Personal and Professional Development

This document provides insights into personal and professional development, including skills audit, interpersonal skills, transferable skills, tools and techniques for enhancing skills, personal SWOT analysis, and individual appraisal. It focuses on the case of Harrods, a well-known British firm, and offers valuable information for individuals looking to improve their skills and career prospects.

Personal and Professional
Development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Part A (Individual Report)...............................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Evaluation of Skills Audit:...........................................................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
A) Tools and techniques for enhancing interpersonal and transferable skills:............................3
Interpersonal Skills:...........................................................................................................3
Transferable Skills:............................................................................................................3
Tools & Techniques:..........................................................................................................4
B) Personal SWOT analysis:.......................................................................................................5
C) Individual appraisal:................................................................................................................6
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................7
Personal and professional development plan:..............................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
Part B (Reflective Essay).................................................................................................................9
What did I do well in the completion of my development plan? ................................................9
What were the problems?...........................................................................................................10
What do I want to further improve?...........................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
The thing that makes successful people successful is their personal and professional
skills. Every person has to have some abilities, attitude and some attributes that make the one
employable. These skills can be inbuilt within the individual or adopt from outside environment
such as parents, schools, offices or other's behaviour (Olsen, 2015). Personal skills helps the
individual in making their life easier while professional skills make them employable and
provide such capabilities that enhance their personality, efficiency and performance at
workplace.
For a better understanding of these skills and abilities, the organization which have been
chosen is Harrods which is a famous and well known British firm dealing in luxury, sensation
and innovative products and services for 162 years and now looking for skilled and talented
employees who have adequate skills to become future manager of the firm. The manager have
been asked for each employee for their report hence this report includes an skill audit of a person
as an employee and interpersonal and transferable skills. It also involves a personal SWOT
analysis and develop personal and professional development plan.
Part A (Individual Report)
TASK 1
Evaluation of Skills Audit:
Role and responsibility: I am working with the Herrods as a customer relationship
executive which is junior level profile of customer relationship management department. I am
working with the organization for last 11 months and responsibilities are planning and
communicating CRM strategies across the company, maintain customer database, collaborating
with other departments, providing creative ideas, overseeing the production process and
execution. At this job profile, I also need to travel in order to meet the customer expectations.
This role require some interpersonal and professional skills which are listed below:
1. Technical skills
2. Analytical skills
3. Communication skills
4. Problem solving skills
5. Leadership skills
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6. Time management skills
7. Empathy skills
8. Relationship building skills
9. presentation skills
In order to perform duties and responsibilities in better way, intensify the skills as per the
organisation requirement. For this focus on the several factors that supports to connect with
customer in direct manner and present things effectively. The organisation have retail store
where arrive several visitors to purchase things for this require to present every thing properly
and influence to purchase product in effective manner (Cheon, and others, 2018). Customer
relation executive would be responsible for the decision making process because many time
customer demand different types of product in modified manner so it will depend on the
representative how to tackle them for products. The main roles & responsibilities of the
executive to support customer regarding to complaints and questions, provide all appropriate
information about products & services, receive orders and process returns. A tabular presentation
of my skills audit is given below:
Skills Bad Good Excellent
Communication skills ✔
Technical skills ✔
Analytical skills ✔
Problem solving skills ✔
Time management skills ✔
Leadership skills ✔
Empathy skills ✔
Presentation skills ✔
Relationship building skills ✔
As per the above table an skills audit has been conducted for my personal and
professional skills in which bad remarks present those skills which need a lot of working on
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development. Time management and presentation skills are must for a relationship executive and
I am not good in them. Mt leadership, relation building, technical and problem solving skills are
good but they need more finishing. On the other hand I am really good at communication,
analytical and empathy skills which can give me a chance for growing my career I this particular
field.
