The personal development planning is crucial for the successful professional development and individual progress.
What is meant here is the fact that it is necessary to set a clear and attainable goals which an individual needs to achieve in certain period of time. In such a way, it is possible to ensure a steady personal development and progress of professional career. At any rate, I strongly believe that the efficient personal development planning is an essential condition of my successful professional career and, what is more, it is important for the formation of my personal philosophy, my views and beliefs. In fact, the personal development planning inevitably involves important issues which influence my personality. In this regard, I should say that, at the moment, I am primarily concerned with my education, development of my professional skills and abilities, formation of a positive social experience and overall employment as a sort of reward or logical ending of my study. At the same time, I am conscious of the fact that to meet all the goals I have defined, I will need to work hard.
First of all, I should say that my personal development planning starts with the definition of strategic objectives I have to meet. My primary goal is to succeed in my studies, but this is not the ultimate goal since the graduation itself is of little importance, as the matter fact. Instead, what does matter are professional and personal skills and abilities they I have to develop. In this respect, I should focus on the development of professional skills, including communication skills, analytical thinking, logic, attention, and organizational skills. Basically, the development of communication skills is essential because I need to communicate with people regularly and the effectiveness of communication influences the development of interpersonal relationships. Therefore, in order to be able to develop positive interpersonal relationships I need to have communication skills, which can facilitate the process of communication and it will be easier for me to present myself in a positive light. At the same time, the communication skills also implies the ability to listen and adequately perceive what other people are telling me. This is very important because often people do not really understand each because they do not really listen to each other.
Instead, they are concerned with their own problems and what they are talking about.
Furthermore, I will need analytical thinking, logic and attention in my professional work because logic and attention allows me to better understand even the most complicated situations and cases, while analytical thinking allows me to assess adequately the situation and take correct decisions. In the future, I will definitely need analytical skills even more because, when I start my professional work, I will count for myself solely. Hence, my analytical abilities will, to a significant extent, define the effectiveness of my professional work, because it is impossible to take correct and effective decisions with poor analytical skills.
Naturally, I am expecting to make a successful professional career and, this is why I need to develop my organizational skills. In fact, I need good organizational skills at the moment because I always enjoy to take part in various social activities, including volunteering, but to be truly efficient I need to organize my work properly. What is meant here is the fact that I have noticed that sometimes I am wasting my time being unable to start working because I do not have a plan of actions and I cannot properly organize the work. In addition, while working in a team, I also need organizational skills because it is very difficult to work spontaneously in a group where the work of its members is not coordinated.
Obviously, employers will highly appreciate the aforementioned skills because the communication skills will contribute to the development of positive interpersonal relations with other employees, while this will contribute to the formation of a positive organizational culture, which is crucial for the positive organizational performance.
Analytical skills, logic and attention of employees are also highly appreciated by employers, especially today, when employees often work autonomously and employers do not use strict system of control over employees.
Consequently, employers need employees capable to work autonomously and avoiding errors. In this regard, analytical thinking, attention and logic are particularly significant. As for organizational skills, employers always appreciate employees who are able to work in a team, who are self-organized and are able to organize the work of a team.
All these skills may help me in my professional work. I can be employed in different fields. For instance, I can find a job in a public organization and become a volunteer, managing a unit of a non-profitable organization. On the basis of the skills I am going to develop I hope I will be able to achieve a tremendous success in this field. Moreover, I am extremely interested in such work because I have already worked as a volunteer. I believe that people should help each other and the volunteer work makes my life purposeful since I feel that I can help other people. In this regard, I need to development my professional and personal skills and abilities. Alternatively, I could work in the field of education or make a scientific career focusing on the study of law. This is also a very interesting direction of the development of my professional career. However, to succeed in this field, I will need to develop my teaching skills, which I do not really have at the moment. Hence, work in a non-profitable organization is more interesting for me.
At the same time, employers are very concerned with the qualification of employees and I think that employers would also appreciate the development of conflict management skills as well as such personal characteristics as tolerance, because people working in non-profitable organizations work in very severe environment. Such organizations often face a problem of shortage of financial resources, while people they are helping to are, as a rule, marginalized. In this respect, it should be said that I have poor conflict management skills because I rather tend to avoid conflicts than manage them. Nevertheless, I understand that these skills are particularly important when you work with disadvantaged people, who are often discriminated and oppressed.
Nevertheless, I believe that I can develop my conflict management skills, although I will probably need the assistant of professional who can develop a special training program for me. In fact, I think that the most efficient to overcome this weakness is to attend training courses where I can learn in details different strategies of conflict management.
Finally, I should say that the efficient personal development planning should be based on a clear action plan. My action plan includes several important stages. Firstly, it is important to define goals I am going to achieve in terms of my personal development plan (the development of skills and abilities which I consider to be essential in my professional career). After that I should define the major methods and approaches that I can use to meet the goals of the personal development plan. Thirdly, it is necessary to define priorities. In other words, I need to define which skills I should develop first, in what direction I should develop my professional career and what to focus my study on. Fourthly, it is necessary to define the timeline of the implementation of my plan. For instance, by the end of the year I should be able four different techniques of analytical thinking. After that it is important to develop a system of assessment of my progress. In such a way, I will be able to assess the level of my personal and professional development and I will see whether I meet the goals of my plan or not. In this respect, interviews of other people and my academic successes may be used for the assessment. In fact, the adequate assessment will allow me to introduce changes in my plan if necessary. Finally, I need to control myself in order to keep working on my personal development. Hence, self-control is also a strong motivation for me.