PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR STRATEGIC MANAGERS Essay
The development of professional skills is closely intertwined with the personal development. In this regard, I can refer to my personal experience because I am conscious of the fact that I cannot keep progressing professionally, if I fail to develop my personality and certain skills, which may be useful not only in my personal but also professional life. At the same time, the adequate assessment of my professional skills is quite a challenging task because it is difficult to assess yourself. In such a situation, the assessment of third parties may be very helpful. This is why, while analyzing my professional skills and learning style, I referred to people, whose opinion does matter for me, including my educator, my friends and my relative. On the ground of the analysis of my self-perception and the opinion of people, who know me pretty well, I have managed to conduct the detailed analysis of my professional skills and abilities and I have revealed the fact that I still need to keep progressing to succeed in my professional development and to improve my personal development as well.
Definition of personal and professional skills
Professional and personal skills are skills that an individual acquire in the course of his or her professional or personal development respectively, which help him or her to fulfill his or her professional duties and develop his or her personal life.
Professional skills
In fact, the development of professional skills is extremely important for the successful professional development of strategic managers. At the same time, the accurate assessment of professional skills can help to identify existing problems and challenges I have to cope with in the course of my professional development. On the other hand, on analyzing my professional skills I can develop a long-run strategy of the professional development grounded on the use of my full potential, my internal inclinations, my current skills and abilities and my actual career opportunities.
In this regard, I would single out my communication skills, organizational skills, leadership skills, team work skills, and learning skills
SWOT analysis of professional skills
On analyzing my professional skills, I would distinguish my communication skills as one of my major strengths as the strategic manager. At this point, I would like to place emphasis on the fact that, in my opinion communication skills are crucial for the professional development of a strategic manager. The development of my communication skills is essential for my professional development. Among the major strengths of my communication skills, I would mention that my communication skills are well-developed. I can communicate freely with different people and I have no problems in establishment contacts with new people.
Furthermore, I always was concerned with the development of positive relations with my peer, educators, and other people and I have proved to be quite successful in this regard. To put it more precisely, I always communicated with my peers and the process of communication was always interesting for me. In fact, my communication skills facilitate interaction with different people because my ability to establish contacts with people helps me to develop positive interaction with them.
On the other hand, my communication skills have weaknesses, such as the need to develop effective communication styles to make my communication flexible. What I mean is some problems that may arise in the process of communication with other people because I stand on my ground and sometimes I fail to negotiate some issues with people, who disagree with me or have different opinion.
Furthermore, I have well developed learning skills. To find out my learning skills I referred to my educator to assess accurately my learning skills. With the help of my educators, I have managed to identify some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Major strengths of my learning skills are the easiness of learning. In addition, my learning skills increase the effectiveness learning and help me to learn successfully. In addition, my educator has noticed my profound interest to learning.
On the other hand, my learning skills have some weaknesses. In fact, my learning skills do help me to develop my professional skills. However, I still need motivation to keep learning, especially if I do not feel any progress in my professional development and learning; fast progress of science and technologies force me to catch constantly up with the progress.
Also I have leadership skills, which my relative has noticed to be very strong. Strengths of my leadership skills manifest through my ability to hold the leading position in a team or an organization, unite people, and take responsibility for the successful accomplishment of tasks, even if I work in a group or team.
Nevertheless, my leadership skills have some weaknesses. For instance, I still have to develop effective leadership style that matches my personal inclinations. Also I need to learn to negotiate with other people to avoid conflicts.
As for organizational skills, I consulted my peers to learn more about my organizational skills and they helped me to reveal major strengths and weaknesses I have. Among strengths of my leadership skills, I would mention effective scheduling and good organization of my learning and work. Obviously, well-planned schedule facilitates completing tasks I am working at. In such a way, I have no problems with completing tasks in time.
However, I still have some weaknesses for I need to define accurately my priorities, while planning my work and professional development. In addition, long-run planning is another problem I still face.
My team work skills increase the effectiveness of my work because I can rely on my team mates. On the other hand, team work skills have a substantial drawback for I become dependent on team members, instead of relying on myself alone.
Personal and professional skills audit
– Communication skills are: well developed; improve the effectiveness of relations with other people; help to establish new relations;
But need to improve my communication skills to elaborate my communication style; develop tolerance in my communication
– Leadership skills are: innate and developed; help to take the lead and develop effective decision making; increase my career opportunities
But: I need to develop effective leadership style; avoid conflicts, develop conflict management strategies
– Learning skills: facilitate learning; evoke interest to learning; help career and professional development
But: need to focus on learning and keep being motivated, while attempting to develop my career
– Organizational skills: well-developed, good scheduling; effective learning and work;
But: need to define priorities in my schedule
– Team work skills: help to increase the effectiveness of my work due to the help of teammates
But: my dependence on team mates
Thus, my professional and personal skills need substantial improvements. To put it more precisely, I need to elaborate effective communication style because I can communicate with different people but often I ignore their opinion and I grow nervous as my interlocutors disagree with my position. In such a situation, the risk of conflict arises substantially. Similarly, I have to develop my leadership skills to make my leadership style more tolerant to other people because I tend to impose my opinion on other people ignoring their position that also provokes conflicts. As for my organizational skills I need to define my priorities in short-run and long-run perspectives. In addition, while working in a team, I should be able to rely on myself above all. In this regard, I need to develop decision making skills applying them in a team work. In addition, I need to develop conflict management skills. In such a way, I can solve many problems that arise in my personal and professional life. The development of my professional and personal skills will help me to develop positive relationships with other people and facilitate my communication with them making it more effective and productive. At the same time, I will be able to prevent conflicts with other people that are deconstructive not only in my workplace environment but also in my personal life as well.
Learning Style
My skills affect consistently my learning. To assess accurately my learning style, I used VAK/VARK model. According to this model I am a visual learner. In this regard, I should mention perception of visual images associated with certain set of information or learning material. Furthermore, I am inclined to the development of associative thinking to enhance the perception of the learning material and its retention in the memory.
In addition, I should say that I have abstract sequential mind style. To put it more precisely, I like my point to be heard and analyze situations before making a decision or acting. As a rule, I apply logic in solving or finding solution to problems and I do not like spontaneous decisions. I learn better when I have access to experts and references. Also, I need to have stimulating environment and I am able to work alone. However, I have difficulties, while working with people, who have different views. Therefore, I need to learn to negotiate and to develop tolerant communication style
However, I still have some problems because of my learning style, such as the lack of time to deal with a subject thoroughly. Also, I can repeat the same task over and over to reach perfectness. I tend to develop my own rules and norms and I am inclined to expressing emotions and use sentimental thinking. On the other hand, I can be diplomatic while convincing others and I do not monopolize the conversation.
Conclusion
Thus, my skills and learning style affect consistently my professional development. I need to improve my professional skills and learning style using my internal inclinations and my potential.
