Managerial And Professional Development: Learning Styles And Continuous Improvement

Importance of Personal and Professional Development

Question:

Discuss about the Learning Strategies and Learning Styles.

Managerial and professional development of an individual is an important factor in the life of a person. In the current world, Changes plays an integral role in grooming the personality of an entity as it gives new direction to a person. Professional skills are essential in creating a profile of a person. This project report is emphasizes on two important aspects such as continuous professional development and learning styles adopted by a person in their daily life. Current investigation focuses various learning styles such as Kolb learning style and Honey and Mumford learning style. Johari window is selected as important model for the continuous professional development of an individual. Focus of the current project lies on enhancing the existing skills of an individual in uplifting the current conditions of the business environment. Professional skills of a person are evaluated on the basis of present as well as future skills of a person. Role of manager gets increases with the passage of time by enhancing their current skills and attributes. This study designed especially for meeting professional as well as personal skills of an entity to avail the benefit arises out of the future of an entity.

Personal and professional development of an individual is essential to grow more in their career. An individual gain more knowledge to strengthen their current skills which is important for shaping a person’s entire personality. Different shades of a personality of an individual are categorized into both personal and professional categories. Professional development of an individual states that various learning styles adopted by an entity in redefining their current skills or attributes (Martin and Thomson, 2017). Professional skills are required in a person as this opens up their future career path by attracting wide number of opportunities. Professional skills may include communicational skills, etiquette, behaviour, commitment level of a person. Changes are integral part of a person as they are required to be flexible and dynamic enough to change their traditional work practices by accepting external market changes at the workplace. Working in a flexible environment increases thinking power of an individual to learn various new things to expand their current profile.

It is one of the aspects of professional development in which the personality and skills of a person are groomed. It is a process which tracks all the skills and attributes which help a manager to gain both formal as well as informal skills at the workplace. Training is given to the candidates who enrolled in a firm to make them understand about the work culture of the business enterprise. Learning attitude of a person is important as this encourage an entity to learn new things and work in a complex business environment (Greany and Maxwell, 2017). Development plan is act like an action plan that guides a person to improve the future skills and the capability suitable for the different working environments. T shows that continuous development of an individual’s personality by amending their skills and attributes for the various working situations. A manager need to act differently in several situations arises at the workplace by crafting different strategies to enhance the entire business performance (Kempen and Steyn, 2017). Training is part of the development in which training offer to the candidate to improve their skills and expand their potential skills to avail the benefit from all the challenges takes places in the future.

Professional Development and Training

A manager working in a XYZ company provides various services to all the customers of the business. It plays a role of front office manager, whose majority of time spent in interacting with the clients to represent the whole company. Current issues faced by a manager to deliver their services to its various clients. Lack of communications skills spoils the image of an entity in front of its customers as this reduces the entire customer satisfaction level. Another issues faced by a person in dealing with various consumers at the workplace is lack of training needs (Breen and et.al., 2016). A manager needs to update their skills to match up with the external market changes takes places in their external business environment. Poor delegations of work responsibilities among its subordinates create misbalance in the daily routine work of an entity. Misbalance in the responsibility delegation creates conflicts among the superior and subordinates which, in turn, increases the workload of the manager.

I need to focus on all my current skills and potential skills and attributes to attract the attention of most of the buyers towards the services delivered by me. Strategies are required to be crafted by me after evaluating my strengths and weaknesses which is essential to welcome the future opportunities in my life. Relying on my best skills, I can get job promotion by creating a rapport in front of my boss (DiPaola and Hoy, 2013). My skills will showcase my true personality in front of the external party. Being a self motivated, I need to build relations with all my team members to lighten the pressure of work as peer at the workplace is essential to complete the complex work with higher ease. Talking with friends at workplace increases my communication skills and reduces my hesitation to talk freely with my boss. Meeting and conferences arranged at the workplace enhances my leading skills to lead the whole meeting and end up with conclusion.

I need to develop goals to enhance my career with different perspectives to avail the benefit associated with all the goals framed by me. I can prepare different goals such as personal goals, development goals and the organizational goals. These kinds of goals an the objectives prepared by me to encourage my spirit in accessing various opportunities lies in the external business environment (Johnson and Golombek, 2016). Individual aims and targets are based on emphasizing on the skills that requires improvement such as communication skills. Communication skills are important in both in personal life as well as in the professional life. It is important to interact with my boss in negotiating with the increment in the salary, asking for flexible timing in the working hours. If I want to switch my job then, my interacting skills will assure nee employer about my skills and attributes by marking a good impression on them. Various approaches, I can use for the professional development of my personality using different training methods (Weerakkody and et.al., 2016). Training methods enhances my vocational talent in upgrade my current as well as future experiences at the workplace. Most important factor require for myself development, is up gradation of several skills to gain more benefit by accepting lots of opportunities takes places at the workplace. Different methods that I can use in improving my skill and attributes involve case study method, educational certificates, professional counselling. These methods are regarded as the best suitable as getting educational certificate will refine my current skills as this add additional value in my Resume and my professional background. Employer spent expenditure in increasing the current skills of their employees to save the cost of recruiting new employees from outside the organisation (Qablan and et.al., 2015). Filling vacancy of the new post within the firm by giving opportunity to the employees currently working in a business entity increases the motivation of all the users. This practice adopted by an entity creates loyalty among its employees which, in turn, results into higher level of cooperation among the personnel. I have seen in various companies that trust of an employer on its employees by offering different opportunities will results into higher return generated by an employee to strive hard for their company in creating a good position of a firm in the external market.

