The most important personal skills education essay

Introduction

Life at a university provides a wealth of opportunity for students. One of them is the chance for personal development. During this period, students can develop important skills that they will use throughout their lives. The skill development is becoming an increasingly important concept in today’s highly competitive business environment (Fallows and Steven, 2000). Nowadays, it is almost impossible to be recruited by an international company without having relevant and effective skills. According to research findings about expectations of employers from graduates, there are certain competencies that majority of employers are looking for while recruiting their new employees (Polyacsko, 2009). These are; oral and written communication skills, ability to work in a team, commitment to learning and self-development, responsibility and time management, computer skills, numeracy and ability to deal with problems. Thus, university students should use every opportunity that will help them to improve their personal skills and experiences during their university life. When I compare myself today with six months ago when I first joined Hull University Business School (HUBS), I can easily say that this period really contributed a lot to improve my personal skills. Especially my teamwork, time management and IT capabilities are those that have improved more with respect to others.-TeamworkThe ability to work with a wide range of personality types is one of the most important personal skills (Baker and Salas, 1992). This may sound like a simple process, however it is not as easy as it sounds. Before joining the university, I have never had such an experience in the academic sense, so I had some hesitations due to the lack of experience. In APS workshops, I had obtained several opportunities to take part in group activities. Usually, those group activities were about having short discussions and brain-storming about the current topic of the workshop. One of the most important features of these group activities was that they were temporary working groups and made up of randomly chosen people where I had not met and did not have any sharing before. In the beginning I felt a bit nervous and had hesitations to share my ideas, but through time I gained my self-confidence, started to put forward ideas and learnt to listen to others and have respect to their ideas as well. These group activities really made me better understand the phrase ” two heads are better than one”. However, when I compared all of my group work experiences during last six months, I can easily say that some of them were not effective as others. While I was trying to outline the reasons of my ineffective group work experiences, I realized that the unclearly defined responsibilities and incorrect task-sharing were the most prominent reasons that caused ineffective group activities. Within the group, every individual has different characteristics, experiences and abilities which make them fit for some tasks. So, for making more effective task- sharing I started to ask my group partners about their previous group works experiences and what kind of tasks made them motivated for working on it. Then, while I was investigating to understand ‘ how to work effectively as a team’ I run into Belbin’s team role theory and realized that I am on the right track. Belbin’s theory uses to identify people’s individual strengths and weaknesses in order to select and develop high performing teams (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010). Belbin identifies nine different team roles as (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010); plant, resource investigator, co-ordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, team worker, implementer, completer and specialist. Now I know that every person has his/her unique strengths and take different roles in team activities that enable them to contribute to their team’s success. Thus, APS workshops made me understand what kind of roles that I may take in team activities and how I should treat my teammates to have a successful team. This contributes for the development of my team working skills. I believe that it will not only contribute to my future group projects during my university education but will contribute in my future business career as well.-Time ManagementIn the literature on personal development, time management is one of the most important personal skills that we should develop in order to manage our time effectively and efficiently (Kuh, 1995). That’s why, time management plays vital role not only for our future business career but also in our daily lives. Time is such an important and scarce resource that we cannot store or save for later use. In the beginning of this academic year, I felt that there was too many thing that I had to do but not enough time. So I started to suffer from my personal life. This put stress on me, made me a bit aggressive and it reflected on my relations with my family and friends. However, in APS workshops, which are based on the conceptual study related with time management really made me aware of how should I manage my time. I started to schedule my daily activities regarding to advice given through this module. As a result, I got rid of that uncomfortable and stressful pressure. Based on given advice, I created a daily time table for myself and placed all activities and responsibilities on it such as my social and leisure commitments, lectures, seminars, tutorials, and lab sessions, work on essays, projects, reading for tutorials and so on. Additionally, I started to set up my self-imposed deadlines for my assignments and projects rather than their original ones. By this way, I can handle all of my assignments at least a week before their assigned deadlines and find enough time to check it and avoid last minute rush. During trying to find out appropriate ways for time management and how well I improve my skills about it, I found the ‘ Urgent/Important’ matrix. The matrix has been attributed to both former US President Eisenhower and Dr Stephen Covey. The Urgent/Important matrix, as can name speaks for itself, is a matrix that helps to use time both efficiently and effectively by determining which activities are important and which ones are urgent (Nicholls, 2001). Urgent activities are usually identified as the activities which demand great attention and have short term concerns (Nicholls, 2001). In oppose to urgent activities, important ones are identified as long term and goal related (Nicholls, 2001). So, now I try to manage my time through differentiating tasks either as urgent/not urgent or important/ not important that really makes me feel more comfortable and helps me to not only use time efficiently as well as effectively.-ITNowadays, having computer or information technology (IT) skills are becoming more and more significant than ever before and has become a must for people who are looking for a good position (Freedam, 2007). Almost all employers emphasize the importance of having basic computer skills while evaluating applicants (Freedam, 2007). Before joining HUBS, I thought that I had enough knowledge about how to use internet effectively in order to find reliable and credible information sources. However, after the APS workshops I realize that the effective internet searching involves more skills than the ability to use Google and Google Scholar. Additionally, our second APS assignment which is about preparing a report on effective presentation by using word processors, gave me an opportunity to understand that an effective PowerPoint presentation should be based on four key points (Sloboda, 2003) that are colour, font style, font size and content of slides. This assignment enable me to learn the psychological effect of background colours on audiences, appropriate font styles and sizes for PowerPoint presentations and how should be the slide’s content prepared. APS module made me understand that my previous PowerPoint presentation that I was proud of having prepared, did not match all of these requirements. Previously I preferred to use black background and Times New Roman style fonts (Serif style) in my presentations. I learnt that black colour might be boring to audiences and serif styles are not appropriate for presentations. Thus, one of the most important contributions of APS module is, besides making us to learn theoretical things, it also allows us to implement and practice those theoretical issues.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, this assignment is a review how APS module contributed to my learning process. I know that it is important to develop right combination of skills and experiences in order to differentiate myself. In today’s highly competitive business environment, completing a relevant degree course is not enough to having a proper job/position. In order to have an on-going successful career, people should learn to be involved in continuous development. This assignment on reflecting my personal development makes me to look at things in a wider perspective to see the bigger picture. I know that there are many things that I should learn and this learning process may never be complete. However, I believe that having such reflections help me to have better and more realistic personal development plans about my future. During APS workshops, I had obtained several opportunities to improve my personal skills, especially my team work, time management and IT capabilities. I believe that the best contribution of APS workshops is that it enables me to improve my skills by practicing in addition to learning the theoretical concepts. So as a business school student, now I feel more confident about my future and I am motivated to improve my other weak points in order to become a more competitive person.