TASK 2
A) Tools and techniques for enhancing interpersonal and transferable skills:
In order to identify some key skills for the role of customer relationship executive, some
of interpersonal and transferable skills are mentioned as below:
Interpersonal Skills:
Interpersonal skills are the set of those attributes and skills that a person have from its
birth or develop them with the help of self motivation. These skills help an individual in
performing his/her roles and responsibilities in personal as well as professional life. These skills
helps in developing relationships, emotions and spiritual abilities (Coleman, Chouliara and
Currie, 2018). Some of the interpersonal skills are mentioned below:
Communication skills: Communication is the most effective way to be in contact with
the customers and make a great impression over them on behalf of the entire organization. A
customer relationship executive have to be able to communicate with the clients clearly. Most of
the customers consider that a customer executive must be able to answer their questions without
losing focus, mumbling and using clear and pleasant language (Albion and others, 2015).
Empathy: Empathy is the skill of understanding the emotions and feelings of the other
person's point of view. Most of the customers and their orders or purchases based on the past
experience they have faced with the customer relation executives. If they felt satisfied with the
positive and professional behaviour of the staff, they stay connected with the organization hence
empathy is considered as most required skill.
Transferable Skills:
Transferable skills are those which can be adapt from the external environment and
continuous practice and training sessions. Such skills helps in adapting qualities like, team
building, time management, leadership, organisation, etc. some of them are presented below:
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Time Management Skill: Time management is important in not only personal but also
professional life as no one wants to wait for a late response. A customer relation executive needs
to be very careful with the management of the time. The person have to be skilled enough to
prioritise and manage the activities and work responsibilities in such manner that he/she can
respond to the customers in minimum time period and retain their interest in the organization.
Leadership Skill: Leadership is a skill to influence the followers, co-workers and
associates in such a manner that they can be agreed with the influencer and work accordingly. A
customer relation executive must acquire this skill so that he/she can co-ordinate with other
employees and and provide them direction and guidelines to perform their part of work in an
effective and efficient manner (Bubnys and Kairienė, 2016).
Problem Solving Skill: In modern era, modern problems are usually take place in the
work environment. On the other side, customers also may suffer from lots of problems regarding
organizational products and services. A customer relation manager have to listen and understand
all the issues of hie/her team and the customers as well. The manager needs to be smart and
creative enough to provide modern solutions for all their problems so that team members can
efficiently work and customers can be satisfied.
Tools & Techniques:
There are some tools, methods and techniques that can be adopt in order to develop these
above mentioned skills in a positive manner which are presented below:
Practice and focus: As the sayings are “practice makes a person perfect” can be
followed to develop and improve the interpersonal and transferable skills. The employees needs
to be focused towards the goals that is to improve those fields in which the one is weak. The
person must consider those ways which can improve deliberately.
Workshops and Seminars: In order to improve the professional skills, various
workshops and seminars are organized by the organization in which the employee is working or
other organizations that can be attend by the customer relation executive. This workshops
provide assorted tactics and key points that can be used to shape and fine these interpersonal and
transferable skills.
Cultivate Peer Relationship: Skills and attitude can be learned from other people's
behaviour. Hence a customer relation executive can improve his/her skills by creating relations
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with as many as possible with related people in the industry. This is significant for compliance
with gaining and developing new ideas and perspectives. The relationships have formed within
industry have often provided great value to the companies also.
B) Personal SWOT analysis:
SWOT analysis is a framework that is used to analysis the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats. A personal SWOT analysis is conducted to evaluate the behavioural
attributes of the individual. It provides facts, data and information regarding characteristics of the
person that helps in understanding the capabilities and eliminate the weak points and strengthen
the personality of the individual (Makhashova and others, 2016). A SWOT analysis of my
personal and professional skills is presented as under:
Strengths: Strengths are those positive attributes that a person is having with oneself and
they help the one in performing its roles and responsibilities in effective manner. My
interpersonal and professional skills that are my strengths are as below:
 Adaptable: My first strength is that I am adaptable which means I can mould myself
according to the situations and work environment. I am flexible with my work which
helps in improving my efficiency and performance.
 Good Communication: I have a good command over local and internationally accepted
language i.e. English and can communicate with others without any hesitation which
helps me in creating good relations with customers and and other delegates as well.
