Running Meetings
A good manager should manage the meetings as they are the better ways to interact with each other in the organization. And effectively managing the meeting is even crucial to the organization as the meetings, if handed in a wrong way, will create wastage of the resources like money, time and the slowdown of the work. The manager should schedule the meeting according to the availability of the employees and with an agenda. Whether the meeting is a formal or informal, the agenda of the meeting should be followed strictly and the outcomes will be measured by the manager and the further action will be delivered according to the schedule. Hence organizing the meetings is a very essential quality that a manager should be possessing.
Effectively conducting the meetings will increase the chance of meeting the agenda of the proposed meeting. This will give the manager a good platform to exchange the views with his or her subordinates and to take proper decisions according to the suggestions of the team members.
Presentation Skills
The presentation skills will depend on the understanding skills of the manager. A manager should have a complete grip of the information on which he or she is going to present. The presentation skills not only emphasize a person’s knowledge but also his or her communication skills and how the information will be delivered to the viewers. A good presenter will not read the information that had been played in the information document used for the presentation rather elaborate the information and explain in detail. The presentation will be interactive and attractive if the presenter mingles with the audience and make them involve in the presentation. The firm position of the presenter is a boost for the audience.
A manager should possess these skills to make the subordinates understand the essence of the meetings. A good presenter will be able to tell what he or she thinks in the mind and the listeners will easily understand the meaning and essence of the presentation.
Stress Management
Stress is the biggest enemy of the manager. A manager who can control the stress can control the work and the deadlines. A better manager with stress management skills will be able to manage the people and remove the stress from the team and the work. The analysis of the reasons for the stress in the work place is a very important issue and hence the manager should have to concentrate on this rather than increasing the stress in the work place. Once the reason is found out, the manager can figure out a better solution to handle the stress.
A manager should compulsorily possess this quality in order to manage the stress in the work place. However, there are chances that the manager will have to reduce the stressed environment among the employees also to reduce the effect of the stress on the work.
- Personal Skills Audits
According to the above questionnaire, the scores for the different types of learning styles are:
Reflector: 12
Theorist: 15
Pragmatist: 21
Activist: 15
My learning style is pragmatist according to the questionnaire.
Though the pragmatist prefers to be aggressive and wants to do the work on his or her own, there are few weaknesses which will affect the nature of the work. The strengths and the weaknesses of the pragmatist are:
- Strengths
A pragmatist generally relies upon the facts rather than the theories and will always try to experiment to make good output. Also apart from the existence knowledge, the pragmatist will try to gather more information from different sources to present before the audience.
- Weaknesses
I generally acts for an issue or work without any caution and thus this created many problems. Without taking into consideration the basic needs of the audience in the meetings or presentations, I will generally make different presentation and this created a chaos sometimes. I can’t be friendlier with the people and hence I can’t force them to work. I won’t rely upon the friends or the other people to improve the skills. This type of nature severely affected my presentation skills and running the meetings where proper output has not been delivered.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis of the personal and professional skills as a part of personal development plan is to identity the strengths of the manager, what are the weaknesses that will hinder the workflow of the manager, what the opportunities that helped the manager to improve the skills and the threats that is slowing down the skills improvement process.
Strengths
- My strong interpersonal skills, communication skills and the mentoring skills will help me to make good companions in the work. Even these skills help me to manage the team effectively and provide the team members with good training sessions so as to make them technically very strong.
- Time management helped me in effectively prioritizing the work and thus finished the work before the deadlines. I even made my team members to complete the tasks with utmost dedication by strict time deadlines.
- The stress management skills through meditation and prioritization of the work will help me to achieve good promotions and heights in the life.
Weaknesses
- A strict discipline is needed in the work but though I’m a manager, I cannot order or demand the team members or my subordinates to finish the work. This is a great hurdle in my life which is affecting my annual appraisals and appreciations.
- The participation style I possess is very weak and I cannot participate in the long duration meetings. This will affect my performance in the long term.
Opportunities
- I have strong planning and implementation skills which will guide me to understand the future technologies and processes and thus will update myself with the same.
- I can grasp the new things very fast and thus will try to learn fast. This is the added advantage which I possess and can improve my skills set.
Threats
- Heavy work is frequently disturbing my personal life as well as professional life. Due to the high stressed environment I’m unable to allocate time to learn new things and spare time with my family.
- The deadlines of the existing projects in which I’m working are very narrow and I didn’t get proper time to concentrate on the extra education through distance learning.
