Personal development is a journey. It is a way for you to grow your capability and qualities, thinking through life and setting goals to realize and maximize your potential. It involves getting to know yourself better so that you can work to address your lowlights and strengthen your highlights.
It is learning to understand your own behavior and motivations and how your actions affect people you work with. Why is your personal development something to focus on in the workplace? What you learn informs you to make the needed changes that will improve your relationships at work and life in general. It helps you to be more intentional about your choices which will give your life more meaning and make you a happier person. T
he truth about personal development is that once your personal life is improved, it translates directly to professional development. Being exposed to new things is another aspect of personal development in the workplace that can enrich your life due to the new skills and new experiences you can discover.
Profiletree states simply that, it is essential for making the most of the opportunity your workplace gives you now and in the future. Personal development in the workplace offers a range of benefits for your business and your employees. Not only will it help to return staff turnover, it will help to keep your employees motivated, and improve profitability. Personal development is all about supporting your employees to meet their professional goals. This includes:
- Learning new skills,
- Taking on new responsibilities,
- Working towards a promotion,
- Moving into an entirely new role.
Personal development does add to your maturity, success story and fulfilment. Indeed describes some important personal development skills that can help in your journey to becoming more capable and confident.
Personal development skills are important because they allow you to create strategic and tactical plans for personal and professional growth towards your goals. It can be helpful to hone personal development skills so that you can naturally work them into your daily routines and use them to:
- Achieve personal and career goals
- Advance in your career
- Improve your strengths and talents
- Better yourself
- Find fulfillment and satisfaction
Personal development skills can be traits or qualities you already have or ones you can gain through education and training. Individuals will value different personal development skills depending on their goals, but here are some examples of skills people commonly practice to facilitate personal development:
- Communication – includes your ability to speak, write and listen. With these skills, you can understand what others are saying and feeling and also convey your own ideas and feelings. Good communicators can speak clearly and confidently, using a tone that is positive and appropriate for the situation.
- Interpersonal – Also called people skills or social skills, interpersonal skills are the verbal and nonverbal behaviors and reactions to interactions with other people. They affect your ability to build relationships and make impressions on others in social situations.
- Organization – include the tidiness of your physical and digital spaces as well as your ability to plan, schedule and prioritize. Good organization can help save time, prevent miscommunications and improve efficiency.
- Problem-solving – is your ability to handle challenging or surprising situations. Good problem-solvers can stay calm when they encounter obstacles and assess all their options to find the best solution.
- Self-confidence – is the belief in your abilities, actions and decisions. If you have confidence in yourself, you might be more likely to pursue ambitious goals, try new things and believe you can succeed.
- Adaptability – is your ability to adjust quickly and easily to new things. People who handle change well often get along with a variety of personalities and thrive in any environment. They can also remain calm in surprising situations.
- Integrity – People tend to trust those who are honest and stand by their values. Integrity means doing what is right and telling the truth, even if doing so presents challenges. Having integrity can lead to a good reputation and opportunities for advancement.
- Work ethic – includes not only hard work but also reliability, responsibility, quality, determination and discipline. People with good work ethic tend to be productive and have a positive attitude.
- Leadership – is the ability to guide people. Good leaders can motivate others and help them reach a shared goal. They build confidence and improve morale.
Here are 4 steps shared by Profiletree that guides us in the personal development journey:
- CREATE A PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
A personal development plan is a blueprint for helping you stay motivated to advance your career. It is an effective approach for self-reflection and goal-setting. It helps you realize your areas of strengths and weaknesses. As such, you will be able to set objectives on what to improve on and take steps to achieve the desired change.
Your personal development plan should include specific ideas tied to both short-term and long-term goals. Top ideas for a personal development plan include studying knowledge specific certifications, learning leadership skills, and networking with influencers in your profession. Also, it should entail steps to overcome obstacles to the advancement of your profession.
For example, if you have a strained relationship with your boss, it is critical to mend it. Drafting your personal development plan should be followed by a scoreboard to help you track your progress. You can use a personal development plan template to create specific and measurable goals. Having the means to measure your progress will keep you motivated and help you adapt to personal development goals.
