Reflective Report: Professional Development and Action Planning

This reflective report details a student's journey of professional development, employing the Gibbs reflective cycle to analyze past experiences and identify areas for growth. The report begins with a description of the student's background as an Application Engineer and outlines career aspirations in project administration. It delves into feelings, evaluations, and analyses of strengths (critical thinking, communication) and weaknesses (leadership, motivation). The analysis highlights key learnings in leadership, motivational theories, conflict resolution, and critical thinking. The conclusion summarizes these insights, leading to a comprehensive action plan that focuses on developing motivational skills, leadership theories, and time management. The student aims to acquire project management and risk management skills to achieve their career goal. The report provides a structured approach for personal and professional development, providing a roadmap for achieving the student's career goals within the automation industry.

Professional Development
[Type the document subtitle]
4/5/2020
student name

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Gibbs reflective cycle.................................................................................................................2
Description.............................................................................................................................2
Feelings..................................................................................................................................3
Evaluation..............................................................................................................................3
Analysis..................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................5
Action plan.............................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The purpose of this reflective essay is to identify the career development skills and
opportunities, which may be identified and justified through past experience. Reflective
practice is one of the best ways to express the experience in order to gain learning from it.
Considering the academic placement applications, from my past experience I would reflect
the development plan that will be helpful for placement applications while considering one of
the popular reflective models that is Gibbs reflective cycle. These models present six stages
for the conversion of experience into learning and eventually providing an action plan after
the learning. Therefore this reflective essay will include reflecting personal development for
the academic year (Mann, 2017).
Gibbs reflective cycle
The five stages that could be used as a model for my personal development plan and passed
reflection include
Description
My past role as an Application Engineer at Tespa India Pvt, has reflected various learning
and provided an experience with various ups and downs. My eventual career plan includes
being a project administrator in one of the top corporate companies in the automation
industry. The past experience has reflected various strengths and weaknesses, which could be
assessed using one of the self-assessment tools. (University, 2018). In my role as an
Application Engineer at Tespa India Pvt, Ltd, I have been responsible for integrating the
automated manufacturing systems, which when coupled with my enthusiasm and dedication
to robot programming and servicing, has helped the business to next level.

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Feelings
After a successful completion of an undergraduate program in India in the field of
engineering, as I initially was going to work with an organisation. My interest in words the
automation industry was quite high where the key to work would be interaction skills, strong
communication skills and teamwork. Initially, I was not sure if I would be able to effectively
accomplish my role as an application engineer. However, as the experience initiated I started
feeling confident and tends to learn various skills and competencies through work experience
in India. From the experience, I was able to understand how important communication is
when you are working within a team. Moreover, coordination, Corporation, and teamwork
are very much important in this industry and especially in an attempt to complete the project
with effectiveness (Tillema, 2000).
Evaluation
Considering the overall experience of Application Engineer, reflected various positive and
negative aspects. Considering swot analysis as one of the self-assessment tools, it can be
evaluated that my key strength that was identified from the experience was critical thinking
skills were effectively used and applied while preparing for the activities. Communication
skills are another major strength that I identified through this experience as I was comfortably
able to communicate within the team and make them understand with the right interpretation.
The position appeals to be as it combines our interaction skills and teamwork with strong
communication as a trail.
However,, some of the weakness that was identified while contributing to this experience is
the inability to motivate team members appropriately and wrong use of leadership style.
Leadership skills are one of the aspects which tend to be important in work experience and
while working with a team, however,, due to lack of experience in the first place I was not

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able to effectively reflect my leadership skills which tend to be a major learning from the
experience. There are various aspects in leadership like leadership style is to be followed,
motivating the team members, time management activities, innovation and creativity.
However,, this acted as one of the major learning experience in India. Therefore I cannot say
that it is my weakness, but due to lack of experience, I could see that there was a need to
enhance leadership skills initially. (Schon, 2017).
Analysis
This stage of the reflective cycle presents the learning from the experience. The major
learning that I gain from previous experience as an application engineer included an
understanding of leadership as one of the major learning. Leadership is the ability of an
individual to get the work done from others with their will and ability to accomplish the
actual objective. Leadership is a very wide aspect of management to be understood and study,
which may take time but act as a critical factor in career development. In any environment, it
is important to lead a particular group of people in order to keep the work managed.
From the learning, some of the models or theories that I have been able to identify and found
useful in my professional development plan were leadership styles and theories. Considering
various leadership style it is important to adapt to the situation and ability to lead a particular
group of people while considering different leadership styles as per the suitability of the
situation or contingency. This reflects one of the common leadership style that the situational
leadership style. Other than this contingency leadership theory also presents leadership style
which is based on the situation or the contingency that has been faced by the leaders. The
reason being the stimuli reflect a need for a more free decision making environment to be
offered to the group, which reflects democratic or laissez-faire leadership style to be more
effective or suitable at times (Brenner, 2015).

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Other than this the learning also reflected with the use of motivation, factors of motivation
and understanding of motivational theories. It is important to motivate the team or group of
people that you are leading as it directly impacts the performance. There is a various
motivational theory like Maslow’s motivation hierarchy theory, Which represents the needs
of an individual and stages at which an individual exists I need to move upwards in order to
get motivated. Various other aspects of motivational skills will understand and practice by me
as part of learning from this experience which could help lead the groups and eventually
helpful in my career goal (Bertrand & Rodela, 2018).
Other than leadership, some other major learning from the past experience included conflict
solving and critical thinking. In the automation industry or any project on working with the
team the chances of conflict is very high this reflects the ability to use conflict management
skills and problem-solving ability, which I believe was the major learning from the past
experience. Moreover critical thinking ability is also very important while working in a team,
or leading which reflects another major aspect of leadership skills that acted as major learning
from past experience (Brooks & Normore, 2015).
Conclusion
From the experience, it can’t be said that various experiences could have been different if I
will have learned some of the skills previously. In case I was aware of leadership skills,
motivational skills, problem-solving skills, the experience would have been different. These
were the major learning from the experience, which could have been implemented in the first
place. While integrating the manufacturing system it is important to consider critical
Thinking ability, time constraint and team cooperation which would have been included in
the first place (DuBrin, 2016).

