Personal & Professional Development - Assignment (Doc)

Personal & Professional
Development Module

TABLE OF CONTENTS
REFLECTIVE ESSAY....................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
APPENDIX......................................................................................................................................8

REFLECTIVE ESSAY
(Communication Skills as a personal quality)
Description
During my academic career, I started an internship program on an Assistant HR Manager in
UK's small medium size company namely Checkout.com. There were lots of colleagues who
were working as an intern, and we were 20 in a group. During the internship program we had to
present various qualities that resided in us and my quality was that I have a good communication
skills. This is the skill which has helped me in my academic career and I believe that it will help
me in my professional career as well. Communication skills is a type of skill by which one is
able to communicate effectively both verbally and written communication (Salomone and et.al.,
2018). During the internship there were many workshops which were organised by the company
and my communication skills has helped me a lot in completing those workshops effectively. I
had communicate with my colleagues and with the management in which my communication
skills played an important role. This is that type of skill which is really important in order to
achieve my employability goals. I want to become HR manager in the future for which
communication skills plays a major role in negotiation, motivation, understanding etc. for which
an individual needs verbal and non-verbal skills (Brink and Costigan, 2015). HR manager should
execute effective communication skills within the organisation which help in increasing the
performance of employees and organisation as well. My communication skills has given me a
sense of confidence due to which I am able to take challenges of my life. Having effective
communication skills acts as boost in a professionals career.
I have to get engaged in various workshops and had to communicate with various
employees of the organisation and with my colleagues which needed an effective communication
skills and I was the one to present communication skills quite properly. Also due to my
communication skills, I was chosen as a leader of a group during various workshop exercises and
for that, my communication has to be good enough in order to keep my teammates motived and
engaged in the various workshop activities which were organised by the company. So, it can be
said that communication skills is very important for any individual in order to lead an
organisation or a group of people. As it acts as a ladder to achieve various feats of life and for
me, same has done by my communication skills.
Feelings
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In order to lead an organisation or to become a leader in the future it is important for an
individual to have a good communication skills as it acts as a boost in its career due to which he
or she can achieve their career objectives. I believe that my communication skills has helped me
a lot in my career both academic and professional. I really feel that due to good communication
skills I was able to complete the various activities of workshops quite easily although there were
some challenges which were faced during the activities but my communication skills helped me
in completing my internship program effectively. I, also feel that this quality in me acts as a
strength in me due to which I was able to lead the team effectively and get the tasks done
effectively. During the internship program and various workshops that were organised by the
company and I had to deal with various challenges as it was for the first time I was working as
professionally, and I was chosen as a leader of a group. So, there was a huge responsibility on
me but it was my communication skills which acted as a strength in me, and I was able to
complete my internship program successfully.
As a leader I had to motivate my colleagues in order to get them engaged in various
workshops and have to keep them motivated for which my communication skills played an
important role. Due to effective communication skills I was able to set proper collaboration with
my colleagues and with management. I was able to give proper directions to my teammates
which helped in completing various tasks and it was only due to effective communication skills.
For example for a specific activity company had given written instruction which was to be
followed, I was able to understand the instructions and effectively dictate to my teammates, and
they were able to understand me due which task was successfully completed. So, this quality has
acted as a strength in me due to which I was able to give proper guidelines to my team which
helped them in getting their job done. Another example of communication as my strength is that,
there arose a situation in a group where some teammates got in a conflicts as they disagreed
regarding some point. So as a leader I have to make negotiation between the two parties and
settle a dispute which was also done in a short period of time due to my effective communication
skills. So, it is major strength for me as negotiation requires proper communication skills, and I
was able to act as a effective negotiate between them. So, communication skill is strength for me
as it will help me to face different types of challenges which will help me in achieving my career
goals.
Evaluation
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During the internship program there were various tasks and activities which were
assigned to us and as a leader of a group it was my prime responsibility to get these tasks
completed effectively. During internship program there were various events which went very
well and where successfully completed on time. Being a leader of a group I had to manage
entire team effectively which was done effectively due to my communication skills. Managing a
team and keeping them engaged towards the activities is a challenging task in which my
communication skills helped me a lot. Managing team requires an effective direction, guidelines
and some motivation which was possible only due to my effective communication skills.
