MANAGING OWN SELF

Personal development covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and
facilitate employability, enhance the quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development takes place over the
course of a person's entire life.[1] Not limited to self-help, the concept involves formal and informal activities for developing others in roles such
as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, life coach or mentor. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the
methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations.

Among other things, personal development may include the following activities:

 improving self-awareness
 improving self-knowledge
 improving skills and/or learning new ones
 building or renewing identity/self-esteem
 developing strengths or talents
 improving a career
 identifying or improving potential
 building employability or (alternatively) human capital
 enhancing lifestyle and/or the quality of life and time-management
 improving health
 improving wealth or social status
 fulfilling aspirations
 initiating a life enterprise
 defining and executing personal development plans (PDPs)
 improving social relations or emotional intelligence
Personal development can also include developing other people. This may take place through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through
a personal competency (such as the alleged skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional service (such
as providing training, assessment or coaching).
Beyond improving oneself and developing others, "personal development" labels a field of practice and research:

 As a field of practice, personal development includes personal-development methods, learning programs, assessment systems, tools, and
techniques.
 As a field of research, personal-development topics appear in psychology journals, education research, management journals and books,
and human-developmenteconomics.
Any sort of development—whether economic, political, biological, organisational or personal—requires a framework if one wishes to know whether a
change has actually occurred.[3][need quotation to verify] In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as the primary judge of improvement or
of regression, but validation of objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria. Personal-development frameworks may include:

 goals or benchmarks that define the end-points

 strategies or plans for reaching goals
 measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a development path
 a feedback system to provide information on changes
 LEADERSHIP SKILLS
The question of what makes a good leader—in other words, what are leadership skills—is widely
debated. It is clear that the ability to lead effectively relies on a number of key skills, but also that
different leaders have very different characteristics and styles.

There is, in fact, no one right way to lead in all circumstances, and one of the main characteristics of
good leaders is their flexibility and ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Leadership skills are
highly sought after by employers as they involve dealing with people in such a way as to motivate,
enthuse and build respect.

Here at SkillsYouNeed, you'll find lots of information that can help you to understand and develop your leadership potential.

Understanding Leadership
Many people consider leadership to be an essentially work-based characteristic. However, leadership roles are all around us
and not just in work environments.
Ideally, leaders become leaders because they have credibility, and because people want to follow them. Using this definition, it becomes clear that
leadership skills can be applied to any situation where you are required to take the lead, professionally, socially, and at home in family settings. Examples
of situations where leadership might be called for, but which you might not immediately associate with that, include:

 Planning and organising a big family get-together, for example, to celebrate a wedding anniversary or important birthday;
 Responding to an illness or death in the family, and taking steps to organise care or make other arrangements; and
 Making decisions about moving house, or children’s schooling.
In other words, leaders are not always appointed, and leadership skills may be needed in many circumstances.
With apologies to Shakespeare, we might say that “some are born leaders, some achieve leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them”.

But what exactly is a leader?

A leader can be defined fairly simply as ‘a person who leads or commands a group, organisation or country’.

This definition is broad, and could include both formal and informal roles—that is, both appointed leaders and those who emerge spontaneously in response to events.

In recent years, considerable evidence has emerged that the strongest organisations and groups tend to permit and actively encourage each member of the group or
organisation to take the lead at the appropriate point. Organisations and families with particularly controlling leaders, by contrast, tend to be fairly dysfunctional.

Leadership, therefore, is in practice fairly fluid: leaders are made by circumstances. The crucial issue is that people are prepared to follow
them at the right moment.
BUILDING SOCIAL RELATION
Building Great Work Relationships
How good are the relationships that you have with your colleagues?

According to the Gallup Organization, people who have a best friend at work are
seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. And it doesn't have to be a
best friend: Gallup found that people who simply had a good friend in the
workplace are more likely to be satisfied.

In this article, we're looking at how you can build strong, positive relationships at
work. We'll see why it's important to have good working relationships, and we'll
look at how to strengthen your relationships with people that you don't naturally
get on with.

Why Have Good Relationships?

Human beings are naturally social creatures – we crave friendship and positive
interactions, just as we do food and water. So it makes sense that the better our
relationships are at work, the happier and more productive we're going to be.

Good working relationships give us several other benefits: our work is more
enjoyable when we have good relationships with those around us. Also, people
are more likely to go along with changes that we want to implement, and we're
more innovative and creative.

What's more, good relationships give us freedom: instead of spending time and
energy overcoming the problems associated with negative relationships, we can,
instead, focus on opportunities.

Good relationships are also often necessary if we hope to develop our careers.
After all, if your boss doesn't trust you, it's unlikely that he or she will consider
you when a new position opens up. Overall, we all want to work with people
we're on good terms with.

