding how core values and behavioural styles affects interaction with team and how choice impact ones performance, image and behaviour. Apart from individual, organisation too derives benefits from personal effectiveness like increases employees responsibility for best results, improves employees performance by becoming self- aware, empowers employee with creativity and logical argument skill that helps the organisation to remain ahead of competitors, employees learns to focus on job performance

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rather than engaging into grapevine communication to be part of company politics, spread rumours.

Aims and objectives

The career aim is to become Operations Manager in a company that offers conducive working environment and inspires to develop personal & professional skills. Objective 1. To finish post graduation master programme by the end of Jan. 2012

2. To learn and develop personal key skills like stress management, time management, creativity and logical argument skill, influential skill, and communication skill

3. To learn and develop key professional skills like continuous professional development, making business presentations, running meeting, and decision making and problem solving skills.

SWOT analysis

It is very important to undertake SWOT analysis to know the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threat. This will enable to know what skills need to be focussed upon.

Strengths Can work in close co-operation with team members Actively working High risk taking capability Critically analyse all the possible options before taking crucial decisions Works with less or no supervision Highly organised at workplace High tolerance capacity

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Weakness Cannot effectively utilise team members to get the task done Cause delays in taking actions Cannot cope with excessive work pressure Lack of confidence in public Lack of confidence in influencing people

Opportunities British world- wide recognised credentials International work experience

Threat Lack of immediate manager support can pose threat to career ambition Other candidate wih similar credential can pose threat to current position

SWOT analysis reveals that appropriate actions needs to be taken to convert weakness into strengths like utilising team member can be converted into strength by learning and developing managing people skill through reflective practice, lack of confidence in public can be converted into strength by developing communication and presentation skill through experiential learning, lack of confidence in influencing people can be developed through self awareness and reflective learning practice. Weakness like delays in taking action can be converted into strength by learning and developing assessment skill and decision making and problem solving skills through management techniques and self -learning.

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SWAIN ANALYSIS

Criteria

Strengths Good job prospects

Career

Weaknesse s No practical experience

Aspirations To be operations manager

Interests Purchase, sales, budgeting, management and leadership Decision making, report writing

Need to do Qualification, training, develop personal and professional skills Practice, study

Qualification s / Training

World-wide recognised British credentials

No practical training

To complete qualification with first class

Personal Skills and Qualities

Stress management , time management ,

Lack of confidence, hesitate to get work done from others No support from manager

To acquire all key personal competencie s

Communicatio n skill, stress management

Practical implementatio n

Social Support

Good support from teachers friends and colleagues

To be helpful

Mutual support

Contact people

The SWAIN analysis indicates that the biggest weakness to career ambition is absence of practical implementation of personal skills and relevant experience. This can be developed by actually implementing personal skills and looking for apprenticeship or trainee management roles. Also reflective practice can help in developing personal skills.

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Personal skills learned and developed or to be learned and developed since stating masters program

Stress management

Stress management is improvement of stress that perks ups everyday functioning of a person. The stress is caused either due to excessive work load beyond ones capacity or due to ones inability to cope with work pressure. All business issues are associated with some or the other problems like deadline, budget limit, etc. this creates pressure which leads to stress. Managing stress is key personal skill that will help an individual to remain calm in business.

Since stating the master programme, the author have been handling stress with the help of stress management techniques like cognitive therapy, deep breathing, yoga, getting a hobby, progressive relaxation, time management, meditation, autogenic training, spas, listening to relaxation music, natural medicines, fractional relaxation. Some of the stress management techniques are used in conjunction with others but few of them like medicines are taken only in case of situation beyond control.

Time management

One of the primary fundamental personal skill necessary for strategic managers is time management. In this organised and professional world, where the time is money, time management skill is very important to meet deadlines. Personal Effectiveness Page 7

Based on past experiences in failing to manage time during exam time has taught the author to manage his time. Since starting the masters programme the author is making use of time log book to manage time as shown below

Day

Studies

College

Work

Sleep

Other Activities

Total

Monday Tuesday

4 4

8 8 -

10 10 -

8 8 8 8 8 8 8

4 4 2 2 12 16 16

24 24 24 24 24 24 24

Wednesday 4 Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday 4 4 -

The use of time log have helped author in managing time to greater extent.

