LCBS5028 Knowing & Developing Yourself PDP Assignment

This Personal Development Plan (PDP) assignment delves into self-assessment, exploring the student's strengths, weaknesses, values, and career aspirations within the context of the LCBS5028 module, 'Knowing & Developing Yourself'. The assignment includes reflections on teamwork exercises like the Marshmallow Challenge, identifying key learning outcomes and their relevance to future studies and career prospects. It examines the student's top three values (learning, work-life balance, and teamwork), how they align with career goals, and strategies to uphold these values. The PDP incorporates a StrengthsFinder analysis, detailing the student's top five strengths (self-motivation, critical decision-making, time management, helping society, work-life balance), potential weaknesses as perceived by others, and actions to cultivate these talents. It concludes with a SWOT analysis, outlining strengths, areas for development, opportunities, and threats, providing a comprehensive framework for personal and professional growth. The assignment emphasizes self-reflection, goal setting, and the importance of continuous development for success.

LCBS5028
KNOWING & DEVELOPING YOURSELF FOR PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN (PDP)
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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
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KNOWING YOURSELF
MARSHALLOW TEAM CHALLENGE
Questions Responses
What did you learn from this
activity?
(Consider how the team collaborated
and worked as a team, and your role
within the team)
From the activity ‘Marshmallow Team challenge’, I have learnt team-work
skills for my future career development. While I worked with the team, I
experienced an integrated team-work and harmony within my team.
Besides, the activity has successfully taught and developed all of us the
useful attributes like collaboration, creativity and innovation. During the
activity, The Marshmallow Team Challenge reminded me for a group
project to be a career success (Hirsch & McKenna, 2008). I and my team
identified the assumptions we were making within the project as well as
test the assumptions early on so that future learning can occur. I worked as
an active learner and team-worker while my team supported me to act as
one. I have learnt how to collaborate in a team for the betterment and
development of each other.
How will this help you when working
in teams as part of your MSc?
When I am looking at MSc and group projects of MSc then I find the above
team challenge activity majorly useful for effectively working in teams. I will
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Why do future employers look for
teamworking skills?
be able to work efficiently as well as effectively with the help of my team-
working skills acquired in this Knowing and Developing Yourself
module.
On the other hand, as per my knowledge future employers will
look for team working skills definitely, and the reasons can be as
follows:
 Employers will require effective teamwork skills for success of their
business (Hirsch & McKenna, 2008).
 Team working skills offer the ability to perform effectively as an
individual as well as together with the team of colleagues or
employees for attaining personal and professional growth and
success (Pritchard, 2013).
 Employers will look for the effective team working skills because in all
aspects of a business, the different skills of team’s workers are
required for achieving success.
 Team working boost an individual’s confidence while contributing
ideas to a group project
 Team working skills gives opportunity of listening to others and
hence take everyone’s ideas for implementing an idea
 Team working kill play an active role in order to create a positive
energy and environ during any employer’s project (Rita et al., 2016).
 Team working skills support any fellow worker who requires
additional support, and hence employers appoint team leaders for an
effective functioning (Banks, 2009).
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 Team work takes responsibility for the employer’s tasks within a
project; hence they will always look for an effective team working
skill in their candidates (Beevers & Rea, 2013).
VALUES
Questions Responses
What are your top 3 values & why are
they important to you?
I take my personality values as the career motivators and drivers of the
future success. In this context, I also own distinct values and three most
important values out of them are as follows:
 Learning: the first value of me is my learning attitude. I am an
active learner which allows me to learn things easily and efficiently
in my personal as well as professional life activities. My active
learning value makes my life easier and smooth to live. It is very
important attribute which always offers success opportunities in
long-life (Chawla & Renesch, 2009).
 Work life balance: this quality of mine is an essential career value
to be successful in both professional and personal life. This quality is
important to nurture as without balancing work with personal life
nobody can get success and growth in their life (Schölkopf, 2015).
 Work with others: this value of mine allows me to work in teams.
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As upcoming employers will look for team-working skills at a large
extent hence I have started developing these skills as one of my key
values through working with other people around me (Bassos, 2016).
Team working skill of mine teaches me several other professional
things such as collaboration, supportive nature, contribution,
competitiveness, accountability, work in pressure, sociable,
energetic, active learning, friendship, help society and many more
(Conzemius & O'neill, 2009).
How will knowing these values help
you during your studies and in your
future career?
In this way, knowing such skills as team work, work-life balance and active
learning will help me during the future studies and career growth as well, in
following manner:
 My teamwork will motivate me to encourage unity within the future
workplace, thus future career growth will not be hindered.
 My value of effective teamwork will create a workplace environment
promoting environ which can foster friendship and loyalty and hence
I will study well.
 My present career values will create close-knit relationships to
motivate other employees within parallel as well as align them to
work harder.
 My career values will make me cooperative and supportive for all,
thus future career and study development will be well driven
through these values (Gibbs, 2016).
What steps could you take to ensure
you live by these values? Think of
In order to effectively ensure that I am living the above mentioned values, I
will adopt following actions as follows:
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some actions you can take?  I will set, evaluate and revise my short-term goals and missions for
them
 I will set, evaluate, assess and revise my medium-term goals
 I will set my long-term goals and work in the direction.
