Action plan of my skills

The three sections that I am going to be concentrating on to improve is:

1. Career,2. Academic and3. Personal.

Within these three sections I have chosen a skill that I need to improve the most and these are:

1. I have decided to choose Presentation skills as my career skill that I will need to improve because I see this as a weakness that will need to be improved for the career options that I am thinking of taking after finishing my degree. There are a few different careers that I am thinking of going into which presentation skills will be critical. An example of this is for being a marketing manager of a sports business such as a leisure centre will be very important not only to customers but also to staff to show facts and figures of the market for leisure centers and how it could be managed better to increase the number of customers.

2. I have decided to choose Reading skills as my academic skill that I need to improve because there is a vast amount of reading that will need to be undertaken to pass the course from reading books, journals, news paper articles, websites etc. To be able to do this I must be efficient and prussic with my reading skills. I do not feel my reading skills are at that level so to improve them I have looked at a few different models that I could use which shows me different steps I can undergo to improve me reading.

3. I have decided to choose Time management skill skills for personal skill that I need to improve. I have chosen this as my personal skill because I feel that I will need this in everything I do. I feel that this is such an important skill because I will need this of organizing myself on what I can do and when I can do it.  An example is that I could have to stay and do work for an assignment instead of going to the gym because there is an assignment the next day etc.

Presentation skillsI feel that presentation skills are a week point for me so this is a skill that I am looking to improve. McCarthy and Hatcher (2002) suggest Speech is one of the most powerful means of influencing others in business and in life. I think this is a really good explanation on why presentation skills are so important.

From doing research on presentation skills I have found different methods of improving presentation skills. The three main points that I found was to use visual aids, interact with the audience and rehearse

To use visual aids is important because it shows the point in an easier way to understand and it stops the audience getting bored from just listening to talking. Bradbury (1997) I used a youtube clip to show the advertising that Under Armor used. This was very effective and it also was a good way to break up the section of talking.

The second thing to do is to interact with the audience. Greusel (2002) says that it is important to interact because it shows you how you are doing and what the audience think. This can be done by looking for reactions to ideas. You could also use props for the audience to interact with. In one of my presentations I had to shirts to show the difference in quality of the different makes.

The last point to do is to rehearse. This is probably the most important thing because the more you rehearse the more you will know without having to read it of the screen. This will allow you to interact more. I found that by rehearsing the 20 minute presentation ran a lot smother then the first time we tried to do it.

Reading skillsI think this is a weak point for me and because university has such a large amount of reading to do I feel this is very important for an academic skill.

On the website mindtools.com I have looked at different strategies that I could use to improve my reading skills this was the page that I looked at to get the information. http://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.htmlThey have made different steps to help making reading fast but the main stages are active reading and skim reading. These are the stages that will be best to use because they will dramatically increase the speed that it will take to find the relevant information.

Active reading is where you highlight and make notes next what you are reading this is because it is easy to recap later. This strategy is good for reading texts in detail because it will keep the mind focused on the work and stop it from wondering.

Skim reading is where you don’t read the words you only scan through the text for a key word that will let you know you are at the right part of the text. Bhardwaj (1997) suggests that this will be a lot faster than reading every word because you can miss out massive chunks of texts and get straight to the relevant texts.

I started using these strategies in my assignments so by about the 20 th of November I had started using these strategies to help speed up my work. I found it really useful for my assignments especially the 2000 word essay for structure and governance essay.

Time management skill I feel this is very important so that I why I chose to improve this skill. I have looked at a few ways to improve time management but I found this website the most helpful. www.timethoughts.com/time-management.htm (2004)

This website says different ways to improve your time management skills. There are various different steps they suggest to do but the most important steps are to make a diary of the week so then you can plan everything around it. Here is a basic diary of my week before I start to add the extra thing like food shopping which could change day by day. Cook (1998) says that you shouldn’t put to much thing on the list because the list will end up running you instead of the list running you.

The next stage is to prioritize the different things on importance. So for this the most important things are the lectures and seminars on my timetable so if I had to things going on at the same time the more important one is the one that I should do. An example of when I have used this is when I had an assignment deadline I couldn’t go to the gym because the assessment was more important. Dodd and Sundheim (2005) Say that you have to prioritize or you will end up missing the most important things

Then the last stage was to carry around a diary to show what I have to do for the week. I did carry around a timetable of the lectures because this was the most important thing. I was then flexible around these times to what else I could do but the lecture times were the most important so I made sure I did them and then I could do other things before or after.

I have improved on the three skills I set out on. I am most pleased with how I have improved my presentation skill because I didn’t have any confidence in my presentation skills but after doing two 20 minute presentation my confidence is a lot better. The first presentation was in a group of seven so I didn’t have to say too much but the second was an assessment between three of us so I had to say a lot

but because of using the video clips and the props I felt it went smoothly and had breaks in talking to keep the audience interested. I feel that I have improved in the time management but I feel that will need constant improvement by having a diary or using my phone as a diary. The table below shows how I have done in each section.

 References Hardwar, A (1997). Improving Reading Skills. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons.

Bradbury, A. (2006). Successful Presentation Skills. 3rd ed. London: MPG

Cook, M. (1998). Time Management: Proven Techniques for Making the Most of Your Valuable Time. USA: Adams media.

Dodd, P. Sundheim, D. (2005). The 25 best management tools and techniques. USA: Peak Performance Press.

Greusel (2002). Architect's Essentials of Presentation Skills. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Manktelow, J. (2010). Reading Strategies. Available: http://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html. Last accessed 20th December 2010

McCarthy, P. Hatcher, C ((2002)). Presentation Skills the Essential Guide for Students. Australia: Allen & Unwin.

Smith, D. (2007). Time Management. Available: http://www.timethoughts.com/time-management.htm. Last accessed 20th December 2010