Professional Identity and Practice: Skills Development Report

This report delves into the critical aspects of professional development, focusing on its benefits for various stakeholders. It examines the essential skills and competencies required for roles such as Sous Chef de cuisine and chief waiter, using the Hotel Hilton as a case study. The report includes a self-a...Read More

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
AND PRACTICE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
P1 Key benefits of ongoing professional development for different stake holders....................3
P2 Skills and competencies required by Sous Chef de cuisine and the chief waiter in Hotel
Hilton...........................................................................................................................................4
P3 Assessment of own abilities, skills and competencies...........................................................4
P4 Review of different learning theories used for personal and professional development.......5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Development of personal and professional skills is very important for any individual in order to
develop himself and succeed in the corporate world. In this report, the importance of continuous
professional development i.e. the ongoing development has been highlighted for different
stakeholders that are associated with the company (Yusof And et.al., 2016). Along with this, this
report will also discuss the different skills necessary for the job role of Sous-Chef de cuisine in
Hotel Hilton, UK. Further, a self evaluation of all the skills possessed has been carried out and
the various leadership theories have been discussed and the impact that they have on personal
and professional development of an individual.
MAIN BODY
P1 Key benefits of ongoing professional development for different stake holders.
Ongoing Professional Development or Continuous Professional Development can be
defined as a process of creating, enhancing, maintaining and the documentation of the
professional skills that are necessary or performing the job efficiently. An individual can gain
these skills either in a formal manner or through an informal process. CPD can be carried out
through a series of steps forming a cycle which are : identify and plan, learning activities, reflect
on your learning, apply your learning and share your learning. It should not be confused with the
training process as it is gained by the employees after the training period so that they can develop
their professional abilities and enhance the skills required for performing their job. For the job
role of Sous Chef de cuisine there are many skills a abilities that they can develop for their job
role as per the values of Hilton Hotel (Gilbuena And et.al., 2015). Their various other benefits
are :-
 It can assist the Sous-Chef de cuisine in building the key skills and competencies that are
required by them to provide first class services to the customers visiting the hotel and
hence create a better value of the company in market attracting investors.
 CPD assists in improving an individual and keeps him updated about all the recent
developments that have occurred in the external environment so that they can adapt
themselves also and this garners confidence of shareholders who have invested in the
company.
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 CPD, by providing the necessary skills and experience required, prepares a Sous-chef for
taking command when the principle i.e. the chief chef retires. This helps in improving
and building employees career of Hilton Hotel (Fisher, Bagiati and Sarma, 2017).
P2 Skills and competencies required by Sous Chef de cuisine and the chief waiter in Hotel
Hilton.
The skills and competencies required by an individual differ fro every role and for the
role of Sous Chef de cuisine and chief waiter, there is an entire set of skills and competencies
that he should have :-
Multi tasking skills :- A Sous-Chef is second in command and he must be able to perform a
variety of tasks at the same time with equal efficiency. He must be able to cook dishes as per the
requirement of customers and also direct his juniors and at the same time chief waiter should
focus on presentation skills without compromising with the time taken to prepare the dishes.
Leadership skills :- Since a Sous Chef would soon become the chief chef, he must have the
required leadership skills that can help him in maintaining other chefs working under him and
ensuring that they are capable of maintaining the required standards (Yusof And et.al., 2016).
Creativity and Innovation :- A chef always needs to develop innovative methods of presenting
his dish and experimenting with ingredients so he ca cook new dishes or modify old dishes. This
is a long process and the chef must be extremely familiar with a variety of ingredients and be
able to successfully mix different food items.
Communication and presentation skills :- A sous chef needs to communicate with a variety of
customers and hence he must be adapt in dealing with different personalities of customers in
different manners and make them comfortable in the setting of Hilton Hotel.
Problem solving skills and dealing with stressful situations :- Being a Sous-Chef of the
prestigious Hilton Hotel is not an easy task and there are many moments when the situations turn
highly tense like dissatisfied customer or stale vegetables or excess time taken etc. an efficient
chief waiter must be able to successfully deal in such situations and satisfy their customers
maintaining the prestige of the Hotel (Nikulchev and et.al., 2016).
P3 Assessment of own abilities, skills and competencies.
A sous chef is an integral personality in the hotel department and therefore one needs to carefully
assess themselves before they can apply for this position evaluating whether they are really
capable or not.
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Strengths :-
 Extremely developed communication
skills.
 An effective Convincing Power and can
be applied in any situation.
 Time management ability is also very
strong and knows the importance of
providing dishes on time.