 I will take feedback from my tutor, class-mates, peers, competitors,
family members and other people around me in the context of my
personal values (Heyrup & Bente, 2009).
Download the Values Inventory from Blackboard
StrengthsFinder
Questions Responses
Name your top 5 from your strengths
profile?
1. Self-motivation
2. Critical Decision-making
3. Time-management
4. Help society
5. Work-life balance
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What surprised you when reading the
report?
Identify any specific words or phrases
that you agreed with and why?
When I read the report, some things surprised me a lot, which are as
follows:
 Communication building and strong building is an important skill of
academic development (Hickson, 2011).
 Report writing can be so important for learning and career
development
 A report carries contributions of diverse team members
 Correct and credible references or sources are very important while
writing a report
I agree with the following phrases:
 John Maxwell said ‘A leader is the one who knows the way, goes the
way and leads the way’. I agree with the words of John Maxwell as I
want to become a true leader in my future workplace and life as
well.
 Furthermore, I believe in the words by Lao Tzu who was an ancient
Chinese philosopher and writer. The words ‘knowing others is
intelligence. While knowing yourself is the true wisdom. On the other
hand, mastering others is strength while mastering yourself is true
power. I agree with these words because these words of famous
philosopher motivated me to write this PDP and reflect upon my own
learning from past events and activities.
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What can you do to invest in these
talents to become strengths?
Identify some specific actions – list at
least 3
In this context, self-reflective practice, self-analysis, self-evaluation and
assessment can easily convert my talents into strengths. For an example, if
I will pursue building my team working skills in future then one day I will
know each and every pros and cons as well as challenges of working in a
team. Hence, this will allow me to become a team-leader in organizational
scenario. In this way, following are some specific actions which I will utilise
to convert my talents into strengths:
 I will always utilize intellectual stimulation to be self-motivated at
future workplaces so that intellectual stimulation can become one of
my great strength.
 I will manage my time and goals so that management of each and
everything can become my one of the big strength. For an example,
time management is already my strength and I want to acquire
expertise in each and every area.
 I will keep learning into daily life, personal life and professional one
so that my pursued learning about my talents can allow me to invest
in my talents to make them my strengths (Harrison, 2009).
How can others see these strengths
as perceived weaknesses?
(sometimes known as basement)
As we know that, there are so many perceptions of a single view as there
are so many people in this world. In this way, other people can take all of
my key strengths as perceived weaknesses in following way:
1. Self-motivation: this strength can be taken as perceived weakness
because self-motivations promote a sole learning while neglecting
team-learning and team-work slightly. Besides, a self-motivated
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person will always be motivated irrespective of his or her team
workers’ motivation level which will affect team-learning.
2. Critical Decision-making: in this context, a critical decision making
occurs from the thinking originating from the practice of logically
gathering, analysing, and evaluating info and relevant data. In this
way, this strength of mine can be excessive time-taking step in
problem solving and decision-making process.
3. Time-management: while I am getting huge benefits from time
management, one can perceive it as a time-consuming and time-
wasting process because a lot of time is get wasted when I manage
my time for each and every important thing and activity (Harrison,
2009).
4. Help society: societal help or social work can be taken as one of my
weakness because every one cannot thing from this angle of
viewpoint. One can think that resources, time and energy are getting
diverted as well as wasted for helping society people.
5. Work-life balance: when I am balancing my work and life then I need
to segment my focus for the both the things. Hence, focus can be
diverted and divided while maintaining work-life balance. Therefore,
work-life balance will be perceived as a weakness when an individual
will be looking for sole concentration on either personal or
professional life (Banks, 2009).
What have you learned from your
strengths profile?
While preparing the first step of PDP, I have identified my all of the key
strengths and now I can easily relate me as a person with those of my
career interests. In addition, discovering myself has enabled me to relate
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Consider what you discovered about
yourself and how this might relate to
you as a person and your career
interests.
my career values with my career interests effectively as follows:
 While preparing my strength profile, I learnt that I am also good at
verbal and written communication and hence I need to work upon
non-verbal communication as it is the most essential communication
type for pursuing career interests. Learning non-verbal
communication will allow me to be successful presenter during
future business meetings and presentations.
 I learnt that my time management skills can be utilized for doing
efficient and excellent quality work as time management enables my
as an effective worker in both professional and personal life.
 I learnt that preparing my strengths profile made me identify my key
qualities as well as think over my present and future weaknesses.
Thus, making strengths profile made me reflect upon my possible
and already present weaknesses in a way that I can address all of
them timely.
Continued…
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DEVELOPING YOURSELF
Setting Future Goals and Aspirations
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
1. Self-motivation
2. Critical Decision-making
3. Time-management
4. Help society
5. Work-life balance
6. Supportive and collaborative nature
7. Active learner
Areas for Development
8. People management
9. Work alone
10.Personal relationships
11.Influence
12.Power and leadership
13.Initiative and responsibility
Opportunities
14.Becoming a manager at future workplace
15.Becoming a team leader at the future organizations
16.Becoming a good businessman
17.Becoming an entrepreneur
18.Setting medium-term, short-term and long-term
goals
Threats
21.Inability to work in pressure
22.Inability to deal with stress
23.At times over-confident
24.Helping others
25.Critical decision making
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