Designing A Professional Schedule And Training Essay For An Event.

Part 1

Design a professional schedule to support the planning of the event, which demonstrates the timings and resourcing prior to the two-day event. In addition, design a training pack to include a range of activities, seminars, workshops, team-building activities and break-out sessions. One of the sessions included should be a 2-hour session on ‘team dynamics’ which your team will be delivering. 

Part 2
Design the two-hour workshop session based on ‘team dynamics’ to include a 10-minute presentation, interactive links to suitable sites and an activity sheet that will require delegates to take part in some form of team-building task.  The presentation and team building task are to be presented to your peers as a taster session for the 2 day event. The presentation slides for the findings should be submitted with speaker notes. You are required to make effective use of headings, bullet points and subsections as appropriate. 

The Overview to this assignment is

I am working as a Business IT Trainer within Team Tech, a large business IT Support Company.  During the recent appraisal process it was identified that staff required further training with regards to their employability skills.

This is a professional schedule to support the planning of the event, which demonstrates the timings and resourcing prior to the two-day event.

A PPT on a 10-minute presentation, based on the workshop session based on ‘team dynamics’.

Duration: 2 hours. 

Effective and efficient communication is essential to business communication, Team building starts with effective and personal and interpersonal skills which are important to organisational structure. Team building creates team work and fosters a positive environment in the sphere of any group activity. In designing and implementing this team building session I have, understood that the various group activities are designed to motivate the employees to work better and more coordination among the employees is achieved. The observations show the importance of building interpersonal skills that helped achieve different targets of the activities assigned to the individuals. Through the many activities I have noted that employees having an excellent communication skill set can very efficiently contribute to the workplace environment and provide an enriching experience to both employees and the management. Effective communication skills are very essential to any cooperation and collaboration within the projects assigned during the team building exercises, also for project implementation, providing competent service to customers, sharing of ideas in training sessions and participating in other varied business scenarios. Through this exercise, my effective feedback is that team building events and activities have improved the cooperative and teamwork culture within the study group. This has led to an effective application of interpersonal skills and team dynamics within my team during the design and delivery process.

My own interpretation of this team building session has been to understand and implement the importance end dynamics of working within a tem, and the team’s own workings when placed in diverse working environments, such as the many exercises that the teams and employees were subjected to. The exercises were all designed to properly activate the teams into perusing their individual goals in a team setting. The groups, through the tasks, were subjected to many activities where their group dynamics were showcased. The teams themselves were very complainant and they learnt to understand the division of labour within the group. Team leaders came up who structured the teams, allocated the individual tasks and were effectively responsible for the operations of the team, the progress of the task or project and ultimately the delivery of the task by the entire team. The individuals thus developed the team building exercise and efficiently delivered on the tasks. Th employees learnt to work within the team and work together within the groups to achieve the targets and set their individual goals. The individual tasks sand goals were set and a follow-up of the activities revealed that the individuals had themselves organised themselves into an orderly fashion to achieve the desired goals.

Part 1

Team dynamics are the interactions that take place within a group of individuals in a team. These interactions can have a strong impact on the dynamics and how a team operates within themselves and how these interactions influence group dynamics and group behaviour, these can have complex effects on team dynamics. Team dynamics can be understood from factors that impact group behaviour. These namely personality styles of team members, team assigned roles, team tasks and dynamics of allocation of different tasks, team culture that organisational structure and processes and procedures of problem solving techniques to solve these problems.