 Good Listener: I have a lots of patience with me which helps to listen other's opinions,
problems, ideas and orders in an impressive manner and I am able to solve the problems,
follow the orders and make decisions by listening others carefully.
 Self-motivated: I can analyse myself and evaluate my work regularly that makes me
satisfied and I get motivated with my own appraisals.
Weaknesses: Weakness can be defined as those characteristics or skills that need to be
improved and can provide new opportunities to perform the job in more efficient manner. Some
of my weaknesses are as under:
 Introversion: I am a little introvert and feel hesitated in breaking the ice with new people
that make it difficult for me to work with new leader or co-workers.
 Unenthusiastic: It is one of my weakness that I do not pay attention to my surroundings
and take interest in other's life which prove me as a boring person.
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 Lack of work experience: I am a fresher and new in customer relation management field
hence I have a lack of experience which sometimes make it difficult to handle hectic
situations and aggressive clients and customers.
 Laziness: Sometimes I get bored with that job which is not according to my interest and I
try to postponed it for the next time that make me a bit lazy towards my responsibilities.
Opportunities: Opportunities are those external positive conditions on which a person
do not have any control but can plan to take advantage from them by performing or grasping
some efforts. Some of the opportunities from which I can take advantage are:
 Earn Experience: with the help of training and development sessions provided by my
organization, I always try to learn new things and fine my skills which will be a plus
point in my experience.
 Create network: Continuous working on my skills will help to get over from my
introversion and I will be able to create a huge network and relations with those related
professionals who can help me in my career growth.
Threats: Threats are those loop holes in a person's attributes that are hard to repair and
can make the professional and personal life hard for a person. Some of the threats that is being
faced by my character are given below:
 Competition: Today's work environment is competitive and I am lack in various aspects
from my colleagues and co-workers which can be a reason of not growing in or failure in
my career.
 Dependence: At my work profile, I need to depend on other people to support my work
and without their help, it is not possible to perform my job successfully that can affect my
work performance badly.
C) Individual appraisal:
Individual or personal performance appraisals are the traditional analysis key points or
skills that helps in measuring performance and efficiency of a person within the organization
against measurable standards and objectives. A thorough analysis of individual performance
helps the employees and their supervisors in sharing their opinions and ideas and reach on
mutually agreed objectives. An individual appraisal focuses on the qualities, capabilities and
skills required for completion of a particular job or task and analyse the improvement in that
skills which is necessary for promoting the individual (Minzhanov and others, 2016). This
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appraisals also help in evaluating monetary compensations, determining recognitions and
providing feedbacks. An individual performance appraisal for myself which is appropriate in my
point of view, is given below in tabular form:
Quality Unsatisfactory Satisfactory Good Excellent
Work to full potential ✔
Work consistency ✔
Independent work ✔
Group work ✔
Creativity ✔
Integrity ✔
Client relations ✔
Dependability ✔
Punctuality ✔
Quality of work ✔
Communication ✔
Take initiative ✔
Productivity ✔
Honesty ✔
Co-worker relations ✔
Technical skills ✔
Attendance ✔
On the basis of above self assessment, it can be concluded that I work with full potential,
honesty and integrity. My communication and technicals skills are in an impressive stage and my
relations with my team and co-workers is also satisfactory. My attendance, productivity and
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creativity is also on an appropriate level. I need to work on my time management, punctuality
and try to take initiatives so that I can come up from my fears.
TASK 3
Personal and professional development plan:
A personal and professional development plan is a framework or strategy that is decided
by an individual to set its objectives, process and outcomes required from the process of learning
and training. An effective personal and professional development plan must clearly define time
lines for the strategies, activities and process, standards and defined aims which will be the result
for the entire procedure. An effective personal and professional development plan that has been
created by me for adequate growth in my career has followed some steps which are given below:
Decide Career Aims ans Objectives: As I am a good listener and can help the people in
solving their problems by listing their problems and make good decisions regarding this, I want
to make my career in customer relationship management field so that I can handle the queries of
the clients and retain their interest into my organization by providing them solutions and creating
healthy relations with them. The aim of my career is to become customer relation manager in a
reputed organization and lead an zealous and creative team that can create a huge customer base
with their interpersonal skills. My objective is to continuously learn new things and skills which
can enhance my professional and personal experience.
