Personal Essay Example: Developing Oneself and Others

Classroom teaching is a standard method used by most people to acquire knowledge. Books are mostly used in classes and exams test the understanding capacity of the students. Memorizing is a technique that can be used to identify learning styles because people have different ways of remembering the content. There are seven well popular learning styles which people use differently. I prefer using the verbal learning style which involves writing and speaking. I find it easy to use this method because it helps me explain myself while talking and writing. Reading is my favorite hobbies which helps me develop the art of writing using word sounds such as rhymes and tongue twisters. I use this method to find the meaning of new words and phrases to improve myself. I have worked in a law firm where verbal learning is primary.

While dealing with cases, I do much reading and writing to identify and understand the relevant information. Taking myself through procedures and using recordings of the content I speak out loud to understand easily. As for my colleague, I identified he prefers the physical style. During our group meetings, he often used the sense of touch and body language to communicate with other members. He usually takes up the role of acting when discussing something to make us understand his points. Written work that involves reading does not work well for him and takes much time digesting content that has many descriptions. He draws diagrams easily and understands them better than written work. When role-play is required, he is always the first one to take up the challenge and ends up portraying a character entirely. The physical method is paramount in a law firm. My teammate can help in recreating crime scenes and role-playing the characters involved in a crime. If a crime scene cannot be recreated physically, he can diagrammatically explain it. It is easier to solve a case physically than verbally.

Meeting with team members is a method that can be used to identify the needs of each member to void unnecessary output when trying to develop an organization. When carrying out a face to face discussion, there is an opportunity to ask each participant of what kind of training they would require to improve themselves in their career and work efficiently to develop an organization. During my teams one on one meeting, the questions asked involved the challenges that each one faced by the law firm. The frustrations that we face when doing our work. The areas that each member would want to know more about and skills they would want to gain in training. Personal goals were also among the questions.

According to the analysis done after the questions were done, I realized that we all required different development needs. I discovered that I faced the challenge of not working well together with others and I preferred solving cases alone. I needed training on how to work with teams and deal with other peoples personalities to be able to work on cases with my colleagues. My frustrations were coping with laws enforcement which does not give enough information on criminal cases. Withholding information is a challenge that can prolong the time when working on cases. The areas I wished to know more about were working on cases using physical evidence and being able to recreate crime scenes using diagrams instead of using only written information. My personal goals were ensuring justice was served relatively to every client. Organizations focus on improving themselves, and law firm can achieve this by gaining winning more cases which helps in increasing credibility.

In the training, I would require information on how to win more cases and work with the information provided to solve cases. According to the assessment, one of my team members showed interest in winning many cases as possible. He also had frustrations on losing any case and faced the challenge of working alone. He desired to learn how to used materials effectively through reading and writing. The analysis showed that the required training was on how to deal with losing cases and using written documents without having to understand using physical actions. Working as a team is always the best way to solve cases, but one requires knowledge of how to work alone which he would need in training.

Learning barriers can either be internal or external which weakens the learning motivation. Lack of importance is one of the obstacles. People are motivated to study if they have a clear sense of why they are learning. Stress when learning is another goal whereby a person prefers reaching a learning goal which is stress-free. Difficulties in the realization of a studying target is an obstacle because people come up with excuses if their goal is hard. Doubts of achieving success when learning can be an obstacle for people are motivated by goals they know they can achieve. Lack of support and discouragement from others can be a barrier because people lack the motivation to learn if they are told what they are doing is pointless. Lack of advantage is another barrier since a person requires inspiration to study if it will not help them improve their performance or achieve bigger goals.

The learning obstacles can be overcome through several ways. Firstly, lack of importance can be countered by talking to other people and discover the importance that they see. Identifying expected stressors in a learning goal and developing ways to deal with them help overcome learning stress. Difficulties in realizing a goal and goal doubts can be managed by breaking the goal into other manageable goals. Lack of support can be managed by avoiding people who work at discouraging others when they are working on a goal. Finally, talking to other people and supervisors on the advantages of a goal can help counter the lack of advantages.

Learning and development options help in ensuring the success of an organization and a persons career. Based on the analysis in section one, I would require working with teams to develop a positive opinion about working with others. Working with groups would also help me identify how people overcome challenges and develop personal goals. I would also learn from others on how to solve cases using physical methods and engaging in physical activities which would help me gain knowledge on how to use body language and role play. As for my teammate who finds it difficult working with written work, he can adopt a habit of reading a book daily which would help him increase his understanding capacity of written content. Using audio materials could also help him understand others when they are talking without using actions to demonstrate their point.

Support mechanisms can help in developing myself, and my team member includes the availability of training resources. The resources include volunteer leadership which discusses ways of motivating work without pay. A mentoring program is also a form of training that can help us learn from one another and attain individual goals while working on leadership skills. Coaching is also a support mechanism that can be accomplished by requesting an experienced person in the organization and using them as a supervisor to help in skill development and learning from their past mistakes.

Individual Development Plan for Development Needs

Competency

Work with others effectively

Target behaviours

Evaluate progress

Communicate with others easily

Work with available content

Actions steps

Working with groups.

Using more physical actions.

Consulting others at work.

Monitoring weekly performance on working with others.

Work with a supervisor on work improvement

Learning logs are journals or diaries that are used as a problem-solving tools. They mostly reflect on self-evaluation of learning. The learning logs help learners improve their ability to observe when studying and document their content. Journals and diaries help in avoiding past mistakes and make only new ones.