Developing Essential Skills: A Self-Reflection Report

This report provides a self-reflection on the development of essential study and employment skills, focusing on a fundraising exercise conducted for teenage cancer patients. The introduction highlights the importance of core skills such as time management, decision-making, and teamwork in achieving personal and professional objectives. The main body evaluates the development of these skills through the fundraising program, detailing how the team learned to manage time effectively, collaborate, and make decisions. The report further examines individual contributions, team performance, and demonstrates skill development through examples. The student utilizes the Gibbs reflective model to analyze the experience, describing the initial motivation, feelings during the process, evaluation of the outcomes, and analysis of the skills gained. The report emphasizes the practical application of theoretical knowledge and the development of persuasion skills, concluding with the importance of planning and efficient working practices. The report is a valuable resource for students seeking to understand the practical application of essential skills in a real-world context.

Essential Study and
Employment Skills-1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Core skills as well as competencies help an individual to exploit the opportunity in order to
achieve personal objective as well as professional career. Thus, it is significant to acquire certain
skills such as time management, decision making and team work to conduct social welfare and
achieve the organisational target (Bell, Bryman and Harley, 2018). For the better understanding
this report carries a self reflection on development of adequate skills while running exercise for
teenager cancer patient. Along with that it includes individual contribution and overall team
performance as well as development of an individual while performing work for teenager cancer
patients. Lastly, it makes the uses of model of reflection to explain self experience (Collet, Hine
and Du Plessis, 2015)
MAIN BODY
Explain and evaluated development skill through formative exercise
Skill, competency or knowledge does not only gets enhance through training and
development program (Sekaran and Bougie, 2016). Apart from it the experiences of people lead
to development of certain individual skills. With that the confidence level of an individual also
get boosted, ready to do a task with better efficiency without thinking twice. In context to the
exercise which we conducted to raise the fund for cancer patients benefitted not only to the
patients but our team as well. As during the process the team learnt lot of things and got the
opportunity to work on specific set of skills. As this opportunity to work for social welfare
helped us in the development of various skills. Some of the skills which team learnt during the
process are stated below:
Time management: Fundraising programme helped us to inculcate the habit of time
management. As our motive was to do social welfare so we conducted various activities to raise
maximum fund for the cancer patients. Initially it took us time to spread the awareness about our
social work as we were doing it for very first time that is to work for cancer patients. Though
people encouraged our work and we raised fund for the unprivileged group of society but this
whole process was time consuming. This helped us to determine which method our team should
adopt to gain maximum result at lesser duration of time. Yes it took some time but at last we
shortlisted some plans to do work with better efficiency. Some of the measures taken by us were:
we distributed colourful pen that carries a sign. Therefore, this method or skill helped our team to
raise fund from public. The sign gave the message that yes we stand together for a good cause.
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Teamwork: Team is basically a group of those people who worked together to achieve
common objective within specific time period (Polonsky and Waller, 2018). In order for a sound
functioning of a team teamwork is essential, that means coordination among the team, proper
distribution of work. In context to fundraising program for cancer patients where we face lot of
hurdles to spread the awareness about our program and generate fund associated with it. Thus, in
this duration I developed my teamwork spirit as we all use to motivate and appreciate the effort
of each other and during that we realised team interest is over individual interest, even
motivation also helped me to remain encouraged by causing positive synergy within the team.
Hence, these steps finally made us strong enough to work for teenager cancer patients which
ultimately helped the main cause to find that steadiness.
Decision making: Decision making is a process to reach out at an outcome after
considering various alternatives (Hair and et.al., 2015). Proper decision making helps you to
achieve efficiency and gives you the best alternative which can help you to reach your objective,
Herein, this situation amongst other skills my decision making was also enhanced. For instance,
our whole team took decision that they will only receive funds after offering colourful pens to
donor. In addition to it, pens with sign will always arise a sense of standing for a good cause to
donors that they have made efforts to contribute for cancer patients. Therefore selecting such
decision has helped our team to create long term relationship with donors and spreading the word
of mouth so that we can get additional fund raiser for a good cause.
Planning: Planning refers to thinking in advance to achieve the predetermined objective
of an organisation (Quinlan, et.al., 2019). It is basically conducted to run whole business process
smoothly. For any business or NPO the objective is there, planning helps in achieving that
objective. In respective place my team of 10-12 people made a group discussion that how we
will raise fund for cancer patients. Therefore, after discussion and going through of each member
we all finally landed on the final conclusion. As our motive was to choose cost effective method
so instead of choosing any promotional tool I decided that we will do promotion by our own.
Furthermore, to do so we went to the public and tell them about our work and for whom our team
is working. This created awareness among the people about our work. And at the same time
people were also impressed by the efforts done by us and they appreciated the same. Hence, it
maximises our effort by the increasing profitability as well as productivity.
Individual contribution and overall team performance
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As this whole exercise was for the upliftment of needy people that is teenager cancer
patient. This helped not only in raising fund for cancer but groomed the pitching skill of every
teammate. Moreover our whole team contribute so that we can reach out to the desirable
solution. Furthermore, my contribution was that I discussed during group discussion duration
that selling personalised pen with a sign is a good option but we should carry some data or
evidences along with us. So that people will rely on us that we belong to particular non
governing organisation and working for cancer patients. Along with that as I have conducted
various seminars and presentation so this helped me to easily connect with people and raise fund
for social welfare. Also I gave tips to my colleagues that how we approach people like we should
have courtesy in our voice and confidence on our face. Some of the member earlier used to
hesitate to pitch the random public in that case I asked them to come along with me and showed
that how things are meant to be done. Therefore, such exercise boosted up the confidence within
overall team that helped us to achieve the objective significantly.