 A keen eye which helps in focusing on
smaller and finer details.
 Strong Creativity levels which can help
in bringing innovation in the dishes
presented (Clements and et.al., 2016).
 A great deal of experience in working
various five star hotels so can recognize
the various types of visitors and deal
with them accordingly.
 Expertise on culinary skills and can
recommend good things as per the taste
of visitor. High degree of flexibility and can
easily adapt to changing scenarios.
Weaknesses :-
 Lack of any analytical or mathematical
skills that may be required (Gilbuena
And et.al., 2015).
 Business sense is also not a very good
field and sometimes may act as
drawback in work area.
 Lack of quick decision making abilities
which might create dissatisfaction
amongst the customers.
 In stressful situations, sometimes the
situations may not be handled as
efficiently as they should be.
 The leadership skills are not so
developed and hence cannot handle
team work successfully. Also, the
guidance may not be proper.
 Lack of proper knowledge regarding
changing trends and practices in the
market and sometimes this may lead to
redundancy making the chef inefficient.
P4 Review of different learning theories used for personal and professional development.
Learning theories and different approaches assist an individual in developing a method for the
purpose of acquiring, retaining and recalling the required and relevant knowledge. There are any
learning theories that are prevalent such as behavioural theory, constructive theory and cognitive
theory. These theories help an individual in forming a brief guideline which assists the user in
creating the earning process that needs to be formed (Caza and Creary, 2016).
Behavioural theory :- This theory states that an individual can learn many things by observation
of the stimuli and analysing the external environment and the behaviour of different individuals
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in those environment. This observation will help an individual in his personal as well as
professional development in the following manner :- By observing the behaviour of employees,
an individual can sharpen their ability to understand and predict the nature of a person thus
helping him in taking better decisions. Also, the analysis of external environment will help a
individual in developing his analytical skills and collectively both of these will help an employee
in making better decisions after careful evaluation of people thus becoming more productive
(Wald, 2015).
Constructive theory :- This theory states that learning is a regular and active process which is
formed by an individual through constructing it by the personal and professional experiences that
they face. Instead of acquiring knowledge, an individual constructs it and since the interpretation
of every individual varies from each other, it leads to different construction and hence
knowledge formation is different for every individual. Here it is emphasized that a learner is not
a blank slate and utilizes his past experiences foe meeting a problematic situation. This can help
the Sous-Chef in serving their customers in a better way.
Cognitive theory :- Cognitive theory is different from both of above theories as it emphasizes is
laid on cognition i.e. knowledge for determining the manner in which an individual reacts. It
states that in every situation individual behaves and reacts in a manner which he thinks is the
best way on the basis of the concepts formed by him. It assists in the development as it helps in
acquiring the knowledge and then classifying of such knowledge so that in relevant situation,
relevant data can be utilized (Broadhead, 2017).
CONCLUSION
The research carried out in this report can be used to summarize the importance of
developing personal and professional skills for an individual. This report concludes that ongoing
development is extremely necessary for an individual and CPD is extremely important for this
process. Further the importance of certain skills like communication, presentation skills etc. and
their importance for the role of Sous-Chef in organizations like Hotel Hilton have been
discussed. Lastly, the emphasis has been laid on the importance of leadership theories in
developing knowledge regarding personal and professional environment by an individual.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Broadhead, R.S., 2017. The private lives and professional identity of medical students.
Routledge.
Caza, B.B. and Creary, S., 2016. 13. The construction of professional identity. Perspectives on
contemporary professional work: Challenges and experiences, p.259.
Clements, A.J. And et.al., 2016. Exploring commitment, professional identity, and support for
student nurses. Nurse Education in Practice. 16(1). pp.20-26.
Fisher, D.R., Bagiati, A. and Sarma, S., 2017. Developing professional skills in undergraduate
engineering students through cocurricular involvement. Journal of Student Affairs
Research and Practice. 54(3). pp.286-302.
Gilbuena, D.M. And et.al., 2015. Feedback on professional skills as enculturation into
communities of practice. Journal of Engineering Education. 104(1). pp.7-34.
Nikulchev, E. and et.al., 2016. Monitoring of information space for professional skills
demand. Contemporary Engineering Sciences. 9(14). pp.671-678.
Wald, H.S., 2015. Professional identity (trans) formation in medical education: reflection,
relationship, resilience. Academic Medicine. 90(6). pp.701-706.
Yusof, K.M. And et.al., 2016. Instilling professional skills and sustainable development through
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) among first year engineering students. International
Journal of Engineering Education. 32(1). pp.333-347.
Online
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