Group dynamics, describes the effect of different behaviours in group members, and on the overall group. Any group with a positive group dynamic is very easy to spot, it has a level of trust amongst the group members, they trust each other in a collective decision making process, the creativity of the individuals of the group increase as a whole in any6 group exercise. Within a group with poor group dynamics, individual behaviour influences group outcomes. The result being, the group decisions may not be influenced altogether, or the group might make the wrong decisions, it is because the group members did not properly explore the different options very effectively. Bad group dynamics are caused by many factors some of which include, an overall weak leadership, if a team lacks a strong and capable leader, nay other dominant leader can essentially take over in his place, within the group, this leads to lack of focus or direction and infighting within the group. Excessive obsession with gaining authority, this might happen when individuals who want to be associated with any of the decisions of a leader and very often hold back, from expressing their opinion to any member of the group. Another dynamic that takes place within a group is blocking of any flow of information within the group, individuals can become the aggressor as the person who is inappropriately outspoken. The individual who is often times critical of other group member’s ideas, the withdrawer is the person who avoids any participation in any discussion process, there are also individuals   who are boastful or dominates the conversation at times. Group thinking is also a team dynamic that happens when people reach a decision solely for the desire to adhere to a group consciousness. This prevents alternative thinking. Free riding off others backs is also a form of group dynamic in which some group members do not sufficiently participate in the group. Some team members' perceptions can also lead to negative and poor group dynamics, this happens when team members feel that they are being very harshly judged in the team.

My own assessment of the group involved me knowing the team better in order for me to effectively participate in the process and provide a proper assessment of the team building activity as a whole. It started with knowing my team properly. Being a leader, I needed to provide guidance for the development of my group, so I started by learning about the scenarios that a group undergoes as it develops itself accordingly. Next was identifying the positive and negative group dynamics accordingly, and how they would impact the group and in what ways. This helped me deal with any potential problems that arisen through team conflicts.  I had to define the roles and responsibilities very carefully, I created a team character. Teams often lack focus or direction very quickly and people struggle to understand their individual roles within the group. I focused on breaking down barriers to team building, using team – building exercises to help every member to get to know each other much better, the exercises eased the process of new colleagues to join the group, and thus any difference was swiftly eliminated. I also focused on effective communication both intra and inter group communication was encouraged by me, to foster a sense of understanding and focusing that everyone within the group is communicating very effectively and all channels and forms of communications are encouraged like emails, messages, mails, meetings, and peer shared documents, for example – to avoid any unnecessary ambiguity. I also paid individual attention to individual team members to focus on activities and foster a sense of ownership and individuality within the group.

Part 2

While conducting this group activity study I have encountered several problems regarding group interaction and group dynamics. This involved my, discussing and problem-solving and its importance when I was planning and running my training event. Three were many challenges that were discussed previously in my study. Such activities involved the use of critical problem solving skills, their correct identification and proper management of resources to identify a roadmap for problem solving. The report also includes a discussion of various problem-solving techniques and approaches. It tries to justify the solution methodologies used during task.

At first I would like to discuss the various critical problem solving techniques that were employed in the team building exercise. When a group of employees is engaged with one another the group potential increases. If the team needs creativity an unproductive session make occur. Employees might not participate, they may over participate, they may discuss the problem but without a vision towards actionable steps, meetings may take too long, wasting time, a solution might never come.

There many strategies to better group problem solving,

These include selecting a leader, identifying them, to assign responsibilities to them such assign responsibilities to these people, the person must be put in charge of a number of responsibilities. This person must be the final decision maker, the final idea must come from them, and this person must be the final person who will close the plan and be the final arbitrator of all assigned actions of the team. The right team must be selected in order to take the steps to create the brainstorming sessions and group activities of the teams. People must not be selected for the purpose of selection alone they must be properly assigned to the teams. The most productive candidate must be chosen for the task and proper duties must be assigned to them for the optimum effect. The participants must be mandated to participate in proper idea sharing of ideas. All people in the team must be properly included in a group building exercise. The problem must be properly identified and defined for any team activity to identify it is done. The right questions must be asked in order to probe the right assigned team task. The explorative thinking must be there for every team member to properly identify the issues and then propose proper ways in order to identify the problem accordingly. Proper criteria must be identified for any assessment to properly take place, properly identifying the methods of problem solving methodologies must be identified, any distinct criteria must be clearly be mentioned. The problem must be very acutely be analysed so that the team is engaged in the operation of the task. Proper problem identification must be there so that the individuals associated with the task must be made aware of all the problems. All ideas must be properly analysed so that any plan of action can be properly be identified by the team very effectively. Another form of problem identification is that alternate solutions must be identified so that the terms of the assignment is properly met by the team members. Alternate solutions must be properly met so that the team is aware of any alternate plan of action. The evaluation must be properly done to assess the situation and proper problem identification. An action plan must be set in motion to properly analyse and develop the plan accordingly. The action plan must be properly be implemented so that the teams have a proper understanding of the problem scenarios and be prepared for any outcomes. However the action must be followed up by a proper feedback mechanism so that the terms of the plan must be properly be met according to the requirements of the problem. The outcomes of the entire must be properly be studied and follow-up must be properly done on account of the action.