We also need good working relationships with others in our professional circle.
Customers, suppliers and key stakeholders are all essential to our success. So, it's
important to build and maintain good relations with these people.

Defining a Good Relationship

There are several characteristics that make up good, healthy working
relationships:

 Trust – This is the foundation of every good relationship. When

you trust your team and colleagues, you form a powerful bond that helps you
to work and communicate more effectively. If you trust the people you work
with, you can be open and honest in your thoughts and actions, and you don't
have to waste time and energy "watching your back."
 Mutual Respect – When you respect the people who you work with, you
value their input and ideas, and they value yours. Working together, you can
develop solutions based on your collective insight, wisdom and creativity.
 Mindfulness – This means taking responsibility for your words and actions.
Those who are mindful are careful and attend to what they say, and they don't
let their own negative emotions impact the people around them.
 Welcoming Diversity – People with good relationships not only accept
diverse people and opinions, but they welcome them. For instance, when your
friends and colleagues offer different opinions from yours, you take the time to
consider what they have to say, and factor their insights into your decision-
making.
 Open Communication – We communicate all day, whether we're sending
emails and IMs, or meeting face to face. The better and more effectively you
communicate with those around you, the richer your relationships will be. All
good relationships depend on open, honest communication.

Where to Build Good Relationships

Although we should try to build and maintain good working relationships with
everyone, there are certain relationships that deserve extra attention.

For instance, you'll likely benefit from developing good relationships with key
stakeholders in your organization. These are the people who have a stake in your
success or failure. Forming a bond with these people will help you to ensure that
your projects and career, stay on track.

To find out who these people are do a Stakeholder Analysis . Once you've
created a list of colleagues who have an interest in your projects and career, you
can devote time to building and managing these relationships.
Clients and customers are another group who deserve extra attention. Think of
the last time you had to deal with an unhappy customer ; it was probably
challenging and draining. Although you may not be able to keep everyone happy
100 percent of the time, maintaining honest, trusting relationships with your
customers can help you to ensure that if things do go wrong, damage is kept to a
minimum. Good relationships with clients and customers can also lead to extra
sales, career advancement, and a more rewarding life.
Build Good Work Relationships
So, what can you do to build better relationships at work?

 Develop Your People Skills

Good relationships start with good people skills. Take our How Good Are
Your People Skills? quiz to find out how your "soft skills" are. For instance,
how well you collaborate, communicate and deal with conflict. This self-test
will point you to tools that will help you to deal with any weaknesses that you
have.
 Identify Your Relationship Needs
Look at your own relationship needs. Do you know what you need from
others? And do you know what they need from you?

Understanding these needs can be instrumental in building better relationships.

 Schedule Time to Build Relationships

 Devote a portion of your day toward relationship building, even if it's just 20
minutes, perhaps broken up into five-minute segments.

For example, you could pop into someone's office during lunch, reply to
people's postings on Twitter or LinkedIn , or ask a colleague out for a quick
cup of coffee.
These little interactions help build the foundation of a good relationship,
especially if they're face-to-face.

 Focus on Your EI
Also, spend time developing your emotional intelligence (EI). Among other
things, this is your ability to recognize your own emotions, and clearly
understand what they're telling you.
High EI also helps you to understand the emotions and needs of others.

 Appreciate Others
Show your appreciation whenever someone helps you. Everyone, from your
boss to the office cleaner, wants to feel that their work is appreciated. So,
genuinely compliment the people around you when they do something well.
This will open the door to great work relationships.

 Be Positive
Focus on being positive . Positivity is attractive and contagious, and it will
help strengthen your relationships with your colleagues. No one wants to be
around someone who's negative all the time.
 Manage Your Boundaries
Make sure that you set and manage boundaries properly – all of us want to
have friends at work, but, occasionally, a friendship can start to impact our
jobs, especially when a friend or colleague begins to monopolize our time.
If this happens, it's important that you're assertive about your boundaries, and
that you know how much time you can devote during the work day for social
interactions.
 Avoid Gossiping
Don't gossip – office politics and "gossip" are major relationship killers at
work. If you're experiencing conflict with someone in your group, talk to them
directly about the problem. Gossiping about the situation with other colleagues
 will only exacerbate the situation, and will cause mistrust and animosity
between you.
 Listen Actively
Practice active listening when you talk to your customers and colleagues.
People respond to those who truly listen to what they have to say. Focus on
listening more than you talk, and you'll quickly become known as someone
who can be trusted.

