MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

In today’s businesses, one of the main objectives that are in mind related to building the business is the
high-quality results delivery. The base of this area is the employee’s productivity and efficiency.

Nowadays, it is very important to achieve a competitive advantage by seeking and retaining valuable
and unique human capital (Knap-Stefaniuk, A & Karna, W., 2022). Human resources is a company’s
most valuable asset because of their potential to further the company’s mission and achieve the goals
set in the beginning (Hinge, P et al. 2022). That is the reason why the process of education and
employee development is seen as an important investment for the company as it affects the
organization’s success (Knap-Stefaniuk, A & Karna, W., 2022).

Some studies have shown that there are some resources that enterprises can use in order to enhance
employee’s job performance (Mindeguia, R et al., 2021). As Diener et al. (2020) and Peñalver et al.
(2017) have stated from both of their research, satisfaction, commitment, and proactive behaviour
have been recognized as group resources that strengthen group performance and boost employee’s
results toward the company’s expectations. Moreover, positive, and pleasant feelings lead team
members to consider pursuing team goals that are important and valuable, what makes them feel much
more committed to these goals (Seo et al., 2004).

If we take these mentioned studies together, it indicates that positive moods across the work unit teams
might influence the teams’ goal commitment, their satisfaction, and make them prone to proactive
behaviours, resulting in a better performance of the company’s workforce and a higher change that the
results obtained are better (Mindeguia, R et al., 2021).

When all components of an organization work in the same direction to produce outstanding results,
that company is performing at a high level.

As a part of the employees of a company, the environment you have is a crucial element in your job
performance. Your colleagues have a very important role while you are working because they are the
ones who create the atmosphere you work in. When going to work, bad mood is usually fastest spread
than good mood, one of the main reasons why employee motivation is important to take into account.
Also, if a worker is not motivated enough, its performance will leave a lot to be desired, as he/she
won’t have the strength to do a good job and the company will be affected from that.

In my opinion, apart from the environment, we can also find as an important factor the company’s
culture in relation to work. If the business you work with has the culture of long hour shifts, no
teambuilding, no appraisal or achievement recognition, dull working environment, etc. the employees
will come to work unmotivated but also, they will not make the most of their time achieving the goals
set or the projects to be done.

When talking about areas that build the organization, one of the most importants speaking for myself
is communication. It is a key factor for an employee to have the work done and in a correct way, to
ask for help or guidance to a colleague or superior, to create a good working environment, etc. And for
a company, communication is key to meet the deadlines, explaining the objectives set and reaching
them and giving feedback of the work done and the performance of the employees.

Today, we cannot imagine human relations without communication, it has a significant role in any
kind of business although the key to a successful business is effective communication. According to
Osmanovic and Stojanovic (2021), competitive advantage in the organization can be achieved easily
through effective communication in the same level of employees and different hierarchical levels in
the entire organization, but communication speed is also very important.

Communication, as said before, is an indispensable element of human relations and it is a must to

maintain organizational activities. Managers encounter the existence of an effective communication in
a business as a basic obligation in reaching organizational targets and increasing productivity (Sayin,
K., 2019). Through communication in the organization, cooperation among the workers of this
organization can be created. Effective communication proves the efficiency of an organization to
operate. Without effective communication, then a public organization or a company will face
efficiency and productivity problems as well as many others (Mustaffa, F., Mahbob, M & Mahmud,
W., 2022).

To conclude, communication is closely related to all areas of human life and action. There is no
segment in our private life or in any organization where communication is not relevant. It helps the
business to achieve its goals and therefore, it is very essential for communication to be successful
(Osmanovic, N & Stojanovic, I., 2021). At the end, every member or the company should have a
communication strategy in performing the duties and responsibilities assigned to them (Mustaffa, F.,
Mahbob, M & Mahmud, W., 2022).

From my point of view, successful communication is one of the aspects that I find most important in a
company and at the same time, one of the most difficult to succeed in. Inside a company there is a
great variety of people, with different habits and cultures, working all at the same time and in some
cases, in different floors of a building. The fact that people work at the same time in the same project,
requires an exceptional communication if wanting to do the job perfect and without having to delay
deadlines because of misunderstandings or mistakes in the work done.
In addition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teleworking has become more and more popular both for
the companies and for the employees. And not to mention, international companies whose employees
are not even in the same country. This way of working requires an even better communication than
going to the office, mainly because you do not see your colleagues face to face, your boss cannot come
to your table to show you anything, there can be cultural and time differences, etc. In those cases, you
do not have any resource apart from your computer and that requires clear messages, daily work
updates and concise guidelines.

Another situation where I find that communication is really important is when talking to a client who
is explaining what they want or need from the company we work with. If we want to do a good job
and give our client the solution they need, we must know exactly what he is asking from us. If our
communication skills are not good, we can misunderstand what we need to do, the way our client
wants us to work or many other things that can lead to inefficiency from the company and
dissatisfaction of the client.

