Improving your personal development
By Jack Matthews
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a great way to understand how people are motivated through out every aspect of their life. One common thread that goes through his hierarchy of need is the personal development of an individual. Examples include reaching your full potential, feeling a sense of accomplishment and earning prestige at what you do. The chances are if these aren’t being met for an individual then they aren’t motivated.
The purpose for this blog is to look at three ways that we can improve personal development to start becoming more motivated in the work place. I have always found having no plans or goals can lead to stagnation and things can soon start spiralling out of control.
- SWOT analysis
SWOT is used by businesses to identify their strengths and weaknesses to ensure they are maximising all opportunities and reducing threats. It highlights the strengths as a positive and what they are doing well to capitalise on opportunities. It then looks at the weaknesses to identify any threats that could arise.
Taking this theory and applying it to an individual works wonders for their personal development. By looking at an individual’s strengths we can spot exactly what they need to continue doing to ensure they are being the best they can be.
Looking at weaknesses for development areas can really open a can of worms of how we can improve. By looking at our weaknesses we can identify certain areas that we need to work on and improve. It’s all well and good working on personal development, but if you don’t know what you need to improve on you are never going to develop.
- SMART goals
Having a goal is a good way to keep us focussed and motivated to complete a task. Having a SMART goal is better. A SMART goal looks at five aspects which help make the goal more specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based.
We can all say I would like to be promoted but what do you want to get promoted to? Is the promotion obtainable and how far off completion is this? Is the promotion achievable and are all stakeholders related to this happy for you to go for it? How realistic is the promotion? Have you got enough time to achieve the promotion?
By answering the questions above, the goal becomes a lot more attainable and manageable. How many times have we set goals that we have missed and felt down about it? By missing the goals it only damages our personal development and can put us off progressing. By making sure we are on top of our goals and specific about what we want to do it can really help motivate us to develop.
- Attitude
I was once told that we chose our attitude, and I feel that statement to be correct. How many times have we been cut up driving and chose to be angry? You can choose to be angry or you can choose for it not to bother you.
The same principle applies for personal development and that we need to choose the right attitude to develop. By choosing a positive attitude we will start getting more work done towards our development. Instead of taking the approach that things will be done for us we need to start being pro-active and get our own stuff done.
Tags: career, growth, personal development, progression