Professional and Academic Skills Development: A Detailed Report

This report delves into the crucial aspects of professional and academic skills development. It begins by exploring the challenges students face when studying business management, such as time management and consumer behavior prediction. The report then emphasizes the importance of developing effective academic and professional skills, highlighting their impact on work interest, planning, organizing, goal setting, and the ability to learn. It further examines the essential skills for effective teamwork, including communication, time management, listening, trust, responsibility, and the establishment of team missions. Decision-making is identified as a critical skill, and the report provides practical steps for its improvement, such as seeking expert advice, setting time limitations, learning from mistakes, practicing, and changing perspectives. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the overall significance of professional and academic skills for organizational success, providing a valuable resource for students on Desklib.

Professional and Academic Skills Development
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Challenges of Studying business management and thriving in professional practice-....................4
Importance of effective academic and professional skills development-........................................5
Effective team working skills-.........................................................................................................6
The skill that is required to work more on- Decision Making.........................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References-....................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
Academic and Professional skills include learning to learn, working in coordination, task
management and problem-solving. All these inclusions contain independent learning,
management of time, presentations and seminars. Academic skills are generally made of basic as
well as essential skills such as academic writing, presentation skills and referencing.
Professional skills are skills that are required to assess customer needs or analysing the market
or market assessment. In this report, Academic and Professional Skills of an individual in a
workplace.
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Challenges of Studying business management and thriving in professional
practice-
Often, studying business management is difficult. Challenges faced during a study of business
management are as follows,
 Time Management- Study of business management often leaves time management
behind (Eckhaus et al.,2017). Time management should be the priority as it is very
necessary to make the most of the time available (Aeon and Aguinis, 2017). Business
schools do not teach the importance of time and time management as well. The business
entrepreneur has to handle various teams and manage their tasks. This is the most time-
consuming process. A good time management plan will help in the areas described above
as well as many other problems.
 Consumer Behavior- Prediction of customer behaviour is also one of the most important
challenges that need to be fixed. Despite schools teaching consumer behaviours, the
difference between actual consumer satisfaction and school teaching is totally different.
Real customers don’t behave the same, at least not exactly the same.
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Importance of effective academic and professional skills development-
Professional development helps employees to compete in their respective professions and have
perfection in them. It is an ongoing process that continuously takes place in an entire career of
employees. Following are the importance of effective academic and professional skill
development,
 Work Interest- Enthusiasm and involvement in work by professionals have a positive
impact on the organisation (Hasanuddin and Sjahruddin, 2017). Employees having high
potential and who work with interest are dependable and can help a company in profit
maximisation. A happy work environment plays an important role in this factor of
importance. The impact of developing good academic as well as professional skills have
a positive and beneficial impact on an organisation.
 Planning- Well planned is half done. Planning answers the question of how employees
are supposed to work as planned. This is necessary in an organisation in order to
maximise its profits. Planning is one of the foundation skills of management.
 Organising- Organising comes after planning. Organising is nothing but the
implementation of things planned in the planning stage. After planning, organising helps
to organise work in a certain manner. Organising in a systematic matter helps in making
complex work easy to handle.
 Goals Setup- Setting goals helps employees at the beginning helps employees to set a
plan on how should they work before starting to work(Peláez et al.,2020). This also helps
employees in working more efficiently. Most businesses set up goals in order to make
sure the improvement is being made and objectives are fulfilled.
 Ability to learn- How an employee can learn new things quicker is also an important
thing for an organisation(Duggan et al.,2020). Employers notice the potential of learning
new thing in employees which eventually help them to plan and organise the work
according to employee’s ability to learn new things.
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Effective team working skills-
Following are the effective skills which a team is required to possess in order to work more
efficiently,
 Communication- Communication is the most important in every teamwork. In order to
effectively work effectively, communication within and among a team is also
important(Maduka et al.,202). It is necessary to have good conversational skills in a
workplace and establishing open communication can have a positive impact on an
organisation. Good communication between employers and employees helps to improve
the relationship between them and it also helps an organisation to make the most out of
the good relationship between employers and employees.
 Time management- Time management is equally important for the team to work
effectively in teams. An employee should learn to manage their time accordingly in order
to meet all the deadlines of projects it has been working on. Balancing work and personal
life are also important for every employee to make sure time is being managed perfectly.
