EMPL4010 - Personal Learning Skills Development: A Reflective Report

This report provides a reflective account of the author's personal learning and skills development journey, particularly in the context of creating a business plan. Utilizing Gibb's reflective cycle, the report details the author's experiences, feelings, evaluations, and analysis of the process. Key learnings include the importance of a positive attitude, effective planning, time management, accountability, integrity, and strong leadership and communication skills. The author identifies strengths and weaknesses, and proposes an action plan for future improvement, focusing on teamwork, communication strategies, and continued leadership development. The report emphasizes the significance of these skills not only for professional success but also for personal growth and development, highlighting the importance of teamwork and effective communication in achieving organizational goals.

Running head: PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Authors Note:

1PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Executive summary:
The report reflects my learning and knowledge obtained from the business plan. Through
Gibb’s reflective cycle my experience and knowledge is reflected. He model focuses on
description on what happened while making the business plan and my feelings that I gained. The
model later evaluates the good and bad experience. Analysis is made for the required situation
and an action plan is also suggested that showcases what would be done, if similar situations
arise in future. The report explores new ideas towards thinking or doing about things to promote
self-improvement.

2PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Description:......................................................................................................................................4
Feelings:...........................................................................................................................................4
Evaluation:.......................................................................................................................................5
Analysis:..........................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
Action plan:.....................................................................................................................................9
References:....................................................................................................................................11

3PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Introduction:
In today’s ever evolving and fast changing world of business, management skills are
greatly relevant. People and organization are interdependent on each other. Management skills
are the cornerstone for business effectiveness (Divleli and Ergun 2015). These skills are crucial
as it provides great support to the organization in the form of organizing, planning and directing
the activities. While preparing for the business development plan, I improved my management
and leadership skills. Through the learning process I have been able to identify my development
needs as well as my leadership strengths. The project helped me to know my style of
management and further ascertain such areas that are useful to emerge as a versatile leader. With
the help of Gibb’s reflective cycle, my strength and weaknesses has been identified and actions
have been taken to address them. The reflective model follows six steps that informs about the
other next statement.

4PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Gibbs Reflective Model
Source: (Potter 2015)
Description:
Management skills are usually referred to all such characteristics and attributes in a
person that makes them the available scare resources (Asah, Fatoki and Rungani 2015). There
are various skills that I learned while making the project and they are the ultimate game changer
to maximize success. Effective management by an individual is completely dependent on their
leadership skills. Without a good leader any project cannot be successfully done. A successful
individual would always have various soft skills to interact with their employees and team
members (Kearns et al. 2015). Therefore, to become successful in future, it is highly crucial to
possess all such positive skills that would increase the level of competence. I learned that the
most primary step to achieve a desired plan is to having a positive attitude.
Feelings:
Prior to the experience, I was not very positive about my feelings as result my confidence
level was very low. Positive attitude helps in creating a healthy and positive work environment.
This leads to achieve the goal more easily and within the specified time period. In the world of
fierce competition, having a positive attitude is the main key to success. I learned that having
appositive attitude does not only raise my efficiency level but also increased the productivity
rate. This creates conflicts and chaos in the large business firms but with positive outlook such
issues can be easily handle (Costa, Passos and Bakker 2014). Previously I made my plan in a
very unsystematic manner that resulted in chaos and confusion. Planning is the primary function

5PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
of a management, which starts with the determination of objective. Planning is required at every
level of the management and hence is continuous in nature. During my experience I learned to
make proper plan for achieving my goals.
Goal setting is important for an individual before making any changes and setting up the
target. It is important to have clear mission and vision for the organization. If goal setting is done
with proper introspection and high care then anything is easily achievable. Moreover, to achieve
such goal it is important to have a clear knowledge and being aware about the team,
organization, market place and moreover myself. The product or services that are to be launched
for the business should also be thoroughly known.
Evaluation:
Accountability and integrity are few of the most important relevant values that are
exercised within an organization. I learned to responsible and answerable for my actions. On the
other hand, integrity is also necessary to make effective choices while selecting between right
and wrong. Without these values, the workplace culture would be ineffective and lead to poor
result. When the workers are mutually accountable to each of the, the employees feels a sense of
belonging and empowerment (Robinson and Stubberud 2014). Through practicing accountability
and integrity, and individual tend to feel a sense of pride and ownership for the firm.
Time management is another major skill that I learnt while making the business project.
Time management is the ability of an individual to effectively plan the set time and organize the
activities on a daily basis. The result of good time management has increased my productivity
and efficiency. Adequate time management is the vital aspect of the management (Howard et al.
2016). This involves planning, prioritizing for better performances and setting goals for the

6PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
organization. Time management is often related with the business but the skill is beneficial in
every aspect of life. It is important to have effective time management skills to become
successful.
Lack or absence of effective management creates negative consequences on the project in
the long-run. This skilled helped me to learn that it is not about working more but working more
efficiently. In today’s scenario, the world offers a lot of distractions in the form of instant
messages, emails, videos and many more. Therefore managing time effectively would lead to get
the task completed more efficiently.
Planning is the key element for achieving the desired objective. Proper and effective
planning method is ascertaining and identifying all the tasks that are needed to be done for
completing an assigned task (Costa, Passos and Bakker 2014). Planning can be done by making a
task or to-do list. The major next step is to prioritize these tasks so that goal can be effectively
achieved. All assigned tasks are not always equal, therefore methods is to be implemented to
identify the most important tasks and the tasks that takes very less time is to be sorted first of all.
Planning helps in thinking beforehand or in advance what and how it is to be done to achieve the
goal. Proper planning helps to bridge the gap between where an individual is currently standing
and where they want to reach in future. The experience that I gained was completely positive that
would be helpful in balancing both my personal and professional life.
Analysis:
It is always important to do the more complex and urgent tasks at first. Later on doing the
easier task is more helpful as this will cause very less delay. After identification and
prioritization the work, the time to complete the overall work should be properly estimated.

7PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Creating a planning schedule is helpful after all the major estimating and planning (Howard,
Turban and Hurley 2016). With the help of Gantt charts, the estimate for making the overall
project can be easily determined. For more complex projects, critical path is also helpful to
visualize which task is to be completed first. I learned that an individual who manages his time
well are the ones achieving their goals on time with much better success rate.
Leadership skills are highly significant to achieve the desired goals (Kodish 2017). While
doing the project I learned that any business achieve success only because of an effective and
true leader behind it. It is the foremost duty of a leader to initiate actions. Leader is generally a
person who helps in starting the work by accordingly communicating the plans and policies with
the management. My personal view of leadership is to be transformational leader. The
communication skills of a leader are required to very smooth with its subordinates. It is
important to posses all forms of communication. This includes departmental, one-on-one and full
staff communication besides communication via email, phones and social media.
Communication between the team members was not smooth at the beginning and it lead to
obtaining poor result.
An effective communication skill also involves proper listening to the other person. I
should establish a steady flow of communication within the team members. Good leaders make
themselves regularly available by discussing concerns and issues with the employees (Manning
2017). Motivation is highly necessary for the long-term growth of the business. Leaders should
be inspiring and encourage their team members to go extra mile for achieving maximum success.
Fair salary given to staff is not enough for the workers in the present times. Through rewards and
recognition schemes employees’ self-esteem are built.

8PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
Proper communication is significant for the people working in an organization to perform
the basic functions of management very effectively (Verma and Pande 2016). These functions
include planning, leading, controlling and organizing. Through smooth communication mangers
effectively perform their overall jobs and responsibilities. I learned that communication serves as
the major foundation required planning. It acts as source of information to the team members for
making vital decisions. This further helps in ascertaining and assessing the alternatives course of
actions. Proper communication also guides in the controlling the behavior of team members in
various ways (Jackson 2014). This helps in socializing and plays a major role in altering the
attitudes of the team members. My team member reactions were slightly different from mine but
overall it was a great experience and helped to learnt positive things in my life.
Conclusion:
In the current scenario, teamwork is highly essential in the corporate world for better
bonding among the employees and also for creating better output. It is important for the firms to
meet the target besides creating revenue. Teamwork helps in accomplishing the desired tasks
more efficiently and at a much faster pace (Häfner, Stock and Oberst 2015). Any person will
definitely would take more time to perform the work, if he or she is single handedly responsible
to perform each and every job. When employees work together, they start sharing the
responsibilities and helping each other. This further reduces the work pressure and workloads.
From the experience I learnt various positive aspect of myself that helped me in meeting required
competencies.
These management qualities or skills are highly significant to run a management
successfully. Each skill enables the individuals to effectively manage resources at their disposal.

9PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
These qualities are essential for each individual to gain success in the long-run. Apart from
achieving success in the professional arena, the qualities or skills that I learned also helped me to
improve myself in becoming a better human being. I learned that by sharing the vision,
motivating the entire team along with gaining commitment encourages the people to perform
more nicely. As a leader, I must be able to succinctly and clearly explain my team everything
about the established goals to a particular task.
Action plan:
In existing work environment, proper teamwork is required by the firm to gain long-term
success. In order to be more efficient in future I need to focus mostly on improving my
leadership skill, team work and communication strategies. Team work is the fuel, which allows
the people to achieve the uncommon result more easily (Butler, Chamornmarn and Ko 2016).
Moreover, behind every great work is a great team. Teamwork at workplace has proved to
increase efficiency, expedite idea generation, improve communication and distribute workload.
This helps in establishing a culture that the employees feel and therefore bring a sense of
empowerment and belonging. I observed that the end result comes out to be better when people
work in a team rather than individually. If people have same interest and specialization,
moreover comes from a common platform they form a great team.
I need to attend seminar and conferences for learning coordination and effective
communication. I also need to undergo a training program for learning all the leadership abilities
to enhance proper teamwork within the management. Moreover I need each and every team
member in the group is assigned tasks according to their specialization and therefore responsible
for the assigned task. There is always a healthy competition that is good for the employees. This

10PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
further helps to motivate each member so that they can perform better than their employees
(Kumar and James 2015). level of bonding among the team members rapidly increases.
Teamwork also reduces major chances of unnecessary chaos and conflicts among the members.
Effective teamwork within in an organization boosts performances and drives company’s growth
by tapping each individual’s unique strength and attributes.

11PERSONAL LEARNING SKILLS
References:
Asah, F., Fatoki, O.O. and Rungani, E., 2015. The impact of motivations, personal values and
management skills on the performance of SMEs in South Africa. African Journal of Economic
and Management Studies, 6(3), pp.308-322.
Betta, M., 2016. Self and others in team-based learning: Acquiring teamwork skills for
business. Journal of Education for Business, 91(2), pp.69-74.
Butler, J.E., Chamornmarn, W. and Ko, S., 2016. The impact of distance from a nation’s
commercial center on entrepreneurs’ managerial skills, firm success and
performance. International journal of education and human developments.
Costa, P., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A., 2014. Empirical validation of the team work engagement
construct. Journal of Personnel Psychology.
Divleli, M.S. and Ergun, E., 2015. MANAGER EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY: THE
EFFECT OF SKILLS ON DIFFERENT LEVEL MANAGEMENT. International Journal of
Management & Human Resources, 3(1).
Häfner, A., Stock, A. and Oberst, V., 2015. Decreasing students’ stress through time
management training: an intervention study. European journal of psychology of education, 30(1),
pp.81-94.
Howard, L.W., Turban, D.B. and Hurley, S.K., 2016. Cooperating teams and competing reward
strategies: Incentives for team performance and firm productivity. Journal of Behavioral and
Applied Management, 3(3).