A training pack will include these activities

Next the process of critically discussion of the task is evaluated on principle. I have taken the responsibility of proper evaluation of the task and have taken up certain measures to identify the parameters of the problems that have arisen. Critical problem solving involves the proper categorical broad problem solving of the team building activity undertaken.  This involves the broad base system of identification of problems and finding out their solutions, formulating the arguments, constructing knowledge to apply these concepts in the process of arriving at any solution of the problem. To be effective thinkers, the teams need tolerate proper claims have proper assessment and proper understanding capacity to understand and analyse vast amounts of data and form well-seasoned claims on the subject. In addition, to developing strong problem solving skills, teams need to build up capacity to analyse diverse situations, and devise strategies for solving problems, implement proper strategies, and then evaluate both their solutions and their processes. Three aspects of critical thinking need to be implemented in order to critically analyse and evaluate the performance the team’s performance. Effective Reasoning is one such process, is defined as the ability to create claims and support them with logical evidence, implement a logical course of understanding  a logical course of action to any problem solving process. The reasoning is the most vital function to a critical analysis of a problem solving action. Decision Making is the next most critical process of problem solving. The ability to identify positions for a choice, to articulate the criteria for evaluating those criteria, and to evaluate those options based on the mentioned criteria, thus it is a crucial process of process evaluation. The final process is actually solving the problem based on the understood principles of problem solving and critical thinking .The ability to properly identify the key questions is a major problem, it is used to develop possible plans for solving the issue, to follow through on the plan of action, and to evaluate and revaluate both the success of the plan and solution and even analyse potential failures of the team activity. Thus, this concludes the critical thinking aspect of this critique on the application, of critical reasoning and my experience of it during the planning and delivery process of the event plan.

A reflection of my own employability skills and consideration of my own Continuous Professional Development (CPD) needs. The analysis is subdivided into three parts described below.

With regards to my personal development agenda, I set aside my CPD goals for long term plans. I am presently working as the IT trainer with Team Teach, a IT support company. I am primarily engaged with the task of providing IT training, and in this current assignment as team building practices relating to CPD of employees. The actions that would make achieve these goals are outlined in five clear smart targets that I have defined below:

• Work based learning that takes place by perusing the current job role, by experimental learning, learning from experience, expanding the job role. Perusing orientation programs, work shadowing, peer review of work.
• Professional activities that support participating in management of a professional body in the company, thus developing skills and knowledge. Involvement as an organiser, committee member, being and examiner, being a supervisor. Organising a conference, membership in a technical or research group, teaching or coaching the group.
• Another type of professional CPD is participation in academic activities, attending training programs, attending training or scientific meetings, undertaking distance learning activities, reading journals and writing academic research papers, preparing training materials for academic courses.
• Self-directed learning is also on the horizon, it is the process of developing the self-initiative to diagnose the self-learning needs for myself. This is not only limited to personal evaluation, it also includes identifying and formulation of new resources. The examples of this kind of assessment include reading books, articles and research journals. Upgrading knowledge through internet searches and IT enabled systems.
• Other activities that influence CPD skills help to development of self-assessment transferable skills and gain experience that is valuable in developing the future career directions. These involve strategic thinking such as organisational restructuring, effective planning, proper resourcing. This also includes planning skills and organisational development skills.