 Listening- It is very important to have an open mind. Having an open mind makes
employees listen to team leaders more carefully and doing the work as guided by the
leader. Listening to others helps employees to gain more knowledge and work more
efficiently. This also helps in maintaining a good work environment in an organisation.
 Encouraging sincerity and trust- Trust within an organisation is required in order to
have a completely cultured workplace. Trust is gained by completing the work before the
deadline, good communication within a workplace and many more reasons. Gaining trust
is the most important part of being in an organisation and work as an employee with
them.
 Responsibility- Team workers have to take full responsibility for their respective works
in a team. One should be clearer about what its duties and responsibilities are in an
organisation. This improves the image of employees in the workplace and makes them
work more passionately and effectively which will lead to profit maximisation which is
the basic principle of any business organisation.
 Setting up missions and purpose of teams- Operating collaboratively to meet a
common objective is called teamwork. In a team, every teammate should work according
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to the work assigned by the team leader. Team leader sets up the team's mission and
purpose in order to make employees work according to missions and purposes. Every
employee must know the purpose and importance of work it is going to complete before
the deadline.
The skill that is required to work more on- Decision Making
Out of all the skills out of which some are mentioned above, Decision making is the most
important skill. Decision making is the one skill that needs to be paid attention to. Decision
making is a process where crucial decisions are taken which have the ability to make a positive
or even a negative impact on a specific organisation. Forecasting the future helps the
organisation to be prepared for potential losses. Sometimes, decisions made can be right or
wrong which have a positive or negative impact on an organisation respectively. In order to
improve the skill of Decision making, the following are some unusual to development of
Decision-making skills,
 Advice from an expert- An advice from an expert can help in the improvement of any
employee's decision making. Asking for an opinion from an expert will be beneficial for
decision-making ability. Example- Taking a piece of advice from the team leader
regarding the project which is currently in development.
 Set time limitations- Setting up time limitations in order to have a track of every
decision made before is also important. The first and most important thing after making
the decision is setting up deadlines for completing the work which has been decided. This
step comes after realising the importance of decision making. Example- Setting up time
limit after deciding to make pizza for a party evening.
 Learning and Improving- Learning from past mistakes and improving the work done
also helps to make good decisions at the right time. Analysing the decisions made
previously and making effort to improving them is also necessary.
 Practise- Practise makes a man more patient and good at making decisions making.
Practising more and more helps a man to develop discipline towards the work and
improve his decision-making skills.
 Perspective- Judging the worth of every decision taken before and trying to improve the
wrongs decisions in order to improve the skill can help in skill development as well as
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personality development. Changing perspective towards everything will ultimately help
in making good decisions.
This way, decision-making skill which is most important can be improved. And thus, Decision
making and skills required to improve it are properly mentioned.
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Conclusion
In this report, Professional and Academic Skills Development has been discussed. The
challenges of studying business management are also thoroughly discussed in this report. The
importance of Professional and Academic Skills is also mentioned along with its application.
Effective team working skills are also mentioned along with their good examples. And at last,
Decision making skill and some effective steps in order to improve Decision making is also
mentioned.
Thus, it is concluded that the development of Professional and Academic Skills is most
important for an organisation.
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References-
Aeon, B. and Aguinis, H., 2017. It’s about time: New perspectives and insights on time
management. Academy of management perspectives, 31(4), pp.309-330.
Duggan, J., Sherman, U., Carbery, R. and McDonnell, A., 2020. Algorithmic management and
app‐work in the gig economy: A research agenda for employment relations and HRM. Human
Resource Management Journal, 30(1), pp.114-132.
Eckhaus, E., Klein, G. and Kantor, J., 2017. Experiential learning in management
education. Business, Management and Economics Engineering, 15(1), pp.42-56.
Hasanuddin, R. and Sjahruddin, H., 2017. The structure of emotional intelligence, spiritual
intelligence and its relationship with work enthusiasm and auditor performance. Structure, 3(1),
pp.67-85.
Maduka, N.S., Edwards, H., Greenwood, D., Osborne, A. and Babatunde, S.O., 2018. Analysis
of competencies for effective virtual team leadership in building successful
organisations. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
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Peláez, M.J., Coo, C. and Salanova, M., 2020. Facilitating work engagement and performance
through strengths-based micro-coaching: a controlled trial study. Journal of Happiness
Studies, 21(4), pp.1265-1284.
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