Difficult Relationships
Occasionally, you'll have to work with someone you don't like , or someone
that you simply can't relate to. But, for the sake of your work, it's essential that
you maintain a professional relationship with them.
When this happens, make an effort to get to know the person. It's likely that he or
she knows full well that the two of you aren't on the best terms, so make the first
move to improve the relationship by engaging him in a genuine conversation, or
by inviting him out to lunch.

While you're talking, try not to be too guarded. Ask him about his background,
interests and past successes. Instead of putting energy into your differences, focus
on finding things that you have in common.

Just remember – not all relationships will be great; but you can make sure that
they are, at least, workable!
Key Points
Building and maintaining good working relationships will not only make you
more engaged and committed to your organization; it can also open doors to key
projects, career advancement, and raises.

Use the following strategies to build good working relationships with your
colleagues:
 Develop your people skills.

 Identify your relationship needs.

 Schedule time to build relationships.
 Focus on your EI.
 Appreciate others.
 Be positive.
 Manage your boundaries.
 Avoid gossiping.
 Listen actively.
This site teaches you the skills you need for a happy and successful career; and
this is just one of many tools and resources that you'll find here at Mind Tools.
Subscribe to our free newsletter, or join the Mind Tools Club and really
supercharge your career!

Time management
Top Time Management Skills
Prioritizing
It is usually impossible to do every single that you need and want to do all at once, but if you prioritize well, you should be able
to complete the most important tasks in an order that makes sense.

When assigning priority, consider such factors as when each task needs to be done, how long it might take, how important it
might be to others in the organization, what could happen if a task is not done, and whether any task might be interrupted by
the need to wait for someone else.

Scheduling
Scheduling is important, and not only because some tasks have to be done at specific times.

Scheduling affects your day, your week, your month, as well as other people, their projects, and their short and long term plans
for projects and tasks. Most people also have specific times of the day when they are more and less energetic, and become
more productive when they schedule themselves accordingly. Schedules can be a good way to avoid procrastination, too.

Keeping a To-Do List

To-do lists (properly prioritized and integrated with your schedule) are a great way to avoid forgetting something important.
They are also a great way to avoid spending all day thinking about everything you have to do. Remembering tasks takes
energy, and thinking about everything you have to do all week can be exhausting and overwhelming. Split all the necessary
tasks up into a list for each day, and you won’t have to worry about any of it anymore. Just look at today’s list.

Resting
Resting, even though it may seem contradictory, is an important time-management skill. Although working long hours or
skipping breaks can sometimes improve productivity in the short-term, your exhaustion later will ensure that your average
productivity actually drops. Except for rare emergencies, it is important to resist the temptation to over-work.
Include necessary breaks, and a sensible quitting time, in your schedule.

Delegation
Depending on what type of work you do, you may be able to delegate some tasks. Knowing what to delegate and when is a
skill. Some people resist delegating, either because they want to maintain control or because they want to save money by not
hiring assistants. Both approaches ultimately hurt productivity and raise costs.

Remember too, however, that if you practice time management diligently and still can’t get everything done, you may be trying
to do too much. It is better to succeed at a few tasks than to attempt and then fail at many.

Examples of Time Management Skills in the Workplace

A-E

 Adapting plans to changing circumstances

 Allocating time for specific tasks
 Analyzing processes and selecting the simplest way to accomplish a task

 Asking for help when overwhelmed with demands

 Assertiveness to say no to inappropriate demands that distract from central duties
 Attacking more complex tasks when you have the highest energy and sharpest concentrations
 Auditing how time is spent
 Avoiding excessive small talk with co-workers
 Avoiding procrastination; acting instead of worrying
 Breaking broader goals into smaller parts and focusing on one step at a time
 Breaking up projects into manageable parts
 Creating daily, weekly and monthly “to do” lists
 Creating schedules
 Delegating more routine tasks to lower level staff
 Eating well to maintain energy
 Eliminating time wasters
 Exercising and participating in other stress reducing activities during leisure time to maximize energy when at work

F-Z

 Facilitating efficient meetings; sticking with time frames for meetings

 Grouping similar tasks together to limit transition time
 Maintaining an organized work area
 Multitasking; shifting smoothly from one task to another
 Openness to more efficient ways of doing things
 Organizing digital files for easy retrieval
 Planning your day the night before or first thing in the morning
 Prioritizing requests and demands
 Prioritizing a list of projects and focusing on higher value tasks with more immediate deadlines
 Punctuality
 Putting cell phones aside to eliminate the distraction of personal messages unless required for work
 Reviewing performance and eliminating deviations from priorities
 Setting daily, weekly and monthly goals
 Setting realistic standards for quality and avoiding perfectionism
 Setting specific times for responding to email
 Taking short breaks to restore energy
 Touching each piece of paper or reading each email just once, whenever feasible