- I usually compare myself with the others in terms of knowledge. This may be constructive sometimes but many times this will be destructive. And this type of nature is spoiling my relations with my team members and also my friends.
- Personality Development Plan
The personality development plan that had been drawn by me is as follows:
- Making presentations
Strengths and weaknesses
Making presentation is a very tough task and same is the case with me. However, I would like to manage the presentation by getting a good grip on the subject on which I’m giving the presentation. My way of communication helped me to improve the standards of the presentation. However, the ascent is the problem every time I give a presentation. Different sets of people are in the company and hence they can’t understand my English ascent.
Action taken
I tried to analyze myself to improve the English ascent so that it can be easily understood to the different types of people. I mingled with my friends and team members and thus taken help from them in understanding the communication.
Monitoring
In the initial stages, I faced problem with the development of the communication in the presentations. But as the time passed, I got accustomed to the different English ascents across the organization and thus helped me a lot to overcome the problem.
- Time management
Strengths and weaknesses
I unnecessarily waste time on the unwanted tasks in the work place. This reduced my capability in fulfilling the job before the deadline. Though I was able to complete my work without any help, I was unable to complete it before the specified time. But I will prioritize my work and will schedule the work according to the time deadlines. This saved me time in completing the work.
Action Taken
I have developed a way of handling the time with most prioritized schedule such that I will not miss out the deadlines. I will perform the tasks according to their importance and thus will reduce the wastage of time.
Feedback
Due to the strict schedule I followed, I was able to manage the time and it took me nearly 3 months to adjust to this schedule. Still, I have to develop the fast ways of finishing the job by taking the help from others if I find difficulty in managing the work.
- Running meetings
Strengths and weaknesses
Running meetings is very tough and being a manager I have taken necessary steps to organize the meetings according to the schedule. I’ll schedule the meeting with a proper agenda and care will be taken not to waste the time on the side topics and will try to come straight to the point. This helped me a lot to increase my ability to conduct the meeting and draw a possible conclusion from the meeting.
Action Taken
Though I’m good at scheduling the meeting and organizing them with proper agenda, there is still scope for the development. I have tried to allow the other team members to speak in the meetings such that they will express their views for the better conclusions.
Feedback
This increased the participation in the meetings and I was able to conclude the meeting with the fulfillment of the objectives. However, I have to take necessary steps to increase the participation of the new members in the team. I have to improve my communication in the meetings. This development took me around one and half month due to the less frequency of the meetings in a particular month.
- Stress management
Strengths and weaknesses
I’m in a better position in the office when it comes in finishing the work before the deadline. I came to know that the pressure that built in fulfilling the deadline is responsible for the stress. Hence, I clearly manage the work according to the schedule and thus finish the work before the deadline. However, the systematic approach was not accomplished by me and thus this created a stressed environment sometimes.
Action Taken
To reduce the stress, I will do meditation, listen to the music (particularly natural sounds available in Youtube), and roam with friends. I will play indoor games as well as outdoor sports to make myself busy with the schedule always and thus get refreshed.
Feedback
The way I followed really helped me a lot to reduce the stress in the work place. The only thing I have to do is to improve the waiting period between the work schedules. Due to the strict and restless work schedule, I’m unable to concentrate on the personal life. This took me nearly 2 months to overcome the stress at least partially.
- Conclusions
For a manager to excel at personal life as well as the professional life, it is essential to identify the skills, find out the ways to improve the skills and thus implement them in the future. To identify the skills, Personal skills audits were used and thus the personal and professional skills like time management, arranging the meetings in the organization, stress management and making presentations. Personality development plan was designed for the future course of plans to improve the personal and professional skills. In order to do this, I have chosen SMART objectives to set the short term goals and long term goals and the SWOT analysis to identify the present strengths of the manager, weaknesses of the manager, Opportunities that turn up in the development of the skills and threats which need to taken into consideration. Thus, a manager should always concentrate on the improvement of both the personal and professional skills and thus this will help himself as well as the organization.
References:
[1] Career Change Skills - Three Great Ways to Do a Personal Skills Audit Before Changing Careers, By Cherry Douglas
[2] http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/leadership-skills.html
[3] http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_swot.htm
[4] Management skills for new managers, 2004, Carol W. Ellis
[5] Social and Personality Development, 2008, David R. Shaffer
[6] http://www.how-to-change-careers.com/personal-skills-audit.html
[7] J Grant and F Stanton, 2001, The Effectiveness of Continuing Professional Development, ISBN 0-9044-73260, p 39