This report discusses the use of CPD within organisations (Mulvey, 2013). CPD provides an individual with the option to regularly evolve and update oneself with the proper important areas of development and training to effectively reducing any shortfalls in their knowledge (DuFour, R., 2004). An individual must be competent enough with the knowledge to properly differentiate themselves from their peers. This is done to provide proper self-evaluation and proper knowledge to the employee and creates an exciting and motivating environment.

Part 2: PPT

CPD is important for many factors for the employee, it measures effectiveness of it in helping the employees, to properly achieve their goals while effectively using their time and resources. Some reasons are the employer can save training costs by allowing the employee and allowing time for professional skill development programs (Billett, 2001).  Supporting the CPD can help the employers increase the retention rate and properly motivate the employees with regards to the employee. This support goes a long way in skill building activities for the employee. The CPD can increase the skill sets of the employees (Kennedy, 2014). Supporting CPD improves the job performance of the employees and increases their output. It is observed that continuing the CPD can improve the overall job security and the skill level of the employees. CPD can also be integrated in the job performance of the employees, it can also be integrated into the other HR matters of the company and it helps in the long term growth of effective HR policies. Through an effective appraisal system the team can develop its skill sets, that will further the objectives of the organisation (Guskey and Huberman, 1995).  CPD can encourage the staff to take control of their own training and development. Regular CPD activities can influence the employees to go the extra mile to peruse the activities relating to the organisation and sufficiently improve their own self goals in the process (McCauley and Hezlett, 2002). Supporting CPD can increase the professionals own willingness to improve themselves and the organisation. It shows the willingness of the organisation to improve their HR value to the employee (Cate et al., 2015). The reciprocal is done by the employee. Strong employer support for CPD helps the company to aid recruitment for the company. It becomes good for career growth and development in the long term. (Dall’Alba and Sandberg, 2006).

CPD has helped me in my own learning and development process. I have perused CPD in my work as a training individual. By perusing CPD I have achieved long term goals in my professional work. I have taken academic study leaves to pursue my Professional higher education goals. Thus I have learned new ways to improve my professional learning. I have also taken study tours to foreign countries for the purpose of continuing my professional standards. From learning new skills to developing my overall development CPD programs have made me a better professional and supported me in the long run. It has helped me set up long term goals and provide my level best to my company (Bailey et al., 2013). CPD has helped me plan out a future course of action with regards to my long term goals in the company, like reaching higher management positions, bettering my team management skills, build my technical expertise, helping me achieve my set targets and develop team building and cooperation skills.

References:

Bailey, S., Bullock, A., Cowpe, J., Barnes, E., Thomas, H., Thomas, R., Kavadella, A., Kossioni, A., Karaharju?Suvanto, T., Suomalainen, K. and Kersten, H., 2013. Core continuing professional development (CPD) topics for the E uropean dentist. European Journal of Dental Education, 17, pp.23-28.

Billett, S., 2001. Learning in the workplace: Strategies for effective practice. Allen & Unwin, PO Box 8500, St Leonards, 1590 NSW, Australia.

Dall’Alba, G. and Sandberg, J., 2006. Unveiling professional development: A critical review of stage models. Review of educational research, 76(3), pp.383-412.

DuFour, R., 2004. Leading edge: The best staff development is in the workplace, not in a workshop. Journal of Staff Development, 25(2), pp.63-64.

Guskey, T.R. and Huberman, M., 1995. Professional development in education: New paradigms and practices. Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 (paperback: ISBN-0-8077-3425-X; clothbound: ISBN-0-8077-3426-8)..

Kennedy, A., 2014. Understanding continuing professional development: the need for theory to impact on policy and practice. Professional development in education, 40(5), pp.688-697.

McCauley, C.D. and Hezlett, S.A., 2002. Individual development in the workplace.

Mulvey, R., 2013. How to be a good professional: existentialist continuing professional development (CPD). British journal of guidance & counselling, 41(3), pp.267-276.

Cate, O., Chen, H.C., Hoff, R.G., Peters, H., Bok, H. and van der Schaaf, M., 2015. Curriculum development for the workplace using entrustable professional activities (EPAs): AMEE guide no. 99. Medical teacher, 37(11), pp.983-1002.