321 Managing Own Personal and Professional Development

Unit Overview

321 Managing Own Personal and Professional Development is a unit within the CMI Level 3 module that improves the ability of the leader to develop their performance and capabilities. This is a unit that aims at preparing leaders and managers within the organisations for different strategies and processes that are involved in creating personal development plans to improve their performance and contribution to the organisation. Managers should ensure that they effectively use feedback and data collected from their areas of practice to improve their abilities and proficiencies within the organisational context.

This development involves both work-related development and the improvement of adaptive skills to their roles as leaders who influence the performance of others within the organisation. Leaders must develop themselves to ensure that they align their personal and professional capabilities to the requirement of the organisation, especially amidst the changing nature of the environment in both technological and social aspects. The unit provides relevant support to ensure that the managers can evaluate their performance in areas of responsibility to identify strengths and weaknesses and implement the findings made to positively impact their performance and productivity.

321 Managing Own Personal and Professional Development helps prepare middle managers for employment. The unit ensures supervisors are able to mentor others within the workplace. As such, this is a critical unit that accounts for 5 credit values and a minimum of 20 hours of guided learning but should do over a long period to ensure the learners have mastered the skills and mastery of information that they need to achieve the desired level of mastery of the content. The main purpose of the unit is to enable the learners to develop a sense of responsibility and accountability associated with managing their individual work-related development with guidance from other stakeholders around the organisation hence facilitating continuous development in different organisational engagements.

Suitability of the Unit 

All stakeholders need to ensure that they continuously manage their development to ensure they are able to improve productivity and boost their performance within the organisation. 321 Managing Own Personal and Professional Development, therefore, provided the platform upon which the stakeholders develop the understanding of principles that they can use to effectively assess their performance and conduct effective work-related development to boost their abilities and contribution to the organisation. 

The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of the first-line managers and supervisors who are at low levels of management within the organisations. This unit provides guidance to help middle-level managers to achieve the status of employment or learning supervisors who are able to become workplace mentors within the organisation. However, it is not limited to middle-level managers. The top managers and middle managers can use the information to boost their understanding of development strategies and opportunities and prepare them for other leadership engagements, respectively. The employees within the organisation and supervisors can also use the information provided within the unit as a stepping stone to preparing better performance and productivity hence impacting their performance within the organisation.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand the benefits of personal and professional development for both the organisation and the individuals

• Identify approaches the organisation can use to support professional and personal development

• summarise the legal requirements that are set to guide the personal and professional development of leaders within the organisation

• Identify and compare different methods that learners can use to conduct personal and professional elopement hence identifying the best approach for a specific situation

• Conduct a personal assessment of current skills and competencies against the required standards using recognised tools and techniques of assessment

• Create a personal and professional development plan that is designed to bridge the weaknesses and learning needs identified within the assessment

• Implement the plan and evaluate its impact in achieving the desired development goals and objectives

Key Learning Areas

321 Managing Own Personal and Professional Development is a wide unit that covers the strategies and techniques that can be used to achieve personal development. It covers different areas, including:

Work-Related Development Requirements

This area of learning lays the basic foundation for work-related development. The learners are introduced to the techniques of personal self-assessment that they can use to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses. They are also guided to understand the different learning styles that can be used to improve performance by facilitating development.

In this area of learning, the learning cycle and its implication in professional development are also taught to the learners so that they can appreciate the deep and surface concepts of learning. They are also introduced to the process of goal setting to determine the SMART goals that the development process aims at achieving.

Evaluation of Planned Development Activities

This area of learning aims at ensuring that the learners are able to develop and implement learning and development strategies to ensure that they achieve the desired levels of work-related development. The learners are introduced to the range of learning and development tools that are both formal and informal, as well as techniques for determining the efficiency and appropriateness of the learning goals and preferences; in this area, the learner is also helped to develop self-management skills that they can use in facilitating growth and development in personal and professional aspects.

Impact of Development on Workplace Performance

This area of learning helps to align the process of personal development to the organisational goals and objectives. The learners are introduced to the process of goal setting. This involves understanding the SMART objectives and techniques that they can use to review the progress and achievement of the set learning goals and objectives. The learners are also guided in understanding different forms of performance appraisal that they can use to determine and evaluate the progress toward accomplishing the set goals and objectives.

Evaluation

Upon completion of the unit, the learners are put through an evaluation process. They are required to complete a written assessment that helps to determine the mastery of both theory and practice associated with the unit. The assessor can also use supervised practice to further ensure that learning goals and objectives are achieved.