Creativity and logical argument skill

This personal skill can help to accomplish organisational objective by leading to innovative ideas of doing things. Creativity is a skill that is not taught but comes through experiential learning and use of intuition and interest in particular thing. Logical argument skill is critically analysing the pros and cons of the idea and seeking an alternative options before taking crucial decision.

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For example, the author has developed a better way of providing better customer service through use of interactive feedback system at workplace. The author is in process of learning and developing logical argument skill by analysing pros and cons of the situation and experiential learning.

Influential skills At organisation, it is necessary that ones voice is heard specially if one is having belief in his ideas, it is necessary to influence the immediate manager to influence him to agree to the implementation of idea. The influential skill is not taught nor comes from the book. It is learned and developed only through reflective practice.

The author influence his immediate manager by being positive and cheerful and presenting the ideas with full confidence.

Communication skill

The basic personal key for a successful strategic manager is communication skill. Communication includes oral, written and communication through gestures.

Since starting masters programme, the author has been actively taking part in group discussion and making presentation which has raised the confidence to speak in public.

Key professional skills learned and developed or to be learned and developed since starting masters programme

Continuous professional development

Continuous professional development is life -long learning activity. If an individual is interested and loves his profession, he / she would certainly seeks ways to keep him up-todate with the latest trends in his profession. There are many ways to learn and develop this skill through attending seminars, seeking experts advice, joining online communities, individual reading, talking informally, by becoming fellow member of professional bodies.

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The author is passionate about operations manager and seeking opportunity to be member of any professional body or individual reading about new operation technologies used in food industry where the author is currently working.

Business presentations

Making a successful business presentation is a challenge for a manager. The successful business presentation can make the existing or potential client happy which can eventually help in achieving the organisational objective and personal objective of getting promoted.

Since starting the masters programme, the author has been given the opportunity to take part in class presentation. This practice certainly raised the confidence to give public presentation. This skill will be further developed through reflective practice.

Conducting meetings

In managerial careers, organising meeting, and attending meeting is like routine part and parcel of the job. Running meetings is such a skill that requires excellent organisational skills and good communication skill. It needs skill to control challenging situations. A well managed meeting must have clear agenda, objectives and outcomes to make it more effective.

The author has got chance to attend meeting at workplace but yet not got chance to organise meetings. The author wish to develop this skill by experiential learning.

Decision making and problem solving skills

Decision making is process of selecting the available options to reach a desired goal. Problem solving is filling out the gap between present situation & desired goal. There are many techniques for decision making and problem solving like SWOT analysis, inductive

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reasoning and deductive reasoning, network analysis, task analysis, brainstorming, linear programing, simulation, etc.

Since stating the masters program, the author is aware of few statistical decision making techniques like decision trees, simulation, linear programming, network analysis and nonstatistical decision making techniques like brain storming, focus group, consumer panel etc. the author is constantly striving to learn and develop decision making and problem solving skill through education and reflective practice.

Approaches to achieve personal and professional learning and developmental objectives

Reflective practice Boud (2001, p.8) describes reflection as turning experience into learning. The concept of reflective practice is introduced by Donald Schon back in early 1990s. Donald Schon (1983) in his book the Reflective Practitioner brings out the concept of reflection on action and reflection in action. Reflection on action is an idea of learning through ones own past experience where the reflective practitioner analyse his own reaction to a particular situation and understands the reasons behind taking such actions and the outcomes as a result of taking such actions. This is done through documented reflection of the situation. Reflection in action is an idea of learning through ones own past experience where the reflective practitioner connects himself to emotions, feelings and prior experience to tackle the particular situation directly. Argyris and Suchon introduced the idea of single loop & double loop learning system. According to single loop learning system, the reflective practitioner remains with same strategies even when earlier error occurred & correction was made. The double loop learning system, involves changing personal objectives, policies so that when a similar circumstances arises, a new framing system is used.