There were some attributes, behavioural preference as well as values which under pin this
strength in me was that I am a good listener as I am able to understand the things very quickly
and being a good listener is one of the best way of being a good communicator (Bard and et.al.,
2017). Some of my behavioural preference like my body language is adequate to keep the team
motivated for example I maintain proper gestures, eye contact, my voice is clear with high
clarity, etc. So, this behavioural preferences acts as strength in me due to which I was able to
perform well during the activities and my team as well. Also, there are some communication
values in me which has helped me in facing the various challenges during the program was that
my communication is based on relevancy and timely information (Özdemir, Akatay and Eroğl,
2015). I was able to deliver proper information on right time which has helped me in achieving
objectives of task during the internship program and overcome the various challenges which I
faced during the program. So, all of these attributes, values and behavioural preference of my
communication skills has made this as a strength for me and it is really important for me in
achieving my career objectives in the future.
Analysis
During workshop, exercises almost everything went very well but there were some
challenges which I faced during the exercises of workshop. There were various things which was
very difficult for me and acted as a challenge for me. One the major challenge which I faced was
to keep the team engaged and motivated towards various tasks. There were some team members
which was very difficult for me to keep them engaged and motivated during workshop exercise.
But due to my communication skills, I was able to keep them motivated and engaged during the
exercise due to my communication skills I was able to understand their problem and provide
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them a proper direction to overcome this problem, and they were able to understand me easily
which increased their performance during the exercise.
Another challenge which I faced during workshop exercises was the setting a proper
collaboration among the team as there arose a conflict between some team members which led
hindrance of activities during workshop exercises. So, I have to make use of my communication
skills in order to understand their problem and provide a proper solution in order to resolve the
issue. As a leader of a group it was my responsibility to settle the conflict in which my
communication skills played an important role. Also, I learnt that there are lots of things which I
need to learn and there some communication skills which lacked in me, which I need to improve
in the future.
Lack of some communication skills in me resulted in some challenging experiences for
example communicating guidelines to team members during various workshop exercises was a
challenging experience for me. As it was my life's first experience to lead a team and
communicating the guidelines in a way it has to be conveyed was a challenging experience for
me. In this case my communication skills helped me a lot as I was able to understand and
communicate the guidelines effectively. The challenges faced by me was because as it was for
the first time working as an intern in an organisation and leading a team which definitely was a
challenging task for me which I need to face. The challenges which I faced during workshop
exercise was an opportunity for me to improve myself as employee or future HR in any which
could help me in pursuing my professional career effectively.
Conclusion
Entire internship program was a positive experience for me and I learnt lots of things
from it, also there were some experiences which contradicted that of mine in which I believed.
First of all I thought that type of communication skills which I had is enough for me to achieve
my career objectives but there some contexts where communication skills is less required for
example development of salary of the employees of the organisation which needs practical
knowledge of preparing a salary for employees or setting a salary scale for employees in an
organisation. This is the area where I had to make less contact with other as it was done with the
help of software available in the organisation. Another thing which contradicted was that, I
thought that HR does not need much of written communication skills, but I was wrong with this
fact. It is essential for HR manager to have proper written communication skills which can help
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in proper documentation of records and is also important for formal communication within the
organisation (El-Shafy and et.al 2018). This is also another contradictory experience which I
have gone through during workshop exercises. For example providing a salary report to Salary
manager has to be done in a formal way which requires essential elements of all written
communication skills.
Another contradictory experience which I experienced was that there requires high level
of communication process within a team essentially for a leader and needs to communicate more
effectively. I believed that leader had normally communicates with its employees but I came to
know that, it is important for a leader to communicate frequently with the employees in order to
keep the motivated and engaged (Suleman, 2018). By communicating frequently and more
effectively will help in increasing the performance of the employees as well as the performance
of organisation as well. So, there were some contradictions which I faced and which contradicted
to my strengths due to which I realised that there are various thing regarding the communication
skills which I need to improve. This was mainly due to that fact I lacked a professional
experience in me and I only had an academic knowledge due which there some contradictions
from the experiences form the various workshop activities.
