Reflect and evaluate development opportunities to meet your current and future defined needs.

Reflect and evaluate development opportunities to meet your current and future defined needs.

During the last activity I identified the need for improving my Business Writing skills, report writing, Presentation skills & problem solving and decision making skills.

I believe goal setting would be one of the key development opportunities and a good starting point. Initially I will focus on what I want to achieve for example from the courses that I will attend and any job role changes or shadowing opportunities. Ensuring the goals I have set, built up on my skills and are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time targeted (S.M.A.R.T) – this is what is currently used with in my organisation to set any goals/ development for individuals.

To improve my Business/report writing skills I believe initially I should take advantage of the courses that are available through my companies learning and development team, the report writing course will provide me with the necessary skills to produce an accepted, flowing text quickly and easily, ensuring that I use reader friendly language, write in a way to produce a positive notion and choose suitable method & pitch. By attending this course I can also take advantage of networking opportunities as a number of individuals from various areas of industry/ business with different skills and experience would be attending the course. (This provides opportunity to allow individuals to review each others work and provide feedback in future). However simply attending this course will not develop the necessary skills as practice is required to ensure what has been thought is embedded. To achieve this, practice in report writing is required for example through a job rotation or taking on additional activities. This could also reduce work load of other colleagues.

To improve my presentation skill I will take the opportunity to attend various meetings where reports are being presented and maybe through job shadowing a member of staff, who provided presentation on daily or weekly basis, increase my knowledge/ awareness of areas to focus on and are also essential in providing effective presentation. In addition, it is important to carry out my own research/ self study on various presentation tools, techniques. To put the information I have obtained from self studies/research and observation of other presentations into practice initially, I will present my work to a number of colleagues peer group contacts (people I have come to know from doing various courses/ attending various meeting) and ask for their feed back, before applying these methods going forward in the presentation which are being provided to the executive team and other stakeholders.

Finally to improve up on my problem solving skills, initially I will take opportunity to attend problem solving course to develop my decision making skills, learn my personal thinking preferences and learn how to apply tools and techniques which will assist me in this area and ensure I will apply skills learnt to my day to day work and home life to strengthen what was learnt within this course. By also using ‘Mind Tool’ Application on my I-phone and visiting their website and newsletters I could enhance my problem solving as well as leadership and management skills.

It is crucial that individuals are kept up to date of any new techniques and changes by reading various newsletters and business related papers to keep themselves informed and by ensuring their knowledge is up-to-date and fresh at all times.

Comments:
 

Mona

Thanks for this. I like that you are looking at a number of work based opportunities as this means from an employer perspective you are still in the work place and the skills you are developing are focused on the business itself.

 

You may want to consider if there are a few more options available to you"off the job".  in addition to the CMI web site Some are fairly easy to follow, e.g. reading relevant publications about the type of business you are in, looking at some "self help" texts about some of the softer skills possibly. Also you should also consider what works for you in your choice. I think that this is implied in your blog, but sometimes people like to learn in certain ways, some like to do, some like to watch others and so on. So where possible you should ensure your own learning style is taken in to account.

Vaughan