Skills Assessment and Development for Business and Academic Context

This report provides a comprehensive self-assessment of skills relevant to business and academic practices. It begins with an evaluation of communication, teamwork, numeracy, and time management skills developed through professional experience as a sales manager. The report then applies Kolb's learning cycle, using a personal experience of presenting a new product concept to illustrate the stages of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Furthermore, it utilizes Gibb's reflective cycle to analyze a marketing research experience, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement, and an action plan for enhancing interpersonal and technical skills, as well as managing work-related pressure. The report concludes with a personality development plan outlining current skill levels, methods for improvement, and a detailed action plan to address specific areas needing development. This includes strategies for improving interpersonal and technical skills, as well as managing pressure in the workplace.

BUSINESS PRACTICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................................3
Evaluation of skills developed for business and academic context..........................................................3
Application of Kolb’s learning cycle and Gibbs reflective cycle.............................................................4
Personality development plan..................................................................................................................5
Action plan..............................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................7
APPENDIX-A............................................................................................................................................8
APPENDIX-B............................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Many of us due to the busy schedule of their lives are not able to give time for skill
auditing of oneself which lowers the self-awareness and personal development aspects in one’s
life (Terblanche and De Clercq, 2020). The present report is based on evaluation of different
skills needed for successful completion of academic and business practices, their application in
real life events in the context of academic and business practices and personal development plan
for assessing skills that are currently present or need to be learned or improved.
MAIN BODY
Evaluation of skills developed for business and academic context
Since the beginning of my professional career, that is right from my professional degree of
master of business administration till now, where I am employed as a sales manager in a
financial concern. At this point of time, I am managing 10 people who are working under me.
The various skills developed during this and their significance in my career are as follows:
Communication skills: The most important skill that is needed for working with and managing
people is good communication skill. Any professional individual must work upon this skill
which can be in any form like written, non-verbal and verbal. I have work upon and still
continuously concern about my communication skills, as this is an important element in my
business writing like emails for communicating with my boss, colleagues, subordinates and more
specifically for responding to feedback of my clients (RAHMAT and et.al., 2020). I am too bad
in communication, but after joining my professional degree course I realized the significance of
this skill and till that time I am continuously trying to improve my communication skill.
Team working skills: As a professional, one must work in a group of different individuals as the
case with me. And at this position one must have excellent leadership qualities, collaborative
approach, critically evaluating problems and solving it in a team and actively listening to other
member in a team for suggestions. These skills are in fact considered as a team etiquette, that is
what I learnt from my job. I realized that one must have interpersonal skills to successfully
accomplish their team tasks. Such interpersonal skills include managing team members, building
friendly relationship with team members and clients, along with resolving their issues and
conflicts through obtaining timely feedback from them.
Numeracy skills: To boost my numerical skills I am training myself right from my graduation
time. This skill proved to be useful for my profession in many ways as I am now able to read
stock market information and can perform risk calculations, profitability and costs associated
with each one of my company’s and competitor’s offerings which accordingly helps me in
building my customer base. For learning and making myself proficient in numeracy skill, I still
take online tutorials and lectures to help improve my numeric skills.
Time management skills: As a professional, I need to complete many tasks at a time, so for this
I need to prepare budget for dividing time for all activities, so that I can complete my work on
time without getting overloaded. I used to prepare timeline for complex activities to be able to

show up on time. Such punctuality in task accomplishment is very beneficial in building good
image in employer’s mind.
Application of Kolb’s learning cycle and Gibbs reflective cycle
Kolb’s learning cycle involves reflection on learning or undertaking some activities for the first
time (Wain, 2017). The four stages involve in learning cycle describes the experience of some
real life situations. Here in a four stages given by Kolb, I will share my experience of my
graduation time when I was first time got the opportunity to develop and present my new product
concept in front of businessmen and professionals.
Concrete experience: here I will describe my first time experience of facing large audience
where I was going to present new product concept developed by me and my classmates. I explain
the concept of new organic product developed by us. The visitors are provided with the feedback
form for their reviews regarding the concept. During the presentation I was along with my
teammates explaining the concept and audiences are making note of their reviews and questions
for Q&A sessions. I have also prepared some questions that can be raised by audience, so that I
can answer them in a professional and logical manner.
Reflective Observation: At this stage, visitors reflect their experience of the understanding of
the concept, share their observation and relate them with their existing knowledge. In the
feedback form, the visitors fill their impressions and suggestions for further improvement in the
concept. I get good reviews for my presentation due to my communication skills and team
management skills.
Abstract conceptualization: At this stage, the visitors are then given opportunity to discuss
their learning through participating in the Q&A session, where they are also allowed to share
their ideas and suggestions through their existing knowledge of the customer need, in order to
make the concept more viable (Watson and et.al., 2019). I learn skills like how invite other’s
suggestions and how to manage with the negative reviews in life because everything can never
be good in any situation.
Active experimentation: At this stage, there was a designed virtual session, for testing the
viability of the new product concept (Wallace, 2019). There the participants are given a chance
to place orders for the product. This session is helpful in determining the possible demand for the
product if the concept was capitalized, and accordingly the resulting profitability can be
identified. I can say that this new product concept and presenting the same has allow me to learn
many skills like interpersonal skills by working in a team, presentation skills has improved and
many numerical, logical and problem solving are learnt through this presentation.
Gibb’s reflective cycle
There are six stages in Gibb’s model of reflecting new experience, where the existing strengths,
areas of improvement and actions needed to be taken to builds and boosts skills. The initial three
steps describe what had happened during the new experience while the last three steps explain
actions for improving experience and results in the future.

