Professional and Personal Development Plan Essay

According to the experience in the ledge weekend, I finished self – exploring with the help of my team members as well as our mentor Brandy. By carefully reading my personal insights profile and putting outcomes in practice, I find out that it is helpful by offering detail leadership information and organized analysis of myself, which includes something I even have not realized before. All these information give precious guidance to me to improve myself becoming a better leader as well as a follower. Personal Style – As a â€Å"Green† person, I am proficient at alleviating the concerns of others and always consist trying and working hard in order to fulfill my sense of responsibility and obligation. Different from â€Å"Red† and â€Å"Yellow† people, I am low ley and would like to experience strong internal personal reaction rather than showing private feelings. I would like to do things in routine manner and is consistent on my work. Order means a lot to me, which is showed by always making plans and keeping everything organized. In other words, work and home structure affect me very much. My mother influenced me a lot on structure making since I was a young girl. She is an organized person who subsequently is very efficient both in home stuff and her work. She is stick to time and plan, as well as flexible when facing changes. Furthermore, I am also tolerant, open-minded, and adaptable, enjoying the present moment. Most of the time I am patient and always understand others and I am forgiveness to make time for people and their problems. I am very effective in specialized work and highly consistent in performance. Interacting with others – I am good at blending productivity with an interest in, and compassion for, the work force. I am capable of great devotion and loyalty to a valued person or cause. In most situations, I could bring harmony and goodwill to the whole team as well as make great contribution constructing a better team. Being as class monitor from a young age, I have huge experiences on how important it is to keep groups of people in harmony and construct a peaceful environment for better development of work and study. Decision-making – In work, I am always deeply committed whenever I choose to undertake a role or task. Compared to the results, I concern more on process. Usually I am good at finding out what we need at the moment and then deal with it – like an â€Å"effective observer†. My team members gave me this title during the Edge Weekend. According to the their  feedbacks, I am excellent at making calm and critical decision as well as comments in rush occasions while others shows panic or have conflicts. Although I am not a perfect vocal person, this feature does not prevent me making critical and incisive decisions and offering useful comments to help modify current incorrect working situation. This leadership competency also comes from my former leadership experience. When being responsible for scheming the high school anniversary celebration, I met similar problems facing internal team conflicts on different ideas. I realized that when groups of people are eager to express and force others to accept their ideas, it becomes more difficult for the whole team to come up with a comprehensive conclusion or path to follow without bias. By the several times’ practices and experience collecting, I consciously calm down to think carefully of everyone’s opinion objectively. Although it is hard to keep a reasonable mind during severely discussion, I could handle it very well now and get to the critical point easily when others are affected heavily by conflicts or the loss of direction. Vision for the leader I will become ï  ¬What contributions will I make to an organization that builds my strengths and the organizational success? i.Self-confidence and influential ii.Can state significant views with clarity and forethought iii.Prefers flexibility and open mindedness  iv.Reliable, cohesive and identity – Commits to realistic goals, expresses through actions, supports others by being loyal, diplomatic and sincere v.Sensitive to Environment – Brings fun and light-heartedness to any environment vi.Tolerance for Sustainable Development – Be patient and forgiving ï  ¬Why would anyone choose to follow me? Some leaders tend to distribute work to employees without considering carefully the capacity differs from person to person. However, I am the kind of leader who could utilize employees’ ability according to their strength and always be considerable, making them comfortable when working. Also, as the leader of employees, I commit to realistic goals and could state significant views with clarity and forethought. At the same time, I express myself not only vocally but also through actions, which makes employees feel reliable and motivated to construct trust. Furthermore, I am flexible and  open-minded to accept different ideas, which offer platform for employees to express their ideas. They feel being respected and have more motivation to improve and raise productivity. As a leader pay much attention on harmony, my efforts on making working environment comfortable and light-hearted may be welcomed by employees. Like what is said in the article Beyond Uncertainty, â€Å"A company is not an instrument; it is, or should be, a living and growing community.† No one will refuse to follow a leader who is effective using right strategy to mange, being mindful, reliable, open-minded and concern much on working performance as well as environment. ï  ¬How will I impact the world from a leadership perspective? As such a leader, I would impact the world by making my team or company more likely to be a community, instead of just focus on economics or financial results. Thus the company’s lifespan may extend. – The Living Company. If all companies could understand leadership on this perspective, all of us will construct healthier companies so that have a better market. Gap Analysis and Professional Development Plan A.Identify gaps and development needs   According to my insights profile results and the concept of Emotional Intelligence, including Personal Competence and Social Competence in order to achieve my future vision, I still need to fulfill several gaps shown as below: ï  ¬Self-confidence: A strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities; ï  ¬Communication, share concerns and reservations bravely In order to become the leader in my future vision, the first thing to do is increasing self-confidence. In some occasions, I found it hard to demonstrate all my abilities and may be underestimated by others and also disappointed myself. Through the readings and feedback of my team members, I discovered that it is not because I am lack of certain ability to complete the task, but I do not hold the belief that I can certainly do it well. In other words, I am lack of courage to step forward a little bit further. ï  ¬Developing others and be influential: Sensing others development needs and bolstering their abilities ï  ¬Emotional awareness: recognizing one’s emotions and their effect These two sections relate to what we read in the past few weeks on moral leadership. â€Å"Moral leadership, by definition, cannot be  situational or contingent. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ The ultimate in disrespect of individuals is to attempt to impose one’s will on them without regard for what they want or need and without consulting them. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Thus treating people with respect is what moral leadership is about, and nothing could be harder.† It responses to my former future vision that being a considerable leader should not only pay attention on financial profit and performances, but also the awareness of employees. Furthermore, how to act is more important because the way you act could change their thoughts. To acquire moral leadership, I should practice more on how to treat others respectfully. ï  ¬Innovation while decrease risks According to results of the Insight profile and Emotional Intelligence, I need to be braver to take risk through innovations. Although in The Living Company, the author points out that one of the four common features of long life span companies have is that â€Å"Long-lived companies were conservative in financing†, it is not wise either to be so frugal and do not take any challenge. In my opinion after reading materials, I think it is also important for me to learn how to balance between embracing challenges and decreasing risks. ï  ¬Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities, make quick or unprepared articulation ï  ¬ Be more flexible, do not over-dependence on rules and procedures. In Week 6’s Oxford discussion, we talked about lots of critical questions about sustainable development. In the article of Value Creation: The Promise of Sustainable Development, the author points out we should balance among Economics, Social and Environment. To create sustainable strategy, we should follow four primary drivers of value creation: Margin improvement, Risk reduction, Growth enhancement and Capital efficiency. All these four aspects remind me how to achieve my future goal by being more flexible. The value creation is a comprehensive process, which needs not merely avoiding risks or losses. B.Development Plan B1: Clearly identified SLOT During the Edge Weekend, we discussed SLOT with each other and tried to analysis ourselves and others using this strategy. S – Strength, means we can use it to make a contribution to the team. Since everyone’s strengths  are different, we could construct a stronger team if we utilize them well. But before that, we need to do accurate self-evaluation in order to take advantage of our strengths. My main strengths, which are mentioned in my formula 2+2, are excellent summarizing skill and organized personality that enhance the whole team’s efficiency. L – Limitation, means nobody is perfect, everyone may face some problems no matter they are internal or external ones. Limitations come from personality or leadership. That’s why we need to explore ourselves and make plans to improve our leadership, and also combine together to help each other in the team. My limitations showed in the Edge Weekend are unvocal and being lack of consistency on own ideas when facing conflicts. O – Opportunity. T – Threat Like the SWOT model in Management, environment plays an important role in influencing our development. Facing opportunities, we should catch them in order to create value by improving our leadership. On the other hand, we should avoid threat. For me, the opportunities are everywhere since I am eager to try new things, all team members treat me very well and always would like to help me improving myself. The threat for me may be the foreign environment, which makes me feel hard to keep on the same page with other American students, since communication is very important for good leadership. Strengths and limitation are internal elements that affect our leadership development, while opportunity and treat are external elements. What we should do with them is shown as below in the form. Internal Elements External ElementsUse itImprove itOpportunity Supervise itEliminate itThreat StrengthLimitation B2: My goals clearly relate to SLOT In order to improve my leadership, I should make plans according to SLOT: Using my strengths of well organizing and opportunity of listening to team members’ opinions in order to become more sensitive to environment and reliable, cohesive and identity. Although I have limitations of unvocal and  not that idea-consistency, I can use my opportunity of my team members’ encouragement to become more self-confident and influential. Since I have the limitation of unvocal and the threat of unfamiliar environment, I should eliminate them by practice English more in order to state significant views with clarity and forethought. Although I have the strength of well organized and considerable, the threat I am facing is the changeable world that requires me to take more risks while not loose too much. Therefore I should learn to keep balance of these two sides in order to improve flexibility and open mindedness and tolerance for sustainable development. B3: SMART – 15 My leadership development goals do meet the SMART criteria, which include Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. According to SLOT analysis, every goal could be achieved in one specific way: use, improve, supervise or eliminate. Most of them are measurable by collecting team members’ feedback. All those goals are achievable, although some goals such as balancing risk-taking and flexibility is hard to handle in the long run. All those goals and my internal as well as external elements are relevant. Only if they combine together could I do accurate analysis and make detail plan for the future. At last, all these goals could be achieved in time bound, if I keep following the above plan.