Find the Area of Development: With the help of a thorough SWOT analysis, I am able
to identify my weaknesses and the skills in which I need to improve my knowledge and efforts. I
am lack of experience which I will gain with the time and practice into the organization. I need
to make my work interesting by following smart ways of doing my work so that it can be
interesting and can be completed on time and also have to pay attention towards my
surroundings so that I can be aware about the work culture and events happening around me. My
introvert personality have to me upgraded into ambiguousness so that I can create my network
and relations with others.
Find Resources and Adapt Activities: The resources that I need to overcome from my
weakness and develop my skills are enthusiastic co-workers, good communicational technology,
creative working environment, positiveness of customers and so on. Activities that I have to
adapt are continuous practise, discipline in life, focus on objectives and meditation. I need to
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attend some workshops and seminars and training & development sessions that can help in
improving my knowledge about the specific field and provide me updated techniques to enhance
my work efficiency. Some calming activities will also help me to stay clam in hectic situations.
Decide Timescales: Some of the aims and objectives are short-term and some of them
are long-term such as experience is the matter of time period that will be gained with the time.
Training and development are short-term goals and the session should be taken within one year
and methods and techniques need to be learned within short period of time. Creating network
with professional and growth in career by getting promotions will take time hence this objective
need time from 2 to 5 years. I also need to learn setting my priorities within short period.
CONCLUSION
With the help of above report, it can be concluded that each and every organization needs
valuable employees who can render their loyalty and commitment to the organization. These
employees should have some interpersonal and professional hard and soft skills along with
academic qualifications so that they can they can stay with the organization for a long-term basis
and benefit the company with their hard work and other effective skills. An enhanced SWOT
analysis can help the employees for evaluating their strengths and weaknesses that will help them
in rectifying their loop holes and provide a sustainable growth to their career. An individual
appraisal will also help them analyse their work performance and they will be able to create an
impressive personal and professional development plan which will help in overcoming from
weaknesses and achieving objectives within specific time period.
Part B (Reflective Essay)
In the above mentioned individual report, I have analysed and disclosed my personal and
professional skills, some strengths and weaknesses of traits and also developed a strategic
personal development plan to furnish my qualities and experience. In order to execute my plan
properly, I have also decided to carry out some activities and training sessions that may help me
to success of my strategic plans. With the help of those activities, I have learnt a lot of things and
enhance my personal and professional skills. Now in below mentioned essay, I will reflect what I
did to complete my plan and strategy, problems I have faced and further improvement that I need
to make in my learning process.
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What did I do well in the completion of my development plan?
I recently completed an Employability Skills self assessment exercise. On doing this, I
compared the results from the two. It was encouraging that one of my main developments
appears to have been in problem solving and I consider my Higher Education studies over the
last three years as contributing to my deeper analysing abilities. In light of earlier descriptions of
my learning journey and reflective logs, it is gratifying to see that I have come a long way in, not
only overcoming my own obstacles to learning, but making measured and significant
achievement which then enables me to guide others in their roles.
Among the key learning experiences for me, alongside the above, are a recognition of the
roles of others, networking and effective communication. An important element of my
professional life is to uphold personal and corporate values of decency and ethical practice
including cultural diversity. This was well received by the treatment management team resulting
in the training being strengthened in this area. I have attended all the training sessions to learn
the ways which make my efforts smarter and interesting. By exploring several seminars
organized on customer relation management, I got connected with some ideal and impressive
sector related personalities to cultivate peer relationships with them.
For being punctual and manage my work pressure, I have decided to prioritise my work
and related activities so that punctuality can be maintained. By dividing my work into categories
and priorities, I an now able to complete my tasks on time. Meditation and yoga helped me to
make me calm and positive which is very useful for me to handle hectic situations and aggressive
customers. With the help of Gibbs reflective model, I am also able to track my fear of speaking
in front of unknown individuals and lack of extroversion. Now I try to take initiatives and try to
crack conversation with others so that I can be compatible and able to work in groups.
