Business Psychology

Public speaking as core skill

The first skill which I want to develop is public speaking. It is defined as the way of interacting or communicating with a large audience, such as in classroom, in our personal lives or at workplace (Garcia, 2016). It is also known as the efficiency in interacting with audience or people so that they can be informed and persuaded to follow the action as well as to entertain them.

Significance

The public speaking skill is very crucial because it allows an individual to confidently share their perspective in front of people. It also gave an opportunity to enhance the knowledge (Awad et al., 2018). In my opinion, if I am not able to communicate with people, then I may fail to present myself in business environment, which requires regular interaction with people and ability to strongly form opinions. I also believe that if one is not able to interact with people, then they cannot become good leaders because they will lack confidence and self-esteem, which is mandatory for leadership. The development of this skill will also allow me to understand the perspective of people as well as emotional quotient of people, which is necessary for making better decisions and gaining knowledge.

Current competency

I believe that I need considerable improvement in my public speaking skills. I have been good at communicating with my friends but when I get a chance to communicate in front of public, then it makes me quite nervous. At once, when I was giving group presentation, I was feeling confused that how to share my opinion to such wide range of audience members. After that presentation, my friends as well as my tutor gave me feedback that I must maintain eye contact while addressing people.

During the entire communication, I was avoiding eye contact and trying to arrange my content. Though when I interact with my friends or in classroom, then I am able to speak with confidently without any kind of fear, but may be in front of large audience I lose confidence. I also get scared that people will laugh at me. Thus, I need to be more confident about my personality and ability to address audience.

Contradictions or allowable weaknesses

Whenever I speak in front of public, I feel that people will laugh at me or at my body language. It makes me more conscious and nervous and thus I fail to confidently interact with the people. However, when I discussed this issue with my teachers and friends, they informed me that I used to over think and there is no such issue.  I maintain good body language and thus I must try to speak without thinking such negative possibilities.

Contribution for future

The development of this skill will be very helpful for me in future, as it will allow me to freely and confidently interact with the people (Eteokleous-Grigoriou  and Ktoridou, 2016). The skill will also assist me in becoming a successful leader by allowing me to share my knowledge without any fear or hesitation. When I will be able to effectively communicate with the audience, then I can successfully face most of the challenges in my professional as well as personal context.

Team work core skill

The second possible skill which I need to develop within myself is teamwork. It is defined as the ability to work effectively in cooperation with different people in a group for achieving shared objectives (Chakra, 2016).

Significance

Teamwork skills are one of the important skills which I must develop for ensuring my professional development (ÇakiroÄŸlu and GökoÄŸlu, 2019). This skill will provide me a chance to work in collaboration with other people and to become a successful leader. If I fail to develop this skill, then it may be impossible for me to gain knowledge as well as to accomplish professional tasks because without teams one cannot work successfully (Sanghi and Srija, 2015). In future, I will get huge opportunities to work with different types of team members. Thus, I must be good at teamwork skills so that I can overcome the challenges and difficulties in working in teams. I think that for effective problem solving as well as for becoming competent in knowledge, I must be good at team work so that related issues and challenges can be addressed.

Current competency

At present, I have been good at some aspects of teamwork, but I need to develop some additional aspect of team work. Though I am good and comfortable at interacting with other team members and managing team conflicts, I think I need to improve my ability to freely and effectively share my opinion in team decision-making. Whenever I work in teams, then I feel it hard to effectively share my perception because I fear that other members will disagree or may not like my idea. I also believe that my situation become worse when I have to work in teams comprising members of different cultures. In such situations, it becomes hard for me to understand and deal with the cultural diversity issues. The team members with whom I worked on a project gave me feedback that I do not participate in decision-making or discussions despite having lots of knowledge and creativity.

Allowable weakness and contradictions

In my opinion, it is possible that working in team can create challenges in terms of avoiding disputes or conflicts. However, with teamwork skills, one can get the ability to overcome such conflicts and to deliver productive outcomes in professional and learning environment in teams (Allen et al., 2018).

