Laying the Foundation (Goals)
My number one goal is entrepreneurship. I wish to take a financial risk and venture into entrepreneurship in order to manage a couple of businesses. My second goal is improving my communication and interpersonal skills. These would make my messages be clear to the intended audience. My third goal is to be a positive role model to my friends and family.
Self-Analysis
I am approachable and friendly and have good communication and planning skills. I have weaknesses in time management and confidence in front of big groups. I have the opportunity of succeeding in groups and developing better communication skills. The threats include missing deadlines and balancing my social and academic life.
Personal Style and Preferences Time Management System Design
What’s working for me currently is the network of friends that I have and I continue to make. What’s not working at the moment is my presentation skills because I am still finding difficulty to present in front of a large multitude of people. My time management preference is being disciplined and doing the right thing at the right time. This will help me save time. My energy circle and choices is focusing my energy on the most important of things and not engaging in activities which may not help me.
Strategy and Design
From the above map it is seen that in order for me to achieve my entrepreneurial objective I will need to take a financial risk, have good communication and interpersonal skills and be a positive role model.
I will consider securing employment in one of the companies in my locality. Through this employment, I will be able to expand my circle of networks on Twitter and LinkedIn. These networks will be very important for my personal and professional development (Sie et al., 2013). I plan to use these networks to learn about business and entrepreneurship and how I can take advantage of the business opportunities (Schaffer, 2015). I also plan to read articles and books on entrepreneurship in order to learn on these business skills.
One of the weaknesses that I have is presentation of reports especially in a large crowd. I have listened to many motivational speakers on how this can be improved. I plan to do more practice in order to improve my communication skills. Apart from this, I will need to learn about different cultures in order to understand how to communicate with these cultures and languages. Learning about different cultures and languages will make me be more culturally competent and this will improve my interpersonal skills (Johnson, Prescott & Lyon, 2017).
The above will enable me achieve my set objectives. Through this I will be able to inspire many people and be a positive role model to my peers and colleagues. I believe that with good networks I will make it in business (Bauer, 2010).
Making It Happen
The following is the strategy for making this happen:
• I will have the timelines input in my laptop and constant reminders put so that I am always reminded of the targets and when I should achieve them. This will allow me to monitor the plan and improve my productivity.
• I will review my progress every 3 weeks to check whether I have improved as per the plan. I will make the necessary changes in case I shall have not seen any progress.
• I will share this plan with my partner so that in case the business does not succeed then we can depend on her income. I will share this plan with my friends and seek to learn from their experiences so that I eliminate any psychological obstacles.
- Bauer, W. I. (2010). Your personal learning network: Professional development on demand. Music Educators Journal, 97(2), 37-42. Doi: 10.1177/0027432110386383
- Johnson, M.W., Prescott, D., & Lyon, S. (2017). Learning in online continuing professional development: An institutionalist view on the personal learning environment. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 6(1), 20-27. Doi: 10.7821/naer.2017.1.189
- Schaffer, V. (2015). Social media: A conduit for increasing knowledge and skill for capacity building. E-Journal of Social & Behavioural Research in Business, 6(2), 20-33.
- Sie, R. L., Pataraia, N., Boursinou, E., Rajagopal, K., Margaryan, A., Falconer, I., … & Sloep, P. B. (2013). Goals, motivation for, and outcomes of personal learning through networks: Results of a tweetstorm. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 16(3), 59-75.
