University of Bradford School of Management
UB No: 06017753
MBA (Full Time)
Module Name: Personal Development Planning
MAN 4228 M
Tutor: Colin Neville
Submission Date: 30.05.2007
Table of Contents
- Development Action Plan – Skill 1
- Development Action Plan – Skill 2
- Development Action Plan – Skill 3
- Reflective Account
Appendix 1.1 Feedback MS-Excel Workshop
Development action plan – Skill 1
Development Action Plan – Skill 2
Development Action Plan - Skill 3
Reflective Account
IT Skill: The Third skill I had chosen, it was IT skill. Solid IT skills are becoming increasingly important and challenging for a professional to work with
Time management is the ability to optimize how someone spends his/her time in order to extract the best possible results in the shortest period of time. Being a professional individual managing time is very important. For me, studying time management ...
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Development Action Plan – Skill 2
Development Action Plan - Skill 3
Reflective Account
IT Skill: The Third skill I had chosen, it was IT skill. Solid IT skills are becoming increasingly important and challenging for a professional to work with
Time management is the ability to optimize how someone spends his/her time in order to extract the best possible results in the shortest period of time. Being a professional individual managing time is very important. For me, studying time management has been an extremely worthwhile endeavour. The sad truth is that I was so incredibly bad at managed my time. In the past I always struggled to manage my time and tried to do things on time and properly. Moreover when I started my MBA I realised that managing my time was more important than any other thing. It was stressful to cope with lot of things in the first semester. I found difficulties got ready in the morning, reach in the class on time, attending tutorials, making assignment with in the time frame, come back home and prepare food, managing my time for study, spare some time for leisure. All these activities were part of my MBA and my personal life.
I thought the general mindset of time management is far more important than any other objective. And the mindset of time management is simply that I value my time. It's really a self-esteem issue. I concluded that if I see my life as valuable and meaningful, then I will value my time as well.
When I started to think that What is time management? I found it quite simple. I evaluated that time management consist on two basic rules, which are as follows.
- Decide what to do
- Do it
First instance, I presumed it was very straight forward but when I started to practice, it became more difficult and complicated. But with the help of Colin Neville’s journals, meeting and by attending his workshops I found the different ways to manage my time. He told me some techniques to manage my time. I began learning of time management at the level of tasks and actions.
First of all I evaluated that what were my roles, goals and aims in MBA and furthermore in life, but I've since been approaching it from a top-down perspective. Now I'm far more concerned with doing the right thing than with doing things right. I spend a considerable amount of time reviewing my beliefs, aims and actions.
I believe the most important thing I can do to manage my time is to strive to understand reality as accurately as possible. Everything I've experienced, everything I think, I know must somehow be integrated into my approach to time management.
The Personal Development Planning module has played a significant role in this whole process of identifying this weakness and building upon to improve this skill. I was able to take responsibility of whole learning process and the learning journal and the workshops helped in summarizing events and identifying the deficiencies and most importantly how to over come on these deficiencies. The development action plan gave me control over how to go through this learning process and what steps are needed to do this.
I believe that I considerably improved myself to manage my time by 50 to 75 percent. In future when I will start my job as a manager I will be able to manage my time effectively.
Effective Curriculum Vitae (CV), is really important since it is easy to understand and shows off your plus points. I have always been keen to create my CV in a professional and interesting manner, but was not able to look upon critically. However, it was during my MBA that I realized that CV writing needs a separate set of skills. Being an international student and coming from a different educational and professional system, it was difficult to adjust my CV to the British employment requirement standards where CV is an essential part of assessment. I still remember when I first time applied for a job in a British company with a three and half page CV and I never got a response from the employer. The Effective Learning Service (ELS) and professional tutors played a vital role in improving my CV writing skills. The different workshops and meetings with tutors conducted by ELS helped me improve various aspects of these essential skills.
Personal Development Planning module provided me an opportunity to take this CV writing skill as a separate task and progress through the learning process. The main areas which I identified to be improved were as follows:
- Personal and contact information
- Education and qualifications
- Work history
- Skills relevant to the job
- Interests
- References
- Sub-Area
- Covering Letter
Keeping a proper record of my tasks and identifying areas of improvement helped me self assess and depict those assessments on two pieces of paper in a proper, interesting and professional way. Learning journal helped me evaluate my skills, and let me decide how to address this information on paper.
The development action plan helped me organize and let me work through a systematic way to improve my skills within a given time frame. The feed back provided to me by my tutors was helpful in improving my CV writing skills. This identified a broad area of improvement and I worked through those deficiencies systematically. Later on, I was able to focus more on my CV and the covering letter which is an essential part of CV. I also compared my CV with my colleagues, took their feedback and in return shared my knowledge on CV writing with them. This helped me benchmark my own CV performance with them and I improved my CV writing skills.
The great achievement of my CV writing skill is that I got an MBA Project from an international organization which was listed by the university. I strongly believe that ESL, my tutors and learning journals played a vital role to improve my CV. In result I have able to introduce myself to the organization and got the MBA Project from an international organization. It gave me a lot of confidence.
Now at the end of my third semester, I am planning to search for part time job and I feel more confident for myself and comfortable enough to apply to any organization. I am sure I shall be able to get a job with help of CV writing skills.
UB: 06017753