Free Custom «Professional Settings» Essay Paper

Human personalities exhibit wide variations among different individuals. This is driven by the one’s core capabilities, character, motivation, and image, which tend to be unique for each person. In a competitive world where humans strive to outdo each other in their individual competencies, understanding oneself is the key to winning. The modern work setting presents individuals with several challenges that need to be overcome in the most effective way possible. As a result, it is important for one to be aware of their individual competencies when dealing with various subjects and situations. Among the most critical competencies include speaking, writing, team work, leadership, negotiation, and problem solving capabilities. This presentation intends to present a self analysis of my personal competencies by showcasing my strengths, and weaknesses in achieving assigned professional goals and objectives.

The ability to speak eloquently and pass across the required message with perfect clarity is an admired quality among individuals. Speaking is one of my personal attributes that has historically enabled me receive recognition. I have been able to demonstrate this unique trait in official and non official settings. I have nurtured my speaking ability over a long time. I can trace this to elementary school, high school, and university level. In all this levels I received awards in public speaking and poetry. My skill in speaking is strongly driven by my ability to analyze and articulate a variety of topics in a convincing manner. Taking into account the importance of negotiations, leadership, and problem solving in the work setting, the short and long term benefits of speaking cannot be underestimated.

In any professional setting, the presence of effective human communication channels is a key driver to success because it ensures work objectives are attained maximally. In addition to eloquence and articulation, I can actively engage the person in the conversation so that they do not just play a passive role of listening. It is important to note that good speakers should be able to show empathy to their audience so that they can reflect the audience’s expectation. Being able to do this in an effective manner increases the confidence of the other workmates in the affected individual.

In this regard, through my enhanced speaking skills, I will be in a position to ensure that my departmental duties are accomplished effectively by forming a seamless communication link with my colleagues and clients. This has the capacity of improving the relationships among people within and outside the institution. As a result, the company is in a better position to improve its rating through positive public relation. Using my advanced speaking skills, I can improve the company’s rating through reinforcement of public relation initiatives because they will definitely require someone capable of articulating the objectives with required clarity.

Writing is another trait that reflects the art of good speaking. I am well endowed with admirable writing skills. From an early age, I participated in various writing contests and always received recognition. I understand different formats of writing, which enables me to prepare good presentations. The perfect blend reflected between my writing and speaking skills makes me a better communicator. Indeed, a good communicator should be able to reflect their ideas in writing and in speech. The first part is always the difficult part.

Most good speakers do not write their own speeches. I remember at one time, my former departmental head had a big conference to attend, but he had not prepared his PowerPoint. He requested me to draft for him a short presentation in half an hour. At first, I though half an hour for such a major conference would ruin my career if things did not turn out as expected. To start, I could not read my departmental head’s mind to tell what he really wanted, but I decided to go for it. Confidently, I wrote the presentation after scanning through the content that was needed. Later on returning from the conference he was impressed by the presentation for its clarity, grammar, and flow. Up to this point, it had never crossed my mind that I could write this good in a very short time period, and without making mistakes. In the end, I came to acknowledge that I had a gift of writing, which I would be glad to put it into application in your organization. Therefore, I believe that given an opportunity I can use my writing skills to improve the company’s image by presenting better reports, preparing PowerPoint presentations, and other important writing functions.

Team work is what drives an institution’s success. The basic ingredient to any successful team work is networking. From experience, I can classify my networking skills as intermediate. This implies that my team work has positive and negative virtues. On account of positive virtues, I am able to peacefully coexist with my workmates regardless of the situation. I can willingly help out my fellow colleagues in situations where they are stuck. For example, when a colleague is conducting analysis on an item and they are not able to comprehend things clearly, I can effortlessly help them to understand the concepts. I have previously done this numerous times. As a result, I have nurtured my networking skills to near perfection. Despite this attribute, my only weakness is exhibited in situations of conflict. I simply cannot stand situations where colleagues are in constant conflict over accomplishing a simple work process. I believe that in any work setting, maturity should drive people’s actions; hence, it should be easy to avoid conflicts from happening. This approach has turned me into the silent observer whenever there are conflict situations among colleagues. I acknowledge that this is not healthy for team work because it weakens the objectives of the team. Consequently, to compensate for the missing bit I intend to learn empathy as a way of addressing this gap in my team work competencies. By exercising empathy, I can picture myself in the shoes of the arguing parties then propose to them the right approach to address the issue.

The possession of leadership skills provides a major advantage in any workplace. My track on leadership has been an illustrious one. This is exhibited by the number of responsibilities that I have previously been assigned in different capacities. Even though I have never served in a high capacity before, the few chances I got, I gave them my best shot, which earned me the reputation of a good leader. My interest in leadership is strongly driven by my desire to serve in equally. Ordinarily, our society has been stratified into different social classes. Hence, in my leadership approach I do not treat people indifferently. I give everyone a chance to do what they can do best by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses.

In this regard, I consider myself an admirable leader who can unite all members of an institution so that they can pursue a common goal, which is productivity. For a team to be entirely functional it should be guided by a conscious steward who can merge all the members’ differences, while enabling them to recognize their common points. Another component of my leadership skills is reflected through my participatory approach. I believe that a good leader should be able to actively involve other members of his team in what he is doing at all times. By involving other members, the leader will be in a better position to learn what they think, how they feel in certain situations, and how they respond to situations.

In any work setting, the possession of good negotiation skills provides a major boost in the acquisition of major deals. The possession of negotiation capability also enables an institution of business to solve arising disputes both within the work setting and from other parties. In my previous experience I have been exposed to situations where I had to negotiate with other parties on important issues. Even though this has not been my major strong point, in this particular situation I successfully achieved the objective of the assignment. After this experience, I was assigned another task; however, this time things did not go as expected. On doing further investigation on what actually made me fail in achieving the objective, I found out that the main cause was my attempt to impose my views without taking due consideration of the other party’s concerns.

In another scenario we encountered a dispute with one of our clients over failure of one of the clients to fulfill their contract obligations. The dispute reached a deadlock and we were bound to pursue legal litigation, which would have resulted in major costs for the company. Again, through negotiation we laid down some rules for negotiation, which both parties were signatories. As the secretary of the negotiation committee, I was in charge of guiding the proceedings and recording minutes on important deliberations taken. It took around 3 weeks and at last both sides reached an agreement. My efforts were very instrumental throughout the whole process. This experience served to strengthen my negotiation skills and capabilities. Hence, these experiences have significantly served to improve my negotiation capabilities.

Problem solving capabilities go hand in hand with one’s leadership and negotiation skills. Disputes are bound to arise in the work setting. The disputes could be involving employees, management, or company stakeholders. In solving a problem, it is important for one to acknowledge the root cause before starting a blame game. Through experience, I have discovered that not all times are employees really bent on protecting the company’s work initiatives.

Hence, when solving a problem one should be quick to point fingers or lay blame on party considered to be weak. In my problem solving approach, I have come to acknowledge that whenever parties are not agreement it is entirely difficult to reach a solution. To address this, I have discovered that rules must be laid down and both parties must admit to their weakness. Failure to do this only leads to a dead end, which is not good for the functionality of the business or institution. Another dimension to problem solving that I have been able to discover is the need to stipulate formidable rules of engagement, which can be initiated whenever there is a major problem.

Finally, the possession of personal competencies such as speaking, writing, team work, leadership, negotiation, and problem solving capabilities is necessary in ensuring that the organization runs successfully. My abilities have been individually analyzed showing my strength and weakness points. In this regard, I consider myself a suitable candidate for the vacant position in the organization.