PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Personal Development Plan



Personal Development Plan

Introduction

Success does not come easy. Success will come from preparing for any obstacles or challenges that may come my way. Success ultimately comes from knowing yourself and having the ability to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses. Listed are my strengths that have helped me to excel in school and in life.

After carefully reviewing all of the covered topics in this course I am able to identify a couple of situation where becoming more aware of how I interact with others would better my personal and social skills. Areas that I should focus on are becoming more aware of are empathy, listening, and managing conflict skills. I will examine SWOT analyze to define my goals and explain my steps to achieve my goals.

My current situation is that working for a specialist in PR company facilitating communication between key individuals in each business area and developing contacts with each stakeholder group. My role is as a PR manager, develop, implement and deliver a proactive PR Strategy. This goal of this plan is to be able to attain the position of PR manager which requires the following: strategic decision making, analytical thinking skills, and creativity. This report will focus on the key improvement my career. I used two different approaches in SWOT analysis, which helped to define current views of myself. Maslow`s hierarchy of needs pyramid which help me to define my current personal needs and Alan Mumford who analyse management development process and learning styles by using your learning experiences.

Learning and Development

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines empathy as, “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner” (Pinder, 2008, 85). This is a very difficult concept for me to grasp. I have tried in many different situations to use my imagination to feel what others are going through. The area of focusing on my listening skills is well on its way of improving.

I will be consistently challenging myself in this area so that I will be able to master the skill of listening, or at best to almost master the skill. Lastly, managing conflict is also a skill of constant improving. I find that this interpersonal skill is very easy to let “fly out the window” upon becoming emotional. To avoid encounters when I have tendencies to become emotional I will avoid the entire situation. Conflict is such a powerful skill to gain control of. Just when I think I have a problem under control the conflict becomes intensely emotional. Before I realize it I'm back to square one again with just as much conflict as I started with.

Abraham Harold Maslow's theory of human motivation postulates that all human beings, regardless of culture, have basic needs that can be arranged on a hierarchy according to prepotency or pressing drive for gratification (Tosi, ...