The author make use of reflective journal while group assignments to enable to learn from past experience of working in a team. Dewey (2001) focus on how one can learn by combining new and old experience. According to Kolb (2003) reflective practitioner go through four stages which begins with concrete experience which is reflected upon & from which abstracts concepts are developed which can be tested. Gibbs (2001) in his model elucidates the reflective practice process shows below with the help of following diagram Personal Effectiveness Page 11

Gibbs (2001, p.166) To put in simple words, reflective practice is a process of learning from ones own past experience. For instance author applies reflective practice to develop stress management skill by analysing what was done before to relieve from stress, what made feel good. Similarly the professional skills like conducting meeting can be further developed through reflective practice approach by describing, evaluating, analysing, linking to emotions and taking lead actions.

Self- development

Self- development is taking all efforts to improve competencies & skills that are necessary in professional life. This includes self-awareness, self- knowledge, implementing personal developmental plan, improvising weakness and developing ones own strengths, improving social abilities etc.

Many personal skills like stress management, time management, effectively managing people, building business relationship, networking, delegation, assessments skills, developing a CV are not taught neither it comes from any books but have to learn and develop on its Personal Effectiveness Page 12

own. Self- awareness helps an individual to know what good he or she is into and what inspires him to achieve the goal.

The approach of self -development will help the author to gain personal and professional skills for example, with self- awareness, author will be able to know what he wants and what he does not want which will empower to turn wants into reality.

Summarising learning and development skills with resources and time frame

Learning and development needed

Learning action to be taken including resources cognitive therapy, deep breathing, yoga, getting a hobby, progressive relaxation, time management, meditation, autogenic training, spas, listening to relaxation music, natural medicines Using time log schedule and adhering to it Use of intuition, selfconfidence, selfawareness, selfknowledge Reflective practice Reflective practice Reflective practice and self-knowledge Reflective practice Reflective practice Reflective practice

Monitoring and feedback

Time frame for success

Stress management

Everyday

8 weeks

Time management

Weekly basis

8 weeks

Creativity and logical argument skill

On- going basis

On- going basis

Influential skills Communication skills Continuous professional development Business presentations Running meetings Decision making and problem solving Personal Effectiveness

Continuous basis Everyday Continuous basis

Continuous basis 8 -12 weeks Continuous basis

Upon completion of every presentation Every six months Continuous basis

3 months 6 months Continuous basis

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Conclusion

The concept of personal effectiveness has gained much significance in business and corporate world. Every organisation wants to hire those candidate who has potential calibre to deve;lop personal and professional skills. It can be concluded that in order to be a successful manager in any management field, it is essential to possess key personal and professional skills as mentioned above. Those skills do not comes from books and hence needed to be learned and developed on the basis of past experiences (reflective practice) and becoming self-aware.

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References

Boud, D. 2001 'Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice' in L. English, & M. Gillen (eds) Promoting Journal Writing in Adult Education. New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education No. 90, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Chopra, J. (2004) The Power of Intention, EnglewoodCliff, Thousand Oaks

Dewey, J. (2001) How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process, D.C. Heath, Boston.

Gibbs, G. (1981) Teaching Students to Learn: A Student- Centred Approach, Milton Keynes, Open University Press

Kashdan, T.B. (2009). Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Kolb. D. (2003) Learning Style Inventory: Self Scoring Inventory and Interpretation Booklet, McBer and Company, Boston.

Schn, D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner, How Professionals Think In Action, Basic Books.

Webliography

http://www.deakin.edu.au/itl/pd/tl-modules/teaching-approach/groupassignments/topic13.php accessed on 13th March 2011

http://www.leadersdirect.com/perseffect.html accessed on 15th March 2011 http://personaleffectiveness.net/ accessed on 15th March 2011 Personal Effectiveness Page 15

http://www.impactfactory.com/p/personal_effectiveness_skills_training/snacks_1729-210342746.html accessed on 17th March 2011

http://www.materials.ac.uk/guides/developing.asp accessed on 20th March 2011

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