Action Plan
Qualities of a person benefits him in the long run. There are various qualities a person
posses which give him an edge over others. Communication skills are very important for HR
manager. If HR manager is not good in communication then he will not be able to do proper
communication with other departments (Konopasek and et.al., 2017). Internship in HR taught me
various skills. There are some problems in communication that I faced during my internship. I
am not very good at writing skills. Writing skills are very important for a person working in
human Resource department (Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017). I needs to send various
information and letter to employees as well as to outsiders. So, information have to be sent in a
professional manner in the form of letters, mails and more. Internship has increased my writing
skills as before I was not able to write a letter properly. All the information is passed to the
employees in mails only and these mails should be written in formal way. There is also one more
communication skill that I lack and that was some non-verbal communication skills. I was not
good in gesture to other in form of gestures and actions. Explaining the work through actions is
very important and beneficial for a company. There are many times a situation when during a
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meeting the employee need to communicate and this type he must know to pass the information
through action so that the whole meeting is not disturbed. Disturbing the meeting can waste time
of the people and can make the manager angry. My writing skills were improved when I tried to
write properly and took the help of other interns. If the writing is properly checked and mistakes
are found out then this skill can be improved. To improve non-verbal communication, I tried to
to do various things like making eye contact, using right facial expression and trying to be more
attentive. These skills benefited me in the future when I went to other company and some people
were facing same problems. Some strength in me includes good verbal communication and
confidence. Good verbal communication helped me in communicating with employees and heads
easily. My good convincing power helped in convincing many people. Verbal communication is
the most commonly used way of communication between two people and it is widely used. It is
the most preferred way of communication.
My good verbal communication can help me in getting good position in company in the
future. I can easily convince people to do work according to me. Confidence is very much
important if a person wants to get a good position in the company. A confident person is always
believed by others. In the starting of internship, my confidence was very low and I was not able
to perform well. I was not able to communicate properly in meetings because of lack of lack of
confidence. But with the help of various colleagues and friends, my confidence increased and my
communication was improved. I showed more confidence in work and learned to deal with
people calmly.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bard, A. M and et.al., 2017. The future of veterinary communication: Partnership or persuasion?
A qualitative investigation of veterinary communication in the pursuit of client behaviour
change. PLoS One. 12(3). p.e0171380.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A., 2017. Human resource management in Europe Issues and
opportunities. In Policy and Practice in European Human Resource Management (pp.
1-21). Routledge.
Brink, K. E. and Costigan, R. D., 2015. Oral communication skills: Are the priorities of the
workplace and AACSB-accredited business programs aligned?. Academy of Management
Learning & Education. 14(2). pp.205-221.
El-Shafy, I. A and et.al 2018. Closed-loop communication improves task completion in pediatric
trauma resuscitation. Journal of surgical education. 75(1). pp.58-64.
Konopasek, L. and et.al., 2017. Evaluating communication skills training courses. Oxford
Textbook of Communication in Oncology and Palliative Care. p.399.
Özdemir, S., Akatay, A. and Eroğlu, U., 2015. COMPETENCIES OF HR PROFESSIONALS: A
STUDY ON THE HR COMPETENCIES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS1. Journal of
Life Economics. 2(4). pp.47-60.
Salomone, E and et.al., 2018. Adaptive behaviour and cognitive skills: stability and change from
7 months to 7 years in siblings at high familial risk of autism spectrum disorder. Journal of
autism and developmental disorders. 48(9). pp.2901-2911.
Suleman, F., 2018. The employability skills of higher education graduates: insights into
conceptual frameworks and methodological options. Higher Education. 76(2). pp.263-278.
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APPENDIX
Value added element
The company in which I was completing internship was a medium size organisation.
There were not many employees in starting. The name of the company is Checkout.com. It is a
UK based company which deals in payment services. The company has grown to a good level in
recent years. The company provides flexibility and control to merchants and it provides customer
with good products which is out of the crowd. This was a small company in starting and it grew
to a level at which it provides billions of payments services every year. The company showed
good growth rate and the customer base was increasing very fast and demand for its services
grew at a rapid speed. There are 20 interns who are doing internship with me and I was chosen as
a leader of them. It motivated me to do better for the organisation and I have done my best in it. I
was motivated to learn and perform various tasks properly. As the demand was increasing the
need of employees were also increasing. Company needed those employees who were efficient
as well as disciplined. The employees should be well-mannered and they should have proper
communication skills. I was doing internship as an assistant of Human Resource manager. The
work of human resource manager is related to every department of the company. Every
employee depends on HR for various work. There are various skills which cab be learned if a
person works in HR department. Various creativity and critical thinking of mine were developed.
As an assistant to HR manager I was getting good response from all the departments . The
company was growing at a good speed so it needed more employees who can work. Company
needs more employees if the workload increases so that the work can be divided between
different employees. The work of Human Resource department was very much as they need to
select candidates for different department. I was given the training on how to recruit employees
in an organisation. Workshops activities were also held which helped me in learning various
skills.