Focusing on the individual traits that all employees need to acknowledge, as humans we all have our
strengths and flaws. And when working in a company, those traits determine the role you play in your
team and what you can provide to others. In a team, there are a lot of roles to be fulfilled and this
variety of personalities is what makes a simple group of people, a good team.

One of the manager’s priorities should be to recognize the strengths and flaws of every employee in
order to have a good functioning team. It is important to develop further our strengths and be careful
about how we manage our flaws. No one is perfect, so everyone will have some flaws, but what we
must do is be aware of them and work on it to eliminate or reduce them. As long as our job does not
get affected for it, flaws are totally acceptable and make us learn more every day about things we do
not excel on.

On the one hand, one of my main weaknesses is creativity and innovation. I do not consider myself as
a creative person, therefore, I do not come up very often with innovative ideas. According to
Dimitrova (2022), the goal of any company is value creation. Innovation is associated with change and
creativity, and it is understood as the most essential value creation and sustainable competitive
advantage. Job-related creativity as a valuable skill includes behavioral processes such as offering
innovative solutions for job-specific problems or identifying new approaches and strategies ti achieve
desired objectives (Kiliç, E., Kitapçi, H & Çetin, N., 2020).

Recently, skills workshops have become very popular in the world of business. Every day there’s
more offer to creativity workshops or business meetings where people share their ideas about a
project. A good thing to do to improve my creativity and innovation can be to assist on one of those
workshops to get some advice on how to open my mind and have more unconventional ideas.
However, only little is known about the planning and execution of creativity workshops in a practical
context (Brem, A., 2019).

My other main weakness is initiative. According to Lisbona, A et al. (2021), personal initiative is a
form or label of proactive behavior between the frame of active performance, which emphasizes
behavior, and the interaction between personality and environment. In my opinion, creativity and
initiative are somehow related one to the other. As a person who is not very creative and innovative, I
do not have many opportunities to come up with an initiative for a project or to start planning a
strategy for example.

However, I have been working on my initiative and follow-through skills at work by not being afraid
to speak up when I have an idea or a comment. Going an extra mile to do a task or even asking for
help or opinions when needed.

Employees’ initiative behavior emphasizes individuals’ self-awareness and self-autonomy to complete

their work and even surpass the task. Managers expect employees not only can complete their work
objectives, but also will look for ways to over fulfill their work actively, seek for a problem-solving
strategy initiatively to improve the operation efficiency of their organization (Liu, Y et al., 2015).
Empirical research studies have found positive relationships between personal initiative and
employment, company profitability, career development and self-employment. It has also been shown
that team initiative is positively related to productivity (Lisbona, A et al., 2021).

For this reason, is why I started developing my skills. I think initiative is a really important
characteristic in an employee, it shows the recruiter or manager that you are able to work by yourself,
you can solve a problem and also that you are willing to do a bit more of what is asked of you just to
do the work the right and best way.

On the other hand, my main strength is leadership. I consider myself a really strong person, able to
guide people on their work and also to help them become the better version of them while working. I
can see through people and understand what they need of me in each situation. I am able to
concentrate on the bigger picture and stay calm when there is a conflict or crisis as my rational part is
more dominant.

According to Tan, L., Mattila, P & Hopwood, J (2022), emerging leaders are high-performing staff
that show great promise as a leader. They are frequently willing to bring new ideas, experiment and
take risks to innovate company procedures. Simultaneously, they continue to assist their on-the-ground
colleagues to carry out their everyday operations effectively, and when communicating in executive
meetings, must demonstrate interpersonal and strategic skills, focus on the bigger picture, and discuss
how to achieve performance through people. In their day-to-day roles, they often use their technical
skills, to achieve performance through their own work and focus on the micro vision.

In recent years, organizations have sought to leadership training to improve their overall performance
(Sørensen, 2017). According to leadership researchers, leadership training has demonstrated
significant impact on the overall performance of the organizations. Junior staff who can take on
greater responsibilities are often first directed to train up in interpersonal skills, so that they understand
how to leverage the working dynamics of their team to achieve greater performance (Tan, L., Mattila,
P & Hopwood, J., 2022).

Due to this interest from the companies, now Leadership Workshops have become more popular.
Leadership skills need to be developed by the leaders, when they are to carry out their job duties in
various types of organizations (Kapur, R., 2022). The leadership training workshops are organized to
augment their knowledge, competencies, and abilities (Leadership Programs, 2022) and these need to
be put into operation in a well-organized and disciplined manner.

I have also wanted to be a leader in the future, and now, seeing the interest of companies in training
new leaders, I found the perfect opportunity to motivate myself to start working towards this and with
the right training be a good leader for my team in the future.