Setting realistic and time-bound goals will set you for success since they are measurable and relevant to your career. Let go of any far-fetched ideas from your plan and only keep measurable goals. A standard personal development plan example might include the following objectives:
- Networking with professionals from other companies within your field of specialization.
- Joining a support group for professionals.
- Pursuing certification courses for specific skills in your profession.
- IMPROVE YOUR TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS
Deadlines are a standard feature in work projects. For you to succeed in your career, you need to be adept at time-management. If you are late on delivering orders or completing tasks that demand your attention, you can improve on this by improving your ability to manage time.
Doing so will result in a paradigm shift in which you will no longer perceive your responsibilities as strenuous, but an orderly sequence of tasks. The first step to improving your ability to manage time is by ensuring conscious attention to your work. Staying alert and in synchronicity with your duties will make you a better planner.
Also, you will have a better organisation such that you will schedule your tasks according to priority and have the discipline to execute them without entertaining any interruptions.
Track the habits that lead to the loss of productivity such as browsing social media sites and restrict them to your free time. For example, you can schedule them for lunch and tea breaks.
As a result, you will be efficient in managing the time you spend on social media and allot the rest of it to your core tasks. Next, you should stick to a consistent practice. Once you set a schedule and assign different hours to various tasks, strive to fulfill them within those hours. Practice this until it becomes second nature to you.
- WORK ON YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS
Social skills are not just for social gatherings. If you do not have healthy relations with your workmates, it is hard to deliver on your work. Teamwork is only possible when you foster good work-relations with your colleagues.
Once you are aware of the synergy between you and your co-workers, you will benefit from increased performance. You can only contribute to the organization by fulfilling your duties, but developing a team spirit takes you a level higher for all the areas that require collaboration.
A team spirit gives you a sense of belonging and better connection with the workflow of the entire team. This way, you will be in a good position to communicate and learn from the rest of the team and better your work processes and speed of delivery.
- IMPROVE YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Your ability to understand emotions and manage them properly is a powerful skill in the workplace. Emotional intelligence is the power to understand and handle both your emotions and that of other people. It helps you to process other people’s motivations and action patterns better.
In a workplace context, you will be able to improve on collaboration efforts. Also, it will enable you to express yourself better and respond to the demands of your relations with clients and co-workers better. The most powerful way to enhance your emotional intelligence is through observing your behaviour patterns and reactions to interactions with others. Look out for what angers you, inspires, or stresses you.
Next, research what motivates other people, what relieves their stress and inspires them to work better. The result will be a clear and unbiased perspective on communications and work approach. It will also result in better listening skills, which is a huge boost, especially in personal development. You will also become a better team player and establish healthy work-relations in both the short-term and long-term.
Since personal progress is a long-term process, it is necessary to start now if you are yet to and continue the journey of improving yourself for the workplace if you have already started to help you give off your best in the workplace always.
Are you ready for TRANSFORMATION?
Dzigbordi K. Dosoo: The H.E.L.P. Coach
Dzigbordi K. Dosoo is a Soft Skills Expert, Personal Impact, Professional Growth and Influence Expert specializing in Humanness, Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Power – H.E.L.P.
A career spanning over two decades, she has established herself as a Certified High Performance Coach, Speaker, Author, Wellness Expert and award-winning Entrepreneur with a clientele ranging from C-Suite Executives, Senior Management, Practitioners and Sales Leaders spanning 3 continents.
She is the Soft Skills Expert and Founder of Dzigbordi K. Dosoo (DKD) Holdings; a premier lifestyle business group with brand subsidiaries that include Dzigbordi Consulting Group& Allure Africa.
Dzigbordi has been featured on CNN for her entrepreneurial expertise. She is one of the most decorated female entrepreneurs in Ghana having being named “CIMG Marketing Woman of the Year” in 2009; “Top 10 most respected CEOs in Ghana, 2012; Global Heart of Leadership Award and, Women Rising “100 Most Influential Ghanaian Women”, 2017.
She can be reached on [email protected] and @dzigbordikwaku across all social media platforms.
