Focussing on your personal development enables you to be more efficient at work. In fact seeing yourself as a “Work-in-Progress” means you will always find opportunities to learn something new. It makes life more exciting and more of an adventure.
Research by Sir John Eccles (winner of the Nobel Prize) highlights that the human brain has infinite potential. This means that humans have an unlimited capacity to learn.
HOW PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT IMPROVES WORK EFFICIENCY
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the most important survival tool in life. Personal development is a vehicle for learning more about ourselves: what motivates our behaviour, our values, our ambitions and dreams, etc. It further enables us to have a mind that is active rather than passive. We expand our self-awareness and self-insight through being committed to our personal development. Remember, it is the areas where we experience pain and frustration or where we feel least effective that require our attention.
Planning
Personal development increases our knowledge and skills. This will enable us to do our work more effectively. Learning about planning, organising and time management equips you to work out your priorities at work: what is urgent and what is critical and requires quite a bit of effort on your part. You will learn how to schedule activities into your diary and to manage your time more carefully. In this way you focus on the important key performance areas in your job.
Relationships
Through personal development we learn how to improve relationships: how to get on well with others, how to understand and “read” their personalities better. We learn how to have lasting relationships that facilitate greater co-operation more easily. You will learn how to handle differences and conflict so that you get the best out of others. As a result you will waste less time trying to accommodate people or struggling to gain consensus or support.
Managing People
Personal development equips you to manage people more effectively. You learn ways to manage different kinds of people. E.g. You need to manage a highly competent and motivated person very differently to a new recruit who understands very little about the business.
Resilience
Personal development provides more insight into those aspects that affect our performance negatively. Often we are affected by the way others behave toward us. E.g. A team leader becomes demotivated and disengages from his work when his manager behaves in a very critical and prescriptive way. A senior manager feels threatened easily when his peers express strong or firm views on business issues. He then starts to blame others because he does not know how to communicate what he truly feels.
In both cases the individuals find their productivity and effectiveness at work is suffering. They feel insecure about their own capabilities. They lack energy and drive. In fact both of them are feeling more stressed and anxious, unable to focus properly on their work.
Stress Management
Learn more about stress management as part of your personal development. I.e. Factors contributing to stress, the various ways in which we respond to stress as well as coping strategies. We live pressurised lives these days. In the work place managers expect excellent results with fewer resources. Deadlines are tight and clients are demanding. Therefore it is imperative to understand more about stress. In doing so you can learn how to manage your own reactions and remain effective and efficient.
Tips
Some personal development tips:
- See yourself as a Work-in-Progress. What do you want to achieve in the next 6 months?
- Ask seniors, peers and subordinates what they want you Stop, Start or Continue doing at work. Then do it!
- Identify who at work would be good at taking something on that is a weakness of yours. Negotiate an exchange of tasks.
- What knowledge do you need to gain to be more efficient? Draw up a three step plan of how you will gain this knowledge.
- What skills do you need to improve on? Identify two ways in which you can learn these skills.
- Identify 2 ways in which you will reward yourself for growing your knowledge and skills!
- Each month note one new aspect you have learnt about yourself or developed.
Business mentoring will equip you to master yourself and thereby improve your effectiveness and efficiency at work.