Issues Faced by a Manager

I have implemented a different learning style that is explained in detail to understand its pros and cons. These kinds of style of teaching would be helpful for me in utilizing my talent for the betterment of my employer (Tewari, 2016). One of the learning styles evaluated by me is Kolb Learning style, whose focus lies on giving training to an individual in offering both practical as well as theoretical lessons to all the candidates suitable for various workplace situations.

This learning style can compare with compass which has four different directions along with sub commands that guides an individual according to its behaviour. First circle of this learning style involves Concrete experience that is feeling of a person, Reflective denotes watching, Abstract means thinking and lastly Experimentation depicts doing. Inner circle of this style has another four parts such as Accommodating that include feeling and doing, Diverging means feeling and watching, Assimilating refers to Thinking and watching and converging signifies thinking and watching (Schmeck, ed., 2013). There is a two path that covers four in the external cover such as Perception continuum that means how an individual think about things and another suggest that Processing continuum which refers to how a person do things.

Advantages

• This learning style is suitable for large number of people
• It is beneficial for the people with homogenous interests

Limitations

• It is lengthy procedure which takes more time of a person
• It is not a cost effective option as this learning styles differ from one situation to another.

It has different stages used to give lessons to an individual to train them according to the existing working culture of an entity. Various phases of this learning style include Reflector, Activist, Theorist and Pragmatist style of education. Reflector is person who evaluates each and every alternative properly and then takes suitable decisions. Activist is people, who try every option with curiosity and open minded attitude to gain different knowledge (DeCoux, 2016). Theorist is a personality who seeks logic in different situations and takes actions in an analytical ways. Lastly Pragmatists is a person who is practical in different situations at the workplace or in a personal life. This person is down to earth who just take decisions and risks to face the trouble. It include trial and error approach adopted by this individual.

Advantages

• It covers different personality types of an entity
• It is suitable in various situations of the personal as well as in the professional life.

Disadvantages

• Pragmatist approach of is not fruitful for an individual as this result into failure of a project.

Johari Window is a model use to evaluate the continuous professional development needs of an individual. Personal skills of a manager is analyze with the help of this important technique (Rajaram, 2016). It has different areas that require in evaluating the relationship of an entity with all other members at the workplace. This includes open area in which a person is free to talk and interact with various person in their surroundings, hidden aspects suggest that a person has right to disclose information to their peer or friends. Blind phase suggest that third party make perceptions about an entity and the personality of a person. It is like a blind spot which would be removed by the person itself (Cox, Clutter, Sergakis and Harris, 2013). Unknown phase depicts that motive of a candidate is not recognize by other individuals at the workplace or in a personal life of an entity. The trait or a skill of a person is fully ignored by the society and the fellow members of a person.

Strategies for Personal and Professional Development

It can summarize from the above assignment that effective learning style adopt by a manager is Honey and Mumford as compare to other learning style that is Kolb style. Honey and Mumford is selected as this describes four different personality types of an individual. Kolb style is not selected as it is complex learning style which is not preferable for a person in different situations at the workplace. Johari window is a model use to analyze all the needs of an individual in the process of continuous professional development.

References

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DeCoux, V. M., 2016. Kolb's learning style inventory: A review of its applications in nursing research. Journal of Nursing Education. 29(5). pp.202-207.

DiPaola, M. and Hoy, W. K., 2013. Principals improving instruction: Supervision, evaluation, and professional development. IAP.

Greany, T. and Maxwell, B., 2017. Evidence-informed innovation in schools: aligning collaborative research and development with high quality professional learning for teachers. International Journal of Innovation in Education.

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Johnson, K. E. and Golombek, P. R., 2016. Mindful L2 teacher education: A sociocultural perspective on cultivating teachers' professional development. Routledge.

Kempen, M.E. and Steyn, G.M., 2017. An investigation of teachers’ collaborative learning in a continuous professional development programme in South African special schools. Journal of Asian and African Studies. 52(2).  pp.157-171.

Martin, T. and Thomson, I., 2017. Adaptive capacity in the Pacific region: a study of continuous professional development for in-service teachers in Kiribati. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, pp.1-16.

Qablan, A., Mansour, N., Alshamrani, S., Aldahmash, A. and Sabbah, S., 2015. Ensuring Effective Impact of Continuing Professional Development: Saudi Science Teachers' Perspective. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 11(3).

Rajaram, S., 2016. Learning Style Preferences in First Year Medical Students-A Descriptive Study. International Journal of Physiology. 4(2). pp.123-126.

Schmeck, R. R. ed., 2013. Learning strategies and learning styles. Springer Science & Business Media.

Tewari, S., 2016. Continuous professional development of school teachers in india: learning from international successes. International Education and Research Journal. 2(12).

Weerakkody, V., Osmani, M., Waller, P., Hindi, N. and Al-Esmail, R., 2016. Situating Continuing Professional Development in Life Long Learning in Qatar. International Journal of Business and Management, 11(11), p.81.

Yazici, K., 2017. The Relationship between Learning Style, Test Anxiety and Academic Achievement. Universal Journal of Educational Research. 5(1). pp.61-71.

Online

Johari window, 2017. Available through: < https://www.businessballs.com/johariwindowmodel.htm> [Accessed on 31^st July 2017].

Kolb learning styles, 2017.Available through: < https://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm> [Accessed on 31^st July 2017].

Vagg. J., 2010. Learning styles. Available through: < https://jonvagg.wordpress.com/tag/learning-style/> [Accessed on 31^st July 2017].