Personal Development Planning I
Introduction
The Philosopher said 2,500 years ago that “Everything flows and everything is constantly changing. You cannot step twice in the same river, for other waters are constantly flowing in.” The statement of Philosopher talks about developing a person’s abilities. In developing your skills and abilities you are also empowering yourself. The process of developing skills and abilities is both empowering and exciting, it also encourages a person to achieve his goals in life and reach out for his dreams.
According to (2003) “The need for professional development arises because security for individuals no longer lies in the job or organization we work but in the skills, knowledge and experience that we have within ourselves.”
Professional development is a planned activity designed to improve the professional performance of an individual. It can take the form of many activities such as meeting with a mentor for the purpose of working on an aspect of teaching proficiency, undertaking a teacher exchange programme, taking a course or pursuing a degree and seeking a programme of personal reflection and change.
According to (1996) there are a number of reasons why an individual or group individuals undertake professional development: to enhance the performance skill in the work of the entire staff or arrays of staff, to enhance the performance of an individual in his or her job, to expand the experience of an individual in the development of careers or for the purpose of promotion, to cultivate the professional knowledge of a person. To expand the general education of a person, to make the personnel feel highly regarded, to raise satisfaction in work, to develop an improved goal of the job, to empower individuals to foresee and make ready for change, to clarify the whole policy of an organization.
As an individual I have participated in many development programmes that over the years have added to my knowledge and provided me the opportunity to look at my career progress from a wider perspective.
Over the past years, I have heard a number of complaints and criticisms arose around the career development area. As the Chief of Training I decided to participate in a management workshop and take ideas back in my desk and implement them in the Training Section.
In this paper I discuss the professional development programme that I participated and the ideas that I got in which I developed and implemented in the Training Section in which I head.
In this paper I also made reference on steps, recommendations and characteristics of developing a successful staff.
A discussion regarding the problem that the training unit faced and solutions is also examined and talk about in this paper.
The need for professional development
One of the best experiences, which I always refer to, is when I participated in an Advanced Course under the title of “Business Process re-engineering”. The course was conducted at the Training Centre that belongs to the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) during the months of April to December 2004. It consisted of four modules which stretched over a period of eight months. The lengths of each module was two weeks with an ample time between each module we learnt to put theory into practice, evaluate the progress and discuss results with other participants before the second module started.
The training was in the form of classroom based activities including lectures, films, audiovisual techniques, and simulations along with mini-workshops at the end of each day. There were twenty-two participants in this programme and almost all of them were managers in other sections of the Ministry. Some of them were technical managers i.e.: Water Production Plant managers, Electricity Production Managers, Electricity Distribution Managers, etc,. Others were non-technical such as Finance Managers, Manpower Managers, and me as a Training Manager.
The Diagram above illustrates mainly the steps that we learned from this course. There was a lot of formal and informal reading and preparation for the different modules. To me, personally, I gained a lot from this course. As a working parent, I have to be mentally agile and to maintain control of different issues at the same time. Parenting teenagers, managing a Training Department for a utility of 3,800 employees, keeping up with husband who is responsible for producing Electricity and Water for the whole Kingdom of Bahrain and taking care of my mother who is a cancer patient is not an easy task. This has always made me feel that I was under a lot of stress and tension. This course helped me to re-organize my priorities. It showed me –through workshops and dialogue with others- my strengths and weaknesses and I became very clear about what effect I have on others and what effect others have on me. This was translated in the way I handled different issues and the next few paragraphs will give you an example of changes that I made after attending that course.
As I mentioned earlier the career development area has a number of expression of dissatisfaction. The introduction of the New Training Section Chart, it opened the opportunity for me to step forward and consider radical changes in the Career Development Area.
The Career Development Unit’s task is to train newly recruited graduate employees to reach the level of a practical hands-on experience. The Group accommodates five members of staff including its Head and looks after one hundred and thirty four trainees of different disciplines. At a later stage of this writing, I will describe the steps I took to remedy this situation and how it affected my development and how I linked it to my personal goal.
The concept of a “Business Process,” which I learnt from the Advanced Course I have undertaken, is an organized group of related tasks and activities that work together to transform input into output and create values and also involves reengineering, which means the implementation of radical changes to these processes in order to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, and service. The concept was suitable in my analysis of the poor standard of trainees in the Department of Career Development. The radical changes were implemented in the Career Development Programme in which all graduate engineers have to go through as they join the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW).
The task was not simple as this involved studying and evaluating training programmes, redesigning them and changing their duration which would have an impact on the trainees’ promotions and pay schemes.
Personal professional development is a cyclical process that can be viewed as a series of steps, as shown in the previous diagram. You start with a determination of your personal and professional values or philosophy. With this as a starting point or guide, you then assess your personal and professional development need, determine your goals, plan how you are going to meet them and carry out a plan of action. Then the process commences once again as you revisit your personal and professional needs and values and success or failure of such actions.
