Graduate Challenge Report: Skills Development and Challenges

This report, titled "Graduate Challenge Report", analyzes various challenges and skills necessary for professional development. It explores challenges such as apprentice, presentation, and T-shirt design, highlighting the importance of communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence, and time management. The report delves into specific skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence, emphasizing their impact on workplace productivity and career progression. It also outlines an action plan for skill development, detailing timelines and strategies for enhancing communication and teamwork abilities. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and the development of essential skills to overcome challenges and achieve personal and professional growth. The report also references several academic sources to support the findings.

GRADUATE CHALLENGE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................3
LO 4 ...............................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Developing skills and knowledge is an essential part for individual to contribute and
helps towards the process of continuous learning phase. It helps individuals to bring efficiency at
the workplace by its regular valuable contribution made by acquiring continuous knowledge and
skills. These skills include effective team work, communication skills, problem solving,
emotional intelligence, time management and various others. Present report will address to how
to work effectively in a team and accounts to how to develop various business skills to monitor
various challenges.
MAIN BODY
LO 2
Apprentice challenge- This challenge helps an individual to enhance skills related to
communication and helps in inspiring teams in an organisation to come up with various
innovative and ideas that are creative in nature. This style of team building activities still remain
very popular choice of employees nowadays. Apprentice challenges are an excellent way to
identify leaders within the team which helps in promoting teamwork as well as collaborative
working in an organisation for an individual. It refers to as the primary a learning and
development event which helps in getting competitive edge. By fulfilling this challenge it leads
to certain outcomes such as enhanced range of skills, knowledge and positive outcomes such as
building partnership with relevant organisations or individuals with variety of different setting in
different scenario (Schwarze, Wosnitza, 2018). Developing interpersonal skills when working
with the colleagues, developing and practising communication skills while handling a team on
the part of a leader. This challenges also accounts to developing resilience to rapidly changing
demand, priorities and various time scales which helps in covering various business angels such
as leadership, effective team work and many others (Hirsch,2020).
Presentation challenge- There are various challenges to presentation which individual possess
while presenting something to somebody which includes planning, practice, consistency,
preparation and performances. The challenges which are relatable with presentation while an
individual present is fear to speak in front of large audience where it can lead to nervousness as

individual might forgot what has been prepared for the presentation as it leads to a situation of
becoming conscious which might spoil the presentation. Challenge possessed in this is someone
might walk of due to varied reasons as they might not found the presentation interesting or could
be with the reason where they have there other commitments to get fulfilled which leads and
attracts individual who is presenting as it may lead to distraction of focus and which might end
up with the presentation which dose not add value to the same (Saikia, Sarma, Yadav2017). The
biggest challenge in this is someone keeps on interrupting in between which leads to addressing
various question and issue by which individuals gets distracted and as a result breaks the flow of
the presentation for individual and there are various other challenges being possessed in the same
such as computer (power-point ) does not work, audiences not wants to hear what an individual
is prepared for and various others.
T-shirt challenges- This challenge is related with the printing of T- shirt for the selected
business which helps in positioning of business and let know target audience what is the
organisation all about which serves as meeting various business angels that is branding,
promotion, marketing and various other. The biggest challenge is related with its design that is
highly attractive for target audience and eye catchy for the same which bring up the curiosity to
know more about the business and witness to what is being provided by the same in terms of
products and services, the challenge also lies with the proper selection of colour which goes up
with the design and not in a way where colour overcast the design which leads not to deliver
what company want to deliver. It also possesses challenge of conveying message what it wants to
convey with its printed T- shirts where it is required to be simple to understood and not complex
in nature (Xu,2020). It regards with right placement of design which ensures good use of typology
and fonts that are easily visible amongst all odds and conveys high quality to attract potential
customers which being fulfilled relates to business branding, marketing and promotional activity.
LO 4
Reflection of various skills- There are various skills which can be developed and meet by the
individual in regards with meeting various challenges possessed to the same which includes
Communication skills and emotional intelligence-
This states that being able to communicate in effective manner is most important aspect
of all skills being acquired as it helps in conveying message in a manner which is being easily
understood by the party to whom it is being communicated and if it fails leads to various

