UNIT OF COMPETENCY : PRACTICE CAREER PROFESSIONALISM
MODULE TITLE : PRACTICING CAREER PROFESSIONALISM
MODULE DESCRIPTOR : This module covers the knowledge, skills and attitudes in promoting career growth and advancement, specifically to integrate personal objectives with organizational goals set and meet work priorities and maintain professional growth and development.
NOMINAL DURATION : 5 hours
QUALIFICATION LEVEL : NC II
SUMMARY OF LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon completion of this module the students/trainees must be able to:
LO1 - INTEGRATE PERSONAL OBJECTION WITH ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS
LO2 - SET AND MEET WORK PRIORITIES
LO3 - MAINTAIN PROFESSIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
INTEGRATE PERSONAL OBJECTION WITH ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS
Clarify Roles
Knowing everyone’s role and being familiar with the responsibility of those roles create efficiency and flexibility. Ideas for clarifying roles on the team include:
Review team members’ roles frequently.
Relate team member expectations to the team’s overall purpose.
Clarify responsibilities when action planning.
Learn what others do on the team.
Figure out ways to help each other.
Setting aside time to really evaluate what you do and how that impacts (or not) the company you work for is important to understanding the value you and your role have with that organization. Are you a key player on your team? If not, does the role provide opportunities for you to advance toward this?
After fully understanding your current role, value within your company, and its possible benefits and setbacks for your future, it’s time to take action. So many people become complacent in their careers and on the job.
If after evaluating your overall situation you discover that it’s actually beneficial to step out of your current role—step out of it. Don’t be afraid to follow after what your heart truly desires.
Relationship and Responsibility
Being a mutually evolving process, a relationship requires team members to be dependent on each other. Every individual should develop a level of trust for each other in order to be reliable for each other. Some of us just cannot find it easy to entrust a work with another team member or cannot seem to trust what a member can contribute.
In order to build trust, the team can hold trust-building talks during meetings every now and then. Self-disclosure is a good strategy for establishing trust with each other. Learning how to open and share a little about you to your teammates will give them a chance to know you as a person. Inject humor and some fun to be comfortable with each other.
Once you start to trust each other as an important member of the team, you will also become easily dependent on each other. With this, a budding relationship is established.
Each individual in a team has talents and abilities that can contribute to a solid work relationship which is needed to be productive in the job. As a team, members have to identify who excel in technical expertise, who are keen in problem-solving and decision-making, and who are adept in active listening, giving good feedback, and conflict resolution.
Identifying these skills helps a team perform effectively. This is otherwise known as team synergy through a coordinated effort of performing these abilities. Diversities even in skills and talents are common. But sharing these skills for the benefit of the team can build a solid work relationship among the individuals.
For a relationship to become healthy, learn to appreciate each other’s talents. Being recognized by fellow colleagues for the effort contributed for the team is heartwarming and rewarding.
Relationship with a Team
Typically, in a work setting, every working individual belongs to a team where a group of members work together with similar functions and work description, though not necessarily similar in interests.
Also, individuals in a team generate a collaborative effort to achieve common goals, and may need to give up individual autonomy in order to attain those goals. The organization as a whole can make up a team and this component is by far the largest to be called as such.
If you are paired up with another work colleague on a project, you are already called a team. Regardless of the population of the members and diversities in a team, building a relationship is a crucially important factor grounded on teamwork.
Team members who develop a common strategy in working such as using a discussion in the interaction process or assigning tasks are manifesting teamwork. Individuals work together by sharing individual objectives and eventually come up with a unified goal.
Being a part of a team also entails commitment in the job and the responsibility. In order for a team to be harmonious, a good working relationship has to be established.
SET AND MEET WORK PRIORITIES
In any responsible position in any company that you ever have, it is a given that there will be more work to do than there are hours in the day. You could kill yourself, trying to do everything that needs to be done, and still not manage to complete it all. As an employee, your most important task is to determine priorities, so that the things that need to be worked on are those that receive your time and attention and that of your department.
Priorities have to be established based upon what is best going to meet your company’s needs. But, that’s not always easy to determine. What often looks like the best possible solution may not actually be so. Properly determining priorities requires understanding the various tasks that need to be done, how they relate to your company’s goals and how they compare to other tasks that also appear important.
ABC Prioritizing
The most common form of prioritizing tasks is by a simple ABC method. In this method, you make a list of all the tasks that you have to complete, and assign them a letter code:
A = High priority, very important to get this done
B = Medium priority, this should get done
C = Low priority, it would be nice if this could get done
It is assumed with this method that you know how important the various tasks are in regard to your company’s and department’s goals. Otherwise, the priorities you place on the individual tasks really have no value.
The next step in the process is to add a due date for each of these tasks. Most important tasks need to be completed by a particular time. If they aren’t completed by that time, they move from just being important to being important and urgent. Some items may not have a due date, especially things that are priority C. However, a priority C item, that never gets dealt with may become more important over time. For this reason, some people put a start date on the items as well. That way, even items that may be a Priority C will have some visibility.
MAINTAIN PROFESSIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
In rapidly changing environments, both organizations and the people who make up those organizations must engage in continual growth, or risk becoming obsolete. All too often, professional growth is a hit-or-miss process. Learning opportunities selected are often those that meet immediate needs rather than future needs.
Professional development helps build and maintain morale of staff members, and is thought to attract higher quality staff to an organization. It is a process of improving and increasing capabilities of staff through access to education and training opportunities in the workplace, through outside organization, or through watching others perform the job.
A career, the pursuit of consecutive, progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business employment, is a personal choice that entails commitment, perseverance, and a plan. Professional growth in a career requires the continuous acquisition of knowledge and skills through study, instruction, investigation, and practice. It is an on-going process.
Career planning involves visualizing what you want to be doing in the future within your profession. Career planning enables professionals to set goals and define specific tasks that must be accomplished in order to reach those goals. At the same time, career planning considers options, and alternatives. Flexibility is important as we cannot know the future.
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