In addition, Megginson and Whitaker state that there are several parties that have an interest in Professional Development. There is yourself, there is the employer and there are also colleges and universities.
To a person, professional development is a continuous process that applies throughout a practitioner’s working life. It is no longer possible to do all learning at the start of your career and then spend the rest of your working life using what you have learned. Our assets do not remain the same if we do not refresh them the assets dwindle, and they taper off fast. Individuals should decide for themselves their learning needs and how to fulfill them. They are responsible for controlling and managing their development.
If professional development is given priority in our lives, it can facilitate:
(a) Advancement and promotion.
(b) Balance and quality of life.
(c) Capability enhancement.
Furthermore, it was observed by (1999) that people who embrace professional development appear to be more engaged, less stressed, more interested in new opportunities and open to working with new colleagues. Professional development can bring excitement and change into a previously routine pattern. It can add extra meaning to staff appraisal or review, and can encourage training and development.
Moreover, (1994) discusses about portfolio careers. He discussed that even if an individual has only one source of paid employment, he or she still have to think in a portfolio way in which the development of “our own portfolio of knowledge, skills and experience” that are transferable to any new opportunity.
As I became the Chief of Training, I have the responsibility for educating the new trainees in order to have excellent standards, I now become a teacher. According to (1992) understanding teacher development includes grasping not only the ideas and abilities that an educator must possess but also comprehending what kind of an individual the teacher is and the circumstances in which a number of teachers work. Without apprehending the person and the without thoughtful alterations in which organizations are run, staff developments are most likely to be temporary and unsuccessful overall.
In addition, The National School Boards Administration, NSBO, [6](2006) have shown excerpts from Chapter four of Winning Strategies “Teachers and Technology”. There are two fundamentals steps in gearing up for staff development: “(a) Reviewing policies, regulations and agreements and (b) Conducting a needs analysis.”
Aside from staff development, there must be also individual development. identified the characteristics of effective individual development as cited in (1996) and these are: “(a) Collaboration (b) Taking risks and experiments (c) Usage of existing knowledge bases (d) Involvement of suitable participants in making decisions, goal setting, implementation and evaluation. (e) Enough and proper time for developing staff and professional learning (f) Precise and continuous leadership and administrative support (g) The right usage of incentives and rewards (h) Consolidating into professional learning of principles and the change process. (i) Reconciliation of personal and institutional goals. (h) Formal location of professional development within the organizational structure.”
As soon as I become the head of the Training Department I immediately identified areas that needed to be rectified within my department. This area was the Career Development Unit that operated directly under my supervision and I have had many complaints from trainees and line departments regarding training programmes set by this Unit. This meant a lot to me as it went very well with my plans for improvement of The Training Department. “Something that I had looked at and wanted to do for along time”.
In addition, The Career Development Group consists of five members of staff and it is a part of the Training Section which in turn is part of the Human Resources Directorate. Its task involved the development of newly recruited graduate employees from the academic level to the practical working environment through training programmes. Hence, they are known as trainees.
Trainees need not be only engineers (of various professions), they can be accountants, computer analysts, chemists and technicians. This type of training is designed to promote ‘employees’ to reach a target position as depicted by the policy of the organization; i.e., the Ministry of Electricity and Water. The main duties of this Group involves monitoring trainees’ progress through continuous guidance and counseling, preparing training programmes, coordinating with the line-management regarding any matters concerning trainees, nominating trainees for specialized courses as means of self-improvement, and assessing trainees’ work through their input to the system as well as their interest for further development. The Training Section was established during the mid eighties a world away from present developments.
It remained un-changed until May 2005. The Career Development Group had to alter the input of the training programmes to incorporate new ideas to the system. In order to process any changes, the causes to the trainees’ poor output quality had to be studied and displayed. This involved the usage of the Fishbone Diagram.
This chapter will describe the analysis of the problem in this particular department and eventually the reforms that was made.
Statement of the Problem
The main problem the Career Development Group faces with its trainees is their poor output quality level during training which worsens after the completion of their training programme.
The trainee’s expectations averaged 70% during the past years while the desired standard for the trainees’ output quality is 95%, hence, a gap of 25% had to be overcome.
The trainees had shown signs of lack of motivation and interest in completing their programmes. As a result, their promotional grades would be delayed causing not only the stagnation of the training procedures but also, the delay in their future development. Obviously the line-management would be affected by this delay and the Human Resources Directorate as a whole.
In order to focus on this problem, the Fishbone Diagram has been introduced. Through brainstorming, the four main categories have been filled with pitfalls. The primary drawback has been identified as the length of the training programmes. Trainees have been complaining that ‘wasting’ four years of their professional lives is considered unfair. Other lesser issues involved lack of motivation including mental aberration. Few cases have appeared blaming the management for improper placement and some have shown malfunction in the coordination procedures amongst all involved parties.