Demonstrate development and contribution through examples
Initially we went out there with no such set of plans. Our cause was good but we didn’t
planned anything. We thought we will raise fund without much fuss as the cause was good. Yes
we raised some fund but I thought we can do much better than this. So I did my part by calling
for a team meeting so that we can discuss what is lacking. We wanted a cost efficient method to
raise fund for the cancer patients but sooner we realise that we don’t have any particular plan to
reach our goals that was to raise as much as possible with efficiency. We planned to build a
sense of belongingness with the people who was contributing. We decided to distribute them
pens with sign which told the public, yes we are standing together for a good cause. It boosted
the speed of raising fund as more people were ready to contribute for a good cause. Everybody
wanted to stand or contribute for the cause. Distributing pens also helps us to spread word of
mouth and the fund raising speed was multiplied by that action and it was very beneficial. Not
only that, after the meeting we had together we came up with specific sets of plan. Another one
of them was going out individually and talking about the cause in front of public and telling them
how important and how good the cause is for the welfare of society. Our team went out and
talked and build connection with public and got their share of confidence that yes the cause is
social welfare and getting profit out of it is not the concern of our organisation.
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It helped me immensely as it made me realise how important is to make plans and efficient
working is. Whole process helped me in my development as talking to people give me exposure
and the confidence also. More than that, it gave me practical exposure and the sense of
understanding of how to put my theoretical understanding in the practical environment. For
example: retaining customer and building relation with them is one of the most important
techniques in marketing. I have learnt it theoretically; we distributed pens with sign to tell people
that yes you stand with us for a good cause, by that we tried to build relation with public
emotionally. And that is how I channelized my theoretical knowledge to get out some result for
the team.
Reflect experiences using cycle/model of reflection to support discussion
Engaging in such exercises has built various experiences in the lives of each and every
individual. Thus, Gibbs reflective model has been used for easy demonstration of experiences.
Description: Initially I decided to work for cancer patients who suffer from life
threatening disease. My motive was to raise fund for those group who don’t have enough fund to
deal with such disease. Thus, to move such exercise further we started with 2 members and
created a team of 9-12 members. Hence, with the increase in number of people the group effort
enhanced that lead us to achieve a sound result.
Feeling: In the beginning we started our fund raising programme with lot of
determination as well as dedicated while performing such exercise we had positive feelings that
our effort is adding value to someone’s other life or we are working for betterment of society by
looking after the health of people. Then during mid we feel demotivated as we were not getting
positive responsive from the people. But at this stage we develop team work skill that
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encouraged us to work with positivity. This finally led us to work smoothly in order to achieve a
desirable outcome.
Evaluation: Though this process was associated with social welfare rather than self
welfare but our team members shared both positive as well as negative experiences which are
defined below:
When we went out in crowd and select people randomly to share about our work like we
are working for cancer patients and looking to raise fund for them. Then some of the people ask
us valid questions like how this fund reaches them or how many teenagers have fought against
this. Then after answering such questions most of the people appreciated our efforts and funded
for cancer patients. Amongst them some of people took our contact to do more funds in near
future. So such experiences boosted our confidence and expanded our reach.
On contrary most of the people ignored as they did not believe us that we are collecting
funds for the respective organisation. In that case we showed them photos and explained the
whole procedure how this fund directly reaches to the needy people. Even after that they did not
fund for patients. Therefore, this was time, cost as well as energy consuming process due to this
it landed up developing negative experiences but with the passage of the time I leant to deal with
it.
Analysis: On the basis of situation I analyse that my persuasion skill helps a lot to
influence the behaviour of listener or other person. I learnt to have courtesy in my
communication even if respondent negatively reward us back. Though this does not guarantee
creating long term relationship but neither creates dissonance. Moreover as I am working for
social welfare so in that case I should connect with the team to understand their perception.
Conclusion: As our overall efforts and skill such as working in team, decision making
and so on. We acquire while working together which help us to remain motivated, focused as
well as attentive. Earlier negative responses used to hurt us which had shaken our trust. So based
on past experience and passage of time we analysed that it is significant for our team to ignore
negatively that pull down our effort
Action plan: If in future I again run such programme then will make effort to conduct
this exercise at longer platform where we can cater huge public at a time. Along with that I will
come up with more data that can work as an evidence for people so that even they will realise
that we are genuinly working to safeguard the interest of society.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been determined that employment helps an individual to
develop core competency over other. Along with that it is essential for an individual to enhance
the skill with the passage of time to gain the better understanding of situation and deal with it
appropriately. Furthermore, it interpret that how one as well as group’s effort help in
accomplishing the objective of social welfare.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Bell, E., Bryman, A. and Harley, B., 2018. Business research methods. Oxford university press.
Assiter, A., 2017. Transferable skills in higher education. Routledge.
Hair Jr and et.al., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. Routledge
Collet, C., Hine, D. and Du Plessis, K., 2015. Employability skills: perspectives from a
knowledge-intensive industry. Education+ Training. 57(5). pp.532-559.
Polonsky, M.J. and Waller, D.S., 2018. Designing and managing a research project: A business
student's guide. Sage publications.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach.
John Wiley & Sons.
Quinlan, C.,et.al., 2019. Business research methods. South Western Cengage.
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