Benefits for future

For achieving professional expertise and becoming a good leader, I must be able to work with and manage different types of people. Thus, the development of this skill will allow me to achieve my professional goals (Sonnenschein and Ferguson,  2019). Through effective teamwork, I will also enhance my learning abilities, as team work also allow an individual to gather knowledge and full information. Team work will also make me able to effectively and accurately solve several problems or challenges. I believe that there are several issues or problems which cannot be solved individually. Such problems required team efforts to get resolved. Thus, learning and developing teamwork skills will benefit me in increasing my knowledge as well as in solving complex problems.

Time management skill

Time management skill is defined as the ability to plan and organise the various activities and time period so that tasks are completed without any compromise in quality or allowable time duration (Viviers, Fouché and Reitsma, 2016). This skill involves smart work so that even under high pressure or multiple tasks, limited or assigned time duration does not act as barrier.

 

Significance

The skill is very important because the productivity of all professional and academic activities depends upon their successful completion in given time duration (Mangrulkar et al., 2017). The lack of this skill can make me highly unorganized, and even productive or quality work, I may not achieve optimum profits. I believe that if I do not manage my time, then there will be high chances that I will fail to complete high-priority tasks.

Current competencies

At present I am not good at properly managing my time and as a result of this, I often end up with missing my important tasks and objectives. I am highly focused in my work; however, when I have very short duration of time and multiple tasks to do, I get panicky and fail to prioritise the tasks. As a result, I give more time to work which is less important or which can be even completed in shorter duration of time. On many occasions, I also do not understand how to divide my time in between various tasks so that I do not miss the deadline. I must develop this skill at the priority so that I can be more focused on my work and I can learn the difference between various tasks on the basis of their significance and allowable time duration. My tutors often inform me that I never complete tasks on time and I must try to manage time so that, in order to avoid submission delays, I do not compromise the work quality.

Allowable weaknesses

I used to think that lack of ability to prioritise the tasks is one of the reasons that I am not good at time management skill. However, apart from this, there is also need to adopt proper strategies to distribute time period among given set of activities. Thus, I will try to focus on prioritising the task as well as dividing time in productive and efficient way.

Future significance

From the future perspective, time management is highly crucial, as one needs to be able to manage their work (Niva, 2016). If I will not be able to manage the time, then I may lose various growth and development opportunities in my profession and learning goals. Failure to manage my time can also land me in trouble, as I may not be able to fulfil the tasks which are highly prioritised and crucial.

 

 

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Timely

Problem solving

 

I want to learn various techniques of problem solving so that I can solve variety of problems.

I can measure this skill by evaluating my own performance. The feedback from my tutor and colleagues can also help me to assure that I have been adopting suitable approaches for solving problems.

After learning the different techniques, I will practically apply them to realistic problems (Assiter, 2017). It will give me real exposure to the problem-solving opportunities.

The proposed action is highly relevant, as problem-solving skills can be developed only through reflective practices and by practicing solving vast range of problems.

The goal will be achieved in 6 months.

Time management

I will learn the techniques to decide the priority of tasks and necessity of required amount of time to complete it.

To measure the effectiveness, I will monitor myself to see if I achieve objectives on time or not. For this, I will also take reviews from my tutors and friends.

The development of this skill will help me to fulfil all my tasks on time and to save a huge quantity of time which is wasted in doing less priority tasks.

The applied actions will help me to suitably distribute time frame for each particular task so that I can learn time management skill.

I will achieve time management skill in 3 months.

Team work

I will integrate different types of teams so that I can learn team work and collaboration.

To measure the effectiveness of this skill, I will receive feedback from my team members.

The skill will make you able to work in cooperation with other people and diverse teams without conflicts or performance issues (Niva, 2016).

The proposed action will give me a real demonstration of challenges faced in teamwork, which will help me to develop the skills in better way.

I will learn teamwork skills in month.