Personal Development Planning: a Modern Approach to Individual Growth

Introduction to Personal Development Plan

Personal Development Plan (PDP) refers to activities that improve self-knowledge and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and employability, enhance the quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. The concept is not limited to self-development but includes formal and informal activities for developing others as well. Finally, as personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations. A personal development plan is a meticulously designed program which uses psychological tools such as the Personal Effectiveness Scale and is created in order to create an understanding between a reviewer and an employee of an organization on important areas of development keeping in mind the ways in which these needs would be supported. PDPs are usually developed in companies and it acknowledges the plan discussed between the employer and employee.

Purpose

In this essay about personal development, I want to create Personal Development Plan for myself through which I would try to focus on the areas where I need to work upon in order to achieve my short, medium, and long-term objectives. So to start the process of developing a PDP for myself I would like to start with my introduction and my career path to date and my future objectives. I work in an Indian government financial organization as an investment consultant at the commercial investment section and my career objective would be to become the manager of the company’s zonal branch in the next 3-4 years. My aim is to open my own financial investment farm for commercial investors in the next 5-6 years.

Short term – To improve my performance to get better output using my strong points. Target Period – 6 Months.

Organizational objectives – Try to implement the plan and increase the amount of loans to the needed people and organizations.

Learning’s to suffice the above requirement – To perfect and constantly evaluate my skills.

Need to perform to achieve the above – Need to attend courses and complete reviews by the senior management people.

Support resources – I might need to join a specific and planned course and which might require some money to be invested.

What immediate success am I looking at – To raise my performance at an exceptionally good level by the end of 1st year with the help of learnings and feedback provided on the above.

Target period to accomplish the above target – Though I am looking at a time frame of 6 months but would be pushing it to achieve as soon as possible.

Medium-term – To enhance my day-to-day working knowledge and to further improve my own ability to perform at a certain level consistently. Target Period – 6 months.

Objectives towards achieving organizational and departmental goals – Learning and enhancing my knowledge on the subject by implementing of own PDP and bringing the knowledge on day-to-day performance.

Facts that I need o learn – Constantly evaluate self-performance and find out new paths of improvement in anything and everything I require to perform.

What I need to do to achieve the above – Need to attend some specific courses related to my work field and try to learn as much as possible from the experienced seniors at work and also get reviews on my learning.

Kind of resources I would require to support the above-expected achievement – Might need to join a specific and planned course and which might require some money to be invested.

What will be my expected success – To have a clear self-understanding of what I am doing and what is my expected outcome in near future.

Target period to accomplish the above target – Planned time frame is 6 months but is expected to achieve by end of 4-5 months.

Long-term – To help myself with self-evaluation of my strong and weak points and build upon the ability to sustain continuous growth and keep growing. Time period – 1 to 4 years.

Organizational and departmental objectives – Implementation of my PDP and enhance my knowledge in the financial domain and increase my work experience to be able to reach the managerial level of the organization with a remarkable remuneration package within 2-3 years and then to open my own investment company to help small-time investors in the state.

What would I need to learn and apply to achieve the above – To be perfect in my work keep the process in place and keep an eye on constant evaluation of my financial and managerial skills, work hard and climb the corporate ladder at the earliest.

What will I need to do to achieve the above – To attend available courses, Learn from experienced sources. Keep the performance level at an exceptional standard. Create a network of high and influential people both from inside and outside of the organization. Create a favorable environment in my organization.

Completion of self-reviews on a regular and timely basis. What kind of resources and support I would need to support the above expectation – Need to get closer with influential clients and higher management people of the organization which might involve some cost in way of entertaining them and providing them with some help in completing and meeting their demand. To create a network of powerful and influential people for myself.

The target period to accomplish the above – Planned time frame is 1-4 years but expecting to achieve by end of 3 years.

To be a successful and effective manager some skills are required, which help in performing well in the job and simultaneously grow vertically in the career ladder. I have classified the roles based on various important tasks that I would expect to perform in the organization.

My learnings on positive managerial and leadership skills

In my earlier employment with the Bajaj Allianz life insurance, I had a chance to demonstrate my managerial skill which worked in a very positive way to get my new job where I am in now. I had to suggest to one of our clients the best option to invest his money. To work out the best result for him, I did my research on all the available options and studied the pros and cons of all kinds of investments options like investing in a market-linked insurance fund, directly buying shares or debentures from the stock market, investment in bonds or confirmed minimum returns on investments like fixed deposits, mutual funds, etc and provided him with my suggestion which was a market-linked infrastructure bond along with health insurance. The return received by the client made him give positive feedback about my commercial insight and which in turn helped me create goodwill for my company. This also helped me create a long-term relationship with the client as well as build my network of people ensuring that I can always expect him to reach out to me for his future investments and in turn can use his contacts and influence to help me in the future.