Description: I got appointed for the marketing research team by my company, which I was
doing for the first time. I have given face to face interview option for collecting in depth
response from the customers. This experience allows me to improve my communication skills
and I was appreciated on the ground of interacting well with the customers through the feedback
taken from the customers at the end of the interview session.
Feelings: Earlier before initiating research I was very confused and stressed as I was first time
going to directly interact with the customers and I fear that if something got unwell may affect
the company’s reputation. Along with customers some business professionals are also part of the
respondent where I feel quite nervous to interact with them as they are experienced individuals.
Evaluation: on reflecting my first time experience of market research, I found that was able to
organize things well, like whatever the data has gathered during the research I organize them
well with appropriate presentation of research data of the market. I am able to begin and
complete research on time which was appreciated by my superiors. But many times during the
research I felt disappointed and nervous as the respondents are getting frustrated due to
questioning during the interview session (Adeani and et.al., 2019). Such problems were
experience due to poor preparation and my lacking interpersonal skills.
Analysis: I realized that better organization and timely starting and finishing the research was
due to my organization skills and time management skills. Also, due to my interpersonal skills
many respondents are sharing their views with great comfort and without hesitation. But
somewhere during initial interviews due to my nervousness and hesitation my communication
gets affected and many respondents feel frustrated during interview due to my inability to
communicate with them properly. At this point, I realized that before going to interact with
outsiders I must first rehearsal what I am required to do actually, so that the actual results can be
improved by identifying my shortcomings in advance.
Conclusion: After this experience, I realized that I need to work upon my presentation skills,
numeracy skills and interpersonal skills, so that if I got such an opportunity in future my
respondents should not feel any sort of frustrations.
Action plan: To improve my certain skills that I thought need to be improved will be done by
taking virtual interviews, attending online sessions for learning numeracy skills which is the base
of any market research.
Personality development plan
Current Skills Status Time required to
improve
Methods of
improvement
Communication skills Very good Working on it since
school time
Online tutorials
Interpersonal skills OK 1 year Practicing active
listening, empathy
and maintaining
(PLANNING,
2018)relationship

with people.
Numeracy skills good 6 months Taking calculative
tests and logical
exercises
Leadership skills Good 1 year Reading novel and
biography of
successful leader and
listening to their
speeches (Lejeune,
Beausaert and
Raemdonck, 2018).
Action plan
For improving my skills in which I feel I am lacking and I need to work upon it are;
interpersonal skills, technical skills and nervousness during work pressure. For this I have
developed an action and review plan for improvement of these skills;
 For my interpersonal skills, I will learn to listen others view, I will try to keep myself in
other shoes while taking decision for a team, I will also work upon my patience level and
learn to give respect to subordinates. After some duration of these actions, I will take
feedback from my colleagues to get myself reviewed on the ground of interpersonal skills
(Middleton, 2017).
 For improving my technical skills, I will undertake training session both online and
offline and to review my technical learning I will undertake technical projects of my
company.
 For working in a pressurize situations, I will prioritize my tasks and breaking down and
preparing task completion schedule, I will overcome my hesitation.
CONCLUSION
From the above report prepared on skill assessment needed for academic and business
practice, it has been concluded that timely self-assessment of skills must be done which enhance
one’s ability to undertake versatile projects by learning new skills from new experiences.

REFERENCES
Terblanche, E. A. J. and De Clercq, B., 2020. Factors to consider for effective critical thinking
development in auditing students. South African Journal of Accounting Research, 34(2).
pp.96-114.
RAHMAT, R., and et.al., 2020. A Revamp of the Internal Quality Auditing Process.
PLANNING, C., 2018. Personal Development Plan.
Lejeune, C., Beausaert, S. and Raemdonck, I., 2018. The impact on employees’ job performance
of exercising self-directed learning within personal development plan practice. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-27.
Wain, A., 2017. Learning through reflection. British Journal of Midwifery, 25(10). pp.662-666.
Adeani, I. S., and et.al., 2019. Using GIBBS reflective cycle in making reflections of literary
analysis. Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ), 6(2). pp.139-148.
Middleton, R., 2017. Critical reflection: The struggle of a practice developer.
Wallace, D., 2019. Parts of the Whole: Theories of Pedagogy and Kolb's Learning
Cycle. Numeracy: Advancing Education in Quantitative Literacy, 12(1).
Watson, M. K., and et.al., 2019. Using Kolb’s learning cycle to improve student sustainability
knowledge. Sustainability, 11(17). p.4602.

APPENDIX-A
Figure 1: Kolb's learning cycle

APPENDIX-B
Figure 2: GIBB's reflective cycle