Personal And Professional Development

Abstract

This report looks at Reflective practice along with Personal and Professional development with a detailed action plan mutually beneficial to both the individual and to the organization. As mentioned in the following report the following four major leadership skill set is crucial for every employee in the leadership pipeline; in order to have a clear self-awareness by properly reflecting upon the experiences and current practices and to further develop the individual skill set in leadership environment, In the first half of the report the reflection practice is highlighted with biggest lesson learned in correlation to one of the four major leadership principles whilst the second half of the reports follows a detailed feedback analysis score and a detailed action plan for development in each area in a prioritized manner along with timeline and milestones to measure the success criteria in each area.

Introduction

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection which is noblest; second, by imitation which is easiest and third, by experience, which is bitterest.” – Confucius.

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In the following report, Part- 1, I have shared the biggest professional lessons learned through experience and by reflecting upon them properly with acute steps, Part – 2 of the report indicates the feedback received from organization and the score plotted in correlation to four major leadership principles and the total score received in each area of four major leadership principles. Later a development plan has been created for the year 2019 to improve in these areas and it has been built in close cooperation with the direct manager on the current business needs and which could be mutually beneficial for both individual and organization.

Each objective in the development plan is attributed to one area of development along with a specific timeline, responsible stakeholders and measuring criteria for milestone success have been incorporated in the action plan index. The index will be further followed up along the development journey 2019, for feedback scores and the objective timeline graphs have been created to share the detailed information in a concise form.

Reflection Practice

It is obvious that one attains high degree of knowledge when they start using the facts learned, however wisdom is attained by reflecting on the experience and the lesson learned after the application of knowledge to practice. We should then be able to shift our mindset after reflection, As (Moon, J.A., 2013, 72) mentions “reflection should enable a shift from an awareness of personal realities to new understandings”. Having undertaken the (Honey and Mumford., 1986) learning style questionnaire it was clear that I am more inclined towards the “Reflector” style and it is seen in similar literatures that (Moon, J.A., 2013, 83) “The opportunity for personal awareness often comes in the moments of 'special problems' if a person is then encouraged to review their understanding”. In the following session I have used the (Gibbs, G., 1988) reflection Model for detailed reflection and express the biggest lesson learned so far professionally.

Description

I am currently an International trainee at ECCO shoes, globally mobile across all ECCO Shoe production units and R&D, mainly working on short term business improvement projects and responsible for its transition to business as usual.

This incident occurred while I was working in one of my recent projects where the task was to investigate the ongoing production activity and to find the root cause for performance loss and suggest improvements along with implementation action plan, I found the objective challenging as the history of the company is rich and the current production setup is well established and any new idea should be very well thought and well entertained before sharing it to the stakeholders, after three months of intense investigation along with gathered data and detailed analysis completed, here I was presenting all my findings and improvement points along with implementation action plan, majority of stakeholders found the facts and figures interesting while the other half of the stakeholders still had a confused look, which also increased my fear as a trainee and that the project should not be a failure case, later that evening over the review meeting the feedback I received was “Average” and it could have been better, average for me is still the lowest score so far as I have always been known for exceeding expectations and being outstanding in all my projects.

Feelings

Since I have always been scoring high on my projects, the first average score felt very hard and heavy. It was also one of the first time in my career I felt like I have lost something extremely valuable and that I have let myself down by downgrading from a high score to an average score, I would open up all my previous projects and their scores and comments and re-read them just to feel better, however the current reality was difficult to face. I could recollect words from my Mentor; “Always react to a situation as it demands and carefully remove your personal emotions” do exactly what justifies the situation, and try to look the event from a third persons view by detaching the emotions. I realized that I was losing track and not being emotionally strong. Later I reach out to my Mentor explaining him about the current scenario and seeking for his guidance.

Evaluation

Immediately after receiving the project score my brain was into a shutdown mode for a while and there was no other thing I could think of apart from comparing myself to the previous high scores. Only after realizing the words of my mentor I could get back on track also having explained him about the scenario it was very convincing to hear that I had a lot of room for improvement on my “Influencing” skillset and that facts and numbers alone won’t convince an idea to get across while working with multiple stakeholders. (Dweck, C. 2012, 342) also mentions “when I was exchanging my fixed mindset for a growth one, I was acutely aware of how unsettled I felt”. During our conversation my mentor also shared one of his personal experiences and his learnings where he highlighted the importance of using right words while presenting it to the team and this can be seen in relevant literatures where (McCann, D., 1988, 113) highlights “Nominalizations such as 'success', 'benefit', 'efficiency' and 'effectiveness' are fat words because they rely on listeners to develop their own deep structures, thereby giving individual meaning to the words” and using the right strategy for sharing an idea across functional teams, he also appreciated for the project work I have done, what an amazing master to motivate in the right time and judge based on efforts done, it is also one of the leadership qualities I admire about my Mentor.

Analysis

Zooming back into the experience it was evident that the major cause of the situation was on me and as I did not incorporate any form of influential style and my presentation was very much one directional with just numbers and lots of information to digest in a very short given period of time, As (McCann, D., 1988, 21) mentions “One of the goals in teamwork is to influence others so that group outcomes may be attained”. I also shared with my mentor that is it alright from the units point of view to rate low to a trainee who is learning rather than giving him a high score for work done as a form of motivation, again my mentor helped me realize that my thinking was very much one directional and I had a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset, where I was paying little or no attention to listening and exploring the feedback but focusing more towards expressing my own feelings and opinions, I was trying to be assertive by stating expectations rather than being open and finding common grounds, As (Dweck, C., 2012, 328) highlights “The fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on judging : “ This means I’m a loser”.

Conclusion

In retrospect, if given a chance to correct myself in the experience occurred, there is a range of behavior I would do it differently I earlier had a Self-awareness. Since I was not very much aware of the emotional Intelligence factor and the power of “Influencing with Integrity”. As It was my first work experience abroad and its always learning by doing, and learning from the mistake and it was something evident, I also realized that facts and numbers don’t always work well and Involving the right Stakeholders at the beginning of the project is very Important factor. As (McCann, D., 1988, 106) mentions “If I tell someone directly what to do, then it is my decision and the other person has no 'ownership' in the solution. However, if I work my way through the Psychoverbal Communication Model, ending up with nothing stronger than a direct proposal, then there is a greater chance that ownership of the solution is shared ”.