Human resource managers performs many duties like coordinating employees so that
organisation objectives can be achieved, giving various services like deciding the payroll of
employees, giving training to employees and more. I was able to learn various creativity and
critical thinking skills. Some critical thinking skills that I learned was decision-making and
problem solving. I was not able to take correct decision and was bad in it. Every person learns
and gets experience after working only and no one gets it directly without hard-work. Employees
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should be selected if they have performed well and are good in communication but it is not
necessary that for how much they will stay in the organisation or how much he will contribute
for the benefit of the company. The company should decide the salary of an employee seeing the
contribution he makes in the organisation. I took various decision in the company like the
candidate should be appointed or not and what pay should be given to employee on the basis of
their skills and experiences. I faced various problems in the organisation and by proper guidance
of manager an individual is able to work properly. The problems which occurred in human
resource were mostly related to the communication gap between various department. Company
face various problems and they are mostly related to employees. Problem which was faced by
the company was related to high labour turnover. The company was facing the problem of high
labour turnover from sometime and the reason for it was workload and timings of jobs. Work
load was very much and the employee was not able to complete work on time and there was a
need of two candidates there. Various problems were solved like these and it gave a good
experience to me.
The internship taught me various creative sills which will help me in future. A person
who has good creative skills always try to work in different ways rather than in one way. He
knows how to make his work interesting and perfect. I was able to generate new ideas related to
training and selection of employees. The idea was to ask different questions from candidates
rather than the same old questions. So for choosing the best candidate I used various creative
skills to make questions and these questions were asked from candidates. The candidate which
answered all questions correctly was selected and is a good employee of the organisation.
Creative skills are not easily developed and they need time for practise. Various changes were
made in selection procedure to make it more effective. Good decision always gave me a feeling
of winner and it boost your confidence. It is the duty of human resource department for arranging
things on any special occasion. I was able to learn various skills as I was noting the things done
by various employees in decorating and doing all things. There is no proper way of learning
creative skills, they are adopted by doing things. The employees of the company were very hard
working and patient and due their work only company has reached a good position. It is very
important to select a good and productive employee for the benefit of the organisation. The role
of manager is very important in the organisation and many skills can be learned from his by just
observing him. He is responsible for all the profits that the company earns and he is only
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responsible for any loss if the company faces. By doing internship, a person learns various things
from the organisation which will benefit him in the near future and he will get the idea of work
by working in a firm. Internship gives a proper know-how to the candidate of job conditions.
Experiential Element
Internship teaches a person various skills and abilities. He gets to various things about
himself. By doing internship in Checkout.com , I got to learn various things like decision-
making, patience and more. The most I learned was from the activity which I had done in the
mid of my internship. I was given a task to give salaries to employees. I was told to decide the
salary of employees on the basis of their experiences and skills. It is very tough to decide the
salary of employee as I was not knowing the amount of work they do so I went to the head of
each department and asked about their team members. Communication with the head of
department is a big task and a person need to have good communication skills for it. The head
gave me the information I needed and according to it I made the payroll. There were many
difficulties which I faced because I was just having the information about the employees and I
needed to take out the basic salary which is paid to employees working on different posts and the
salary decided by the company. Human resources are very important for a company and no
organisation can work properly without handling them. My communication skills were increased
during this process and I got the knowledge in various fields. I became more confident after
communicating with different people and I got to know that I can work easily under work
pressure.
Workshop Activities Evidence
There are various things a person can learn from different workshop activities. Different
workshop activities are carried out in a company and it depends upon the person to take
part in that and learn from it. One workshop activity was done in which the person who
attended the job least time in last 4 months was to be identified. The person who least
attended the job had to give small treat to the people who were in the activity. Activities
like this benefit the company as the total attendance is found and employees try to attend
the job as much as possible. Different workshop activities are done so that interest of
employees also remain in their work as well as organisational objectives can also be
achieved. As a leader of the group I was able to show my leadership skills and I motivated
others to achieve the targets on time. Workshop activities are done to increase the skills of
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the interns as well as for the benefit of the existing employees. Workshop activities
improves communication skills as well as it gives different opportunities to interns in
various fields. Knowledge of an intern increases if he attends workshops regularly and it
helps him in getting good jobs easily. Workshops given good experience to interns on
various topics. Workshops are mostly arranged by two companies and this gives a chance
to interns make new contact with the people of other company and they might get good job
in a good company.
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