misunderstanding at the workplace which will affect the productivity of business operation as it
hinders growth of the same. These are needed tom have smooth conversation with a wide variety
of audience by maintaining good eye contact , demonstrating wide vocabulary and tailoring the
language accordingly which helps in getting attention of audience to whom the message is being
conveyed which helps in presenting ideas more clearly and concisely. If an individual possess
good communication skills its efforts will be valued at workplace which will guide its career
progression, helps in building rapport with the target customers, helps in maintaining cooperation
among the team, builds professional image, helps in influencing ability to learn at workplace and
many others (Karnieli-Miller, 2020).
Emotional intelligence is the ability to use, understand and manage emotions in positive and
favourable manner to relieve stress, communicate effectively, overcome challenges, reduce
conflicts and helps in emphasising with others (Petrides,2016). It is the gateway of living more
fulfilled and a happy life whereby it allows individuals to manage and understand their emotions
in order to be self- motivation and to create positive and social interaction which identify the first
step to realise individuals true potential of what can be done.
Teamwork – This is the skill of working in a team whereby it takes into consideration various
view, opinions, idea of others to reach at a decision which is highly valuable. It can simply be
referred as collaborative efforts of a group to achieve common desired goal in most effective and
efficient manner. It is a skill of synergistic way of working with each person committed and
working towards a shared goal whereby the way to achieve the same become simpler as it lead
and accounts to problem solving by the efforts of various individuals in a group and helps in
promoting strong working relationship which leads to a favourable culture that derives job
satisfaction (Driskell, Salas, Driskell, 2018).
Time management and meeting skills – It is the skills and process of an individual of planning
and organising how to effectively divide the time between various specific activities which helps
an individual to derive focus, dedication and commitment to effective functioning of task. It can
also be understood as the process of exercising, planning and controlling time spent on specific
activities which in turn helps in increasing efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of
individual to perform desired goals (Gregg, 2018).
This challenges can also account and gets fulfilled by various skills being developed such
as competencies of using presentation skills that helps in delivering effective and engaging

presentation to a variety of audience which can be by the mean of laying down proper structure
of presentation, such as design of slides, fonts, colours, image, body language that is being
conveyed which will outline the purpose of what needs to be communicated and lastly how it is
being concluded and ended. It also accounts to proper use of excel which helps in simplifying the
work as it make calculation of data more easy which helps in saving lot of time and analyse and
present data with help of various charts, tables, diagrams and various others which helps in
conveying of message of what is being required in simple terms.
Action Plan - It refers to plan on how the above skills will be developed in upcoming years.
This in simple words can be said as actions needed to reach one or more goals.
Skills Action plan Time Horizon
Communicatio
n skills .
Action plan for developing these skills
is start conversation with various
people whereby it will help an
individual to assess its flaws and errors,
Start reading novels, newspaper,
magazines and various others which
will helps in providing insights about
various topics and let an individual
developing with the capabilities to
speak in front of audiences. Ask for
honest feedback where an individual is
lacking, learn how to communicate
with the use of action, gestures, body
language and various others, record
conversation in the mobile and listen
where it is lacking, stand in- front of
mirror and communicate with yourself
and find strength and weaknesses
(González-Morales, Vega, 2020).
6-8 months from the
date of start
Team work Action plan for this is individual should 12 months from date of

develop sense of understanding and
participating in contribution towards
achieving goals of team which could be
by means of providing views, opinion,
ideas to solve a problem and perform a
task. It can be by getting into the right
mindset and agreeing on things which
is right and not agreeing on things
which can hinder growth of the
company, to work in a team it is being
also required by individual to acquire
quick decision making skills and
acquiring knowledge of various
analytical thinking by which individual
can contribute in team work and helps
in making decision which are beneficial
for team as well as individual
start.
Time
management
To acquire this skills one needs to plan
and decide on to do list in a specific
task and manage time accordingly by
having proper time check and set a time
limit for completion of the same. It is
required that individual should plan its
time on allocation of the same on doing
most important task which are highly
valuable and then on task which are less
important which helps in prioritising
the work and helps in achievement of
the same by the time being decided by
the individual (Guanzon, Ancho, 2020).
It an ongoing process
where individual needs
to plan daily on how it
can allocate its time on
proper utilisation of
resources.

CONCLUSION
From the above report its is being understood that there are various challenges such as
apprentice, presentation, t-shirt being possessed for which individual is being required to have
skills such as communication which helps in conveying message of what is being required , team
working that leads to co-operation for achieving goals, emotional intelligence and skills of time
management which helps individual prioritising its task accordingly which serves as means of
personal as well as professional growth.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Driskell, J.E., Salas, E. and Driskell, T., 2018. Foundations of teamwork and
collaboration. American Psychologist.73(4). p.334.
González-Morales, O. and Vega, L.E.S., 2020. Design action plan for employability of
university students. education policy analysis archives.28. p.88.
Gregg, M., 2018. Counterproductive: Time management in the knowledge economy. Duke
University Press.
Guanzon, M.E.R. and Ancho, I.V., 2020. A Proposed Action Plan for the Improvement of
Students’ School Engagement. KKU Research Journal (Graduate Studies) Humanities
and Social Sciences,.8(2). pp.155-173.
Hirsch, P.B., 2020. The sorcerer’s apprentice. Journal of Business Strategy.
Karnieli-Miller, O., 2020. Reflective practice in the teaching of communication skills. Patient
education and counseling. 103(10). pp.2166-2172.
Petrides, K.V., and et.al., 2016. Developments in trait emotional intelligence research. Emotion
Review, 8(4), pp.335-341.
Saikia, U.K., Sarma, D. and Yadav, Y., 2017. Delayed presentation of Turner syndrome:
Challenge to optimal management. Journal of human reproductive sciences. 10(4).
p.297.
Schwarze, J. and Wosnitza, M., 2018. How does apprentice resilience work?. In Resilience in
Education (pp. 35-51). Springer, Cham.
Xu, K., and et.al., 2020, August. Adversarial t-shirt! evading person detectors in a physical
world. In European Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 665-681). Springer, Cham.
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