8607-521 Managing own Continuing Professional Development

Unit Overview

8607-521 Managing own Continuing Professional Development is a unit within the ILM Level 5 qualification in leadership and management that focuses on personal improvement. Continuing professional development is important in ensuring that the leaders and individuals within the workplace are able to continuously improve their personal and professional capabilities. This involves being able to identify e strengths and weaknesses using self-assessment and identifying areas for self-development. The stakeholders within the workplace must be able to pursue effective self-development through identifying learning needs and implementing effective planning.

 They are required to e babel to select the most appropriate development activities that suit their specific learning needs. This ensures they adapt to the changing workplace environment and are able to improve the contribution they make towards the accomplishment of the organisational goals and objectives. Continuing professional development relies significantly on an effective development plan that focuses on both short-term, long term and medium-term priorities for learning and development.

8607-521 Managing own Continuing Professional Development is a unit that significantly improves the ability of the leaders and other stakeholders within organisations to conduct professional development. The unit's purpose to improve the understanding and ability to conduct self-assessment and determine the areas that require reinforcement through learning to address personal weaknesses. The main purpose of the unit is to build the theoretical knowledge and practical skill required to manage personal and continuing professional development. The unit is taught in 20 hours of guided learning and contributes 15 credit values towards the completion of the ILM Level 5 qualification in leadership and management.

Suitability of the Unit

The unit is important in reinforcing the process of continuous improvement through continuous professional development. All individuals within the workplace must be able to pursue activities that facilitate continuous development to ensure that they acquire relevant skills and knowledge that they need to use at specific times within their practice in the organisation. This involves being able to identify their weaknesses and string against the organisational needs and expectations and implementing effective measures that are aimed at addressing the weaknesses and focusing on the strengths.

8607-521 Managing own Continuing Professional Development is a unit that is, therefore, suitable for all stakeholders within the organisation as it helps them to understand principles of managing continuous professional development through self-assessment and self-development. The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of middle managers who are at the operational level within the organisation. The middle managers can improve their performance by reinforcing the practices associated with self-assessment and activities that can be used for self-development.

This involves their influence over the activities within their areas of responsibility. This unit is also applicable to other leaders, including executive management, junior managers and team leaders. Employees can also use principles taught within this unit to ensure they can effectively identify and handle learning needs that they experience in their daily professional practices and personal engagements. The unit can also be used by external human resource consultants who contribute to setting up workplace environments and practices aimed at achieving preset goals and objectives.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Evaluate the personal learning and work-related experiences that help them to identify strengths and weaknesses in self-development

• Identify personal development priorities, goals and objectives that are designed to meet the short, medium and long-term needs

• Understand the development opportunities that can be used to achieve these priorities, goals, and objectives

• Justify the process of undertaking personal development activities that have been planned for learning supervisors

• Engage in negotiations to undertake planned and resourced development activities within the organisation

• Identify the efficiency and effectiveness of the development activities in achieving the personal aims, objectives and priorities

• Evaluate and review the application of learning and development within the workplace for personal development as well as development of others

• Review the accomplishment of short, medium and long-term goals based on personal development activities to evaluate the need for revision

Key Learning Areas

8607-521 Managing own Continuing Professional Development is a unit that builds an understanding of self-assessment and self-development. The main learning areas covered to achieve these goals include:

Self-assessment

In this area of learning, the learner is guided to effectively evaluate their strengths and weaknesses based on past experiences and development activities. The area of learning helps to build knowledge on the techniques that can be used for personal self-assessment and the specific rationales to identify. It also helps to identify learning styles and models and the learning cycle to achieve the desired development. The learners are also guided to understand different goals setting approaches through the use of SMART Goals.

Evaluating Planned Development Activities

This area of learning focuses on guiding the learners on different approaches that they can use to implement and pursue planned development activities. The learners are guided to understand the range of learning and development activities that they can implement. They are also guided to identify and appreciate skills that are required for self-management in the process of undertaking learning and development. Lastly, they are taught approaches that they can use to evaluate the planned learning activities based on set priorities, objectives and aims.

Review and Reflection of the Learning Process

This area of learning helps to create effective appraisal of the learning and development activities based on work performance. The learner is guided to identify different approaches to performance appraisal, such as self-appraisal, feedback, 360 degrees and performance appraisal. They are also guided to identify approaches to revising goals to ensure that the development plans are aligned with the set goals and objectives.

Evaluation

The evaluation process involves a written assessment that tests the accomplishment of learning goals through the acquisition of theoretical information and knowledge. other approaches that are used include supervised practice, simulated exercises and case studies which can be implemented in the learning process to determine ability to implement the learned concepts and principles within the workplace.