A person should be able to express himself loud and clear in written communication. Be it writing essays for school or writing an application for a job, creating his bio-data, research thesis, day to day email communications, anywhere and everywhere it is very important to be clear about what he or she is trying to convey and to be sure the person at the other end is clear about the message.

As he word goes that speech out of mouth and arrow out of bow can never be returned back, so it is highly important that we choose words before any verbal communication is made. Be I formal or informal, a person should be well efficient and double clear about conveying thoughts easily and getting engaged with other people. It is also to be kept in mind the mode by which the message is conveyed, whether socially among friends or in a gathering, or on the telephone.

Another most important but highly ignored way of communication is the person’s self-body language. A person has to have the ability to match is own body language appropriately to what he or she is trying to convey verbally. It is the presence and display of body language which supports verbal communication heavily in every place, be it at work or at a public gathering or be it in a social function. Eye contact, gestures, and postures, movement, expressions everything is highly counted when it comes to any communication to take place and to produce the desired outcome.

Working in a team

It’s very important and highly noticed by the management of any organization is that how well a manager can work with fellow team members. It’s valued at a very high level, not only in case of work but otherwise in all respect, it’s important to demands to have good skill to work with others and create a positive environment. The factors which are included in this skill set are as below.

A person should have the quality to be able to co-operate with all levels of people in all kinds of situations. It’s highly important to be able to bring into effect the co-cooperativeness in both ways, from the person himself and to get the same from others, which plays a big role in accomplishing any target. Not only work but any group activity like in sports, or group discussion or for that matter preparing project report, in every cases co-operation in a positive way is very important.

It is this skill which makes a person close and valuable to others. The ability to understand the need and offer help and respond is very important, regardless of age and level. A person who can reach out to anyone and display his sensibility to help others to handle situations is one of the best qualities one should develop.

This is purely team-oriented. How good a person in conveying his ideas to fellow members and providing them with a feeling that they are important for the success and most importantly motivating and encouraging each individual member in all situations to give their best for the overall success is the best quality a leader can wish for.

Problem-solving qualities

Having the skill to generate ideas to solve any kind of problem and bring an end to issues and conflicts is counted as a problem-solving skill of a person.

The ability to develop a well-thought plan and set the required sequence of systematic processes and ideas are part of a successful result in every part of day o day to life. Planning is one thing and organizing the required requirements and executing them as per plan comes under a person’s perfect organizing skill. It also comes in handy when we think about simply organizing a group, party, or get together or for that matter client’s demonstration, a proper planning and execution through seamless organizing skills is highly important.

Generating new ideas or reusing existing solutions in a new way is what it matters when it comes to handling a situation or solving a problem. It’s not always that we need to come up with new approaches or ideas to deal with a situation, but we should be able to use any existing methods in a better way and apply the same in a different approach depending on the kind and nature of issues.

Doing thorough research on the subject and gathering all sorts of required information plays a vital role to derive at a successful outcome. Not only gathering information but then analyzing the same in respect of the situation and nature of the issue gives a chance in most of the cases that the result is expected in a positive way.

To be able to learn from all available situations and apply the same learning in different contexts as and when required. It’s not only book, but learning from day to day experience, from playing a game, working at home, nurturing his hobby, learning can be from anything and every situation a person come across, but what is important to find out whether we apply the same when we face any situation, that’s more important. It is the transfer of our learning experience from one situation to another situation is what we need to be good at.

A person should have to be able to use his reasoning skill and logical thinking to defend an argument or make a statement. Planning without any logical reasoning in place can never produce a positive result. He has to foresee the effects of the planning in advance and that is only possible when he can think logically and apply the proper reasoning behind the decision taken or else it can only produce an adverse result.

One of the most important skills is to be able to judge and question his own performance. Unless a person can reflect on his own performance and find out where he stands as per his expectation and critique his sort falls, he can never revaluate and find out the reason and also the answers for the incorrect result. It is self-judgment and revaluation which can work as the corrective measure and can rebuild the situation and change the failure to success.

To enhance knowledge on the subject from finding more and more information from people around and relevant sources. Going through different educative materials, gathering information from journals, and available notes, collecting ideas from reference books from the library, going through thesis, finding documents available on the net – there are so many ways of increase your study skill and enhance self-knowledge on the subject which will only make you stronger and firm while talking on the subject or when making decisions.

Conclusion

Personal development is a modern alternative to traditional training for organizational individual development. It offers useful alternative methods compared to coaching and mentoring too. This essay discussed about the different approaches to self-managed learning and their suitability. Self-managed learning is a technique to management development which helps managers to control the processes, content, and pace of their own learning. The role of executives in learning and development structure a coaching capability, the use of competencies with wider organizational strategy, as well as providing appropriate information on trends in the workplace.