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Action plan
Considering the reflective cycle this is the last stage where the actions that need to be
developed for the future circumstances or activities are to be considered. This is the eventual
purpose of this reflection as a future course of action would be depending on this
development action plan. Understanding strength, weakness and learning from the past
experience my personal development plan along the professional development areas will
include various skills and activities to be performed within this academic year to help in my
career goal. I believe that a good MBA program is an essential step for realizing my long-
term goals. The course modules of the MBA program at my university has helped me to
develop my managerial and administrative skills. This valued program helped me acquire
creative problem solving, critical reasoning and strategic thinking skills, and apply these to
my learning about global economic principles, strategic business issues, organisational
management and the realities of the competitive marketplace.
The first skill that I would like to possess as part of my development plan is motivational
skills. It has been identified that it is important to keep the team motivated in order to get the
performance and lead the team effectively. Some various motivational tools and techniques
could be studied as per this development plan. Other than this ability to imply the
motivational model would also be Included. This development skill would be considered to
complete or accomplish within next eight months which require various learning module as
resources and class activities where I will be able to practice the skills within the academic
coursework (Clarke & Donoghue, 2017).
Leadership theories, to be an effective leader it is important to understand the leadership
concept, models, styles and theories which could be applied in the workplace by leading a
team. It is important to understand leadership theories and relevance of the applicability of

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leadership styles in different situations so as to effectively lead a team in the near future. This
skill is a very wide learning skills which may require a large number of resources like class
tutor educational sessions, learning modules, and stimulus training so as to eventually
understand leadership theories and styles and also the ability to imply the same within a
particular situation or group of people. I will be possessing this skill within the next one year,
and participate in various classroom activities while acting as a leader is to my group in order
to accomplish the objectives offered or directed by class tutors (Brenner, 2015).
Time management is another skill which I would like to possess to more effectively lead a
team and ability to accomplish a project while working with the team. Considering leading a
team is in direction to achieve a goal or objective that is common for a team. For this it is
important to complete all the activities within the group in time and understand the priority of
an activity to be performed at first. Therefore for this time management aspect of
management will be possessed by me to be more effective leader and make the team perform
good and to be efficient enough to complete the task on time. For this time management
priority matrix is important to understand and learn, which reflect the priorities of the
activities based on urgency. Therefore this reflects the ability to schedule and plan the
activities with a priority list in order to complete all the activities and the eventual objective
on time. This learning will be possessed by me within the next six months with the help of
class tutor lectures and learning modules. Other than this can be assessed through completion
of assessment offered within the academic year so as to assess the completion of the task on
time (Mann, 2017).
For my career goal that is to be a project admin at one of the reputed automation company,
the action plan on skills that I will prefer to gain include project management skills. Other
than leadership, negotiation, motivation; another skill that I will be working as a major action
plan is risk management skills. It has been identified that while managing a project risk could

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be higher, especially when you are leading a project. The risk might be of different nature
that is an economic risk, operational risk, leading risk, functional risk. However, in order to
decrease the impact of risk on the project completion it is important to manage the risk and
mitigate the risk in the first place. Therefore I would consider risk management practice as
one of the major aspects to learn in order to be an effective project admin. This may include
the use of project management training, risk management modules, case study analysis. For
this, I would be considering various activities to be performed within the academic sessions
like role-plays, case analysis, and problem-solving activities. This objective would be
accomplished by me within the next six months as this will be helpful for me in the
placement activities to be a project admin in the Automation Company (Trivedi, 2016).

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References
Bertrand, M. & Rodela, K., 2018. A framework for rethinking educational leadership in the
margins: Implications for social justice leadership preparation. Journal of Research on
Leadership Education, 13(1), pp.10-37.
Brenner, S.O., 2015. Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership
& Organization Development Journal, pp.2-16.
Brooks, J. & Normore, A., 2015. Qualitative research and educational leadership: Essential
dynamics to consider when designing and conducting studies. International Journal of
Educational Management, 29(7), pp.798-806.
Clarke, S. & Donoghue, T., 2017. Educational leadership and context: A rendering of an
inseparable relationship. British Journal of Educational Studies, 65(2), pp.167-82.
DuBrin, A.J., 2016. Leadership: research findings, practice, and skils. 8th ed. Mason, OH:
South-Western Cengage Learning.
Mann, S., 2017. Reflective practice in English language teaching: Research-based principles
and practices. London: Routledge.
Schon, D., 2017. The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London:
Routledge.
Tillema, H.H., 2000. Belief change towards self-directed learning in student teachers:
immersion in practice or reflection on action. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(5-6),
pp.575-91.

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Trivedi, M.K., 2016. PESTLE technique–a tool to identify external risks in construction
projects. International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), 3(1),
pp.384-88.
University, O.B., 2018. Reflective writing; About Gibb's Reflective Cycle. [Online] Available
at: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/upgrade/study-skills/reflective-writing-gibbs/.