What were the problems?
With the help of SWOT analysis of myself, I was able to understand that I was lack in
some interpersonal and professional skills such as confidence, time management, experience,
anger management, team building and group tasks, etc. These problems have taken place due to
the lack of confidence and laziness. During the reflection, I noticed that the environment and
culture of the top administration structure strain down and no matter how much one tries to resist
or even kick against it, it permeates one’s own work practice after a while. The climate in which
I work consistently places emphasis on the meeting of Key Performance Targets (KPT’s) and
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now, the Service Level Agreement (SLA). In meeting these as well as ever increasing budgetary
constraints, every facet of work culture is placed under the microscope and is cut wherever
possible yet the targets must be met regardless.
However, no matter the conditions in which we find ourselves or expectations laid at our
‘office door’, it is how we respond that is important and the acceptance of our personal
responsibility to be channelled into effective working. I have also analysed I do have a tendency
of avoiding the conflicts and disagreements yet I may be stubborn when my own values and
feelings come into the conflicts with other corporate personalities in which I am in the risk of
dragging in objectivity. These are some of my own negative personality traits which are affecting
my professional skills and career and I need to work consciously on them. On the other hand,
stickiness with the learning programs was quite challenging for me as they were theoretical and
not so interesting that can attract my concentration. Learning and development sessions must
identify and execute some effective ways to ensure that skills are learned and applied into the
real work environment.
What do I want to further improve?
By developing and executing an effective personal and professional development plan, I
am now sufficiently able to work in the industry as an customer relationship executive and
handle the job according to the industry norms but I don't want to stop this learning here. As we
all know that the work environment and economy is dynamic and changing continuously
therefore I want to continue this development plan and cycle. My technical skills for the job are
sufficient but I want to be an expert into technical field also and learn the utilization of advanced
technical skills for betterment of my organization.
It was interesting to learn and perform team building activities and perform tasks in
groups. In the session, I have noticed that I am able to influence my teammates with my
influencing skills and creative ideas. I further want to develop my leadership and management
skills so that I can be able to become an impressive leader and manager who can lead the team
effectively. As a company representative, I also need to work on my presentation skills so that I
can present the organization in front of the customers efficiently and satisfy the customers by
rendering and explaining the solutions effectively. My problem solving skills are just good but I
want to be the best in that field also for which I need to gain the experience and acquire the
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knowledge of more and more case studies so that I can present the modern solutions for any kind
of problems which may take place within the work environment.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals:
Olsen, B., 2015. Teaching what they learn, learning what they live: How teachers' personal
histories shape their professional development. Routledge.
Cheon, S. H. and et.al, 2018. Why autonomy-supportive interventions work: Explaining the
professional development of teachers’ motivating style. Teaching and Teacher
Education. 69. pp.43-51
Coleman, A. M., Chouliara, Z. and Currie, K., 2018. Working in the field of complex
psychological trauma: A framework for personal and professional growth, training, and
supervision. Journal of interpersonal violence. p.0886260518759062.
Albion, P. R. and et.al, 2015. Teachers’ professional development for ICT integration: Towards
a reciprocal relationship between research and practice. Education and Information
Technologies. 20(4). pp.655-673.
Bubnys, R. and Kairienė, A., 2016. The Concept and Content of Teacher’s Reflective Practice:
From Impulsiveness of Professional Activity towards Personal and Professional
Development. Pedagogika. 121(1).
Makhashova, P. and et.al, 2016. On the Development of Professional Competence in Students of
Creative Pedagogical Specialties. International Journal of Environmental and Science
Education. 11(11). pp.4660-4668.
Minzhanov, N. A. and et.al, 2016. Professional Training of Social Workers: Development of
Professionally Significant Qualities in the Future Social Workers. International Journal
of Environmental and Science Education. 11(10). pp.3746-3754.
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