Data and Measurements
Once the causes are identified, each of the ‘old’ and current pending cases is evaluated. Only seventy-nine cases are pinpointed having problems related to the causes displayed in the diagram. The measured data were tabulated based on the Fishbone’s X-main divisions as noted in Table below.
Fishbone’s X-main
Number of Trainees*
%
Cumulative %
Sub-Divisions
Cases
Policy
53.0
67.09
67.09
People
14.5
18.35
85.44
Plant
6.0
7.59
93.03
Procedures
5.5
6.96
99.99
total
79.0
100.00
Table: Data and Measurements
* Should half a number appear, this indicates that the case falls between two main sub-divisions.
The results for ‘Policy’ have received the highest value; over half of the problematic cases. Most of the obtained values have reflected the length of the career development programme with few values for Recruitment’s improper placement and trainees’ involvement in other activities as means to pleasing the concerned line-management.
The results for ‘People’ have received second highest value; less than a quarter of the total problematic cases. Most of these obtained values have reflected lack of motivation or interest by the trainee, over- or under-confidence which the trainees have possessed and mental aberration.
The other two main subdivisions namely ‘Plant’ and ‘Procedure’ are almost equal in results indicating that no cause is more important than the other. Hence, ‘Plant’ has reflected the trainees’ poor performance and ‘Procedure’ has reflected lack of line management support from the beginning of the training programme.
Solutions and Implementation
The Career Development Group for many years has adopted a four-year training programme. The trainees, based on the obtained data, have noted the length of the programme as their main hurdle for development. To overcome this problem, the Career Development Group has suggested reducing this duration to two intensive years during which trainees will upgrade their English Language capabilities along with conducting their visits and following-up with the requirements stated in their programme. Additionally, the trainees will be obliged to deliver presentations to combat their fear of speaking publicly.
Prior to proceeding with this new policy, identifying the driving and restraining forces for reducing the length of the training programme as noted in Figure below ought to be studied.
Driving Forces Restraining Forces
Reducing training programmes duration Depleting trainees’ energies and
to two years ambitions for a four-year training
programme
Giving trainees chance to demonstrate Restricting trainees’ activities while
their abilities in two years under mandate
Saving time and funds within Wasting extra funds due to expenditure
the training budget on un-productive trainees
Equilibrium Line
(Identification of Drivers/Restrainers for Reducing Length of Training Programmes)
The driving forces have over-weighed the restraining forces. This has come in a form of a presentation raised to the Higher Management which agreed to reduce the training programmes to two years.
Results
Amalgamating the above-stated solutions, results have indicated slight improved output quality of trainees who believe that this new arrangement has treated them as employees rather than trainees.
Recommendation
Each X-subdivision of the Fishbone Diagram can be an issue of its own. Thus, each can undergo the idea if ‘unfreeze- change or implement-refreeze’ The training programme itself requires further attention. It ought to keep up with new technologies and reflect practical work. This Project could have been more effective if it had been conducted on a long-term basis of about two years minimally.
Reducing the duration of the training programmes to two years has been the first step to further improving the cycle of training. Self-evaluation does not only reflect the trainees’ output quality, it reflects the quality of the system. Thus self-evaluation may lead to self commitment to upgrading work inputs.
The short duration of this Project however has restricted involving other aspects of the Fishbone Diagram. Moreover, the complexity of this field where many points intermingle can lead to misunderstanding. Hence, implementing the ideas stated herein has been difficult at start but their feasibility has been widely accepted.
Yet, this Project displayed the pitfalls the Career Development Group was facing with the trainees’ poor output quality. It has illustrated the effective usage of technical professional methods to tackle these management problems.
CONCLUSION
All forms of evaluation and training must be looked at as an evolving thing which with time must be updated to meet the needs of whatever society demands. In this particular age, there is a great demand for high skills in the area of technology and computer skills and even in technical institutes it has been discovered that whereas, a hammer and a chisel approach or so termed “hands on” experience in workshops training blue collar workers in previous times was enough. Nowadays however, blue collar workers must have a good academic background to cope with the instruction manuals. If this is true on the workshop floor how true must it be for chiefs, managers and supervisors at the Middle and Upper Management levels to grasp every opportunity to keep a breast of development in the various fields under their control. Is it not a fact, that the General Manager of Mitsubishi Motors spends three months in every year on the factory facing the same problems as his workers so that he can go back to his “Ivory Tower” and seek solutions.
The lesson surely here is management by distant control is no longer acceptable. The fact of the matter is that painful decisions about changing about changing a course of training whether it be for apprentices or a regular work force must be based upon personal experience of management who having seen for themselves what consequences or benefits would accrue from such changes.
Was it not Gestalt who said” Change for Changes” sake is not enough, it must accomplish something better if progress towards perfection is to be achieved.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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