Critical Self-Reflection on Professional Development
A summary of results and commentary on my self-audits
During the course I learned a number of techniques for the development of my listening and story-telling skills (Tomkins 2009). I also found out how to use effectively social media LinkedIn and Twitter for attracting employers’ attention (Feldmancreative.com). I was very surprised that social media was so important for personal branding. I have not known before that 91% of employers screened social networking sites (Feldmancreative.com). What is more, I got to know the main issues of personal brand which could play a great role during employees’ selecting process (Rampersad 2008; Schmitt 2011). In my opinion, story-telling process was critical in relation to my personal development.
I will evaluate my experience basing on Gibbs’s Experiential Learning Cycle, describing the situation, feelings, evaluating, analyzing, making conclusions, and developing a personal active plan (Gibbs 1988). During the lessons we had to develop our skills in critical reflection through mentoring stories. We did several exercises in which we were listening, mentoring, observing other students’ narrations, and telling stories by ourselves. I was exhausted when we were doing listening activity. It was difficult for me to concentrate my attention on each story and listen to my partners in communication carefully by asking them mentoring questions. I noticed that sometimes I began to think about different issues. It was really interesting and easy for me to create a story, but I felt nervous and confused when I had to tell it in public. It prevented me from getting thoughts together, controlling if I used both parts of brain, and analyzing the messages that I received (Tomkins 2009). The experience of story-telling was good as I found out my weak areas which I had to work on as they could affect my job hunting process. It was bad that lack of self-confidence influenced negatively on my story presentation. The situation showed me that I had to improve the level of my self-confidence, story-telling, and listening skills, since they will be very useful in future communication with clients. I should take forward communicative skills learning for sounding more convincing and psychology learning in order to understand how to behave during job interviews.
A personal active plan will be presented below. SWOT and Force Field Analysis
My strengths
I am very creative. During the storytelling, I managed to propose an interesting content of the story and change it. It will help me design my personal brand. I also have an ability to analyze stories in depth by extracting new multiple meanings from the story (Tomkins 2009). My analytical skills will help understand a cause-result decisions effect at a workplace. Then, extraversion will enable me to develop a strong brand personality, as it is one of dimensions that display consumers’ brand personality perception (Schmitt 2011). Besides, I love travelling and read a lot about tourism industry.
My weaknesses
My story-telling is not …
