DEVELOPING THE

SOCIAL SELF
 IDENTIFYING AREAS FOR
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
• knowing where you want to be, and establishing your personal vision
• the next step is to understand where you are now.
• From this point, you can work out which areas are likely to need some work to improve your
skills and abilities.
• Being aware of your weaknesses enables you to take steps to start to address them.
• These steps may be through formal courses, working out how to use and apply your existing
experience in a different way, or using everyday experiences and setbacks as a way to learn.
 IDENTIFYING YOUR STRENGTHS
AND WEAKNESSES
• Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses - and, indeed, wider self-awareness - is a
crucial part of emotional intelligence.
• Without a good understanding of yourself, it is very hard to either improve, or to
respond effectively to others.
• Cultivating habits of reflection, self-awareness and understanding is therefore
important for relationships throughout life.
 DON’T FORGET YOUR STRONG
POINTS!
• In identifying areas to work on, it is also important to recognize your strong points: where
you already have very good skills or some particular expertise.
• This will help:
• a) To avoid your feeling as if all you do is criticize yourself; and
• b) To identify where you might be able to draw on previous experience to develop new skills.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
PLANNING
• Improving your skills — a practice known as personal development — does not happen by
itself.
• Some personal development can be a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and
simply taking up opportunities.
• But consistent, effective personal development across a wide range of skills requires
deliberate and focused effort.
 WHY PLAN YOUR PERSONAL
DEVELOPMENT?
• At various points in your life, you may be presented with opportunities for personal
development: perhaps the chance to work with someone particularly inspiring, or to do
something new and unexpected.
• But it is also true to say that you make your own luck.
“The harder you work, the luckier you get”
Attributed to golfer Jerry Barber in 1960
• In other words, you have to know what you need to improve to achieve a particular
ambition, and then work on it. But if you do so, you will improve. And only by doing so
will you have a chance of achieving that ambition.
• On the other hand, if you really don’t know what you need to improve, you can’t work on it.
• And if you don’t plan ahead to develop the skills that you need for your chosen course in
life, you will not be able to achieve all that you want.
• The reason for planning your personal development is therefore very simple: only you know
what you want to achieve, and the key to achieving it is in your hands via the actions you
take. 
• Planning what you need to do to achieve your goals is a vital step in the process.
• Many people may first come across personal development plans as part of a course of study,
or at work. But planning what you need to do to improve or change yourself is not just
important in formal situations. It can also help in your personal life too.
 WHY YOU WOULD NEED A
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
• There may well be times in your life when you don’t feel the need for a personal
development plan. You might, for example, finish a course of study, or reach a point in your
personal life where you consciously decide that for the moment, you don’t want to do
anything deliberate by way of personal development.
• In the nature of things, you will of course continue to learn from everything that happens to
you, every day. This is why it is called ‘lifelong learning’. But you may choose not to
document it, or to work towards any particular goals, and that’s fine.
• But remember that when you do want to improve particular skills, planning will help
you to achieve your goals.
 ELEMENTS OF YOUR PERSONAL
DEVELOPMENT PLAN
There are a number of things that you need to include in a personal development plan.
 1. A CLEAR VISION OF WHERE YOU
WANT TO BE AND WHY
• It is really helpful to think about where you want to be and what you want to do.
• It can be useful to think in terms of different lengths of time: for example, one month, six
months, one year, five years.
• It is also helpful to make your vision as detailed as possible, across all spheres of life: career,
where you want to live, your hobbies and even relationships.
• The more detail you can include, right down to how you will feel about it, the easier it will
be to hold onto your vision when times are hard.
 2. A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF THE SKILLS
YOU NEED TO DEVELOP TO ACHIEVE YOUR
VISION
• The next step to your personal development plan is to think about what skills you need to
develop, and why this is important to achieving your vision.
• For example:
 Do you need certain skills to get a particular job, or to advance in your chosen career?
 Are you planning to live abroad, and therefore need to develop your language skills?
 Are you struggling to manage a particular situation, and need new skills to help?
 Have you been told that you lack particular skills and need to develop them to work effectively with
others, or on your own?
• It is important to make sure that the skills you are targeting are clearly linked to a purpose, which
is in turn linked to your vision.
• Without this clarity, your personal development efforts may fail. In particular, you may not
concentrate on the right skills, or be fully aware of your timescale.
• Interpersonal Skills Self-Assessment
• https://www.skillsyouneed.com/quiz/343479
 3. A CLEAR IDEA OF THE STANDARD YOU NEED TO
ACHIEVE, AND HOW DIFFERENT THAT IS FROM
YOUR CURRENT STANDARD
• The difference between where you are now and where you need to be tells you the
magnitude of the task. It therefore affects how long it will take, and also how much effort
you need to put in.
• For example, if you are planning to move abroad in a year’s time, or go travelling, you may need
to develop your language skills.
• But If you have already lived in that country for a period and speak the language well, you may
not need to do more than keep your language skills up via listening to foreign radio.
• If, however, you have never learnt the language, and you are starting from scratch, you may need
some intensive language tuition, or even an immersion course, to ensure that your skills develop
quickly enough.
 4. A LEVEL OF PRIORITY FOR EACH AREA
• You cannot do everything at once.
 Instead, you need to prioritize.
 One very good way to do this is to list all your areas for development, then ask yourself two questions
about each one, answering on a scale of one to five:
 How important is this to me?
 How essential is it to develop it now?

• Leave the other areas for a later date.

 5. A DETAILED IDEA OF HOW TO GET FROM WHERE YOU
ARE NOW FOR EACH SKILLS OR AREA, TO WHERE YOU
WANT TO BE
• It sounds obvious, but you need to know how you are going to get from (a) to (b): where you
are now, to where you want to be.
• For example, are you going to enroll on some kind of course?
• Just as with your vision, it can be helpful to break this down by time: in a month/six
months/a year, what will you have done on the way to your ultimate goals? This makes it
easier to check your progress and keep yourself on track.
 ONE STEP AT A TIME:
• When you first start thinking about personal development, it can seem as if you know
nothing, and have no skills.
• You may find this point rather overwhelming! But it is important to bear two things in mind:
 You do have skills. You have been learning and developing all your life, and you already
have many, many skills.
 You don’t have to improve everything all at once. In fact, you’re much better off not trying
to do that. Focus on just one or two areas at a time, and you will see much larger
improvements, and also feel less overwhelmed.
• There is a reason why personal development is sometimes called ‘lifelong learning’:
there is no time limit on it.
 THE SKILLS YOU NEED GUIDE
TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Learn how to set yourself effective personal goals
and find the motivation you need to achieve them.
This is the essence of personal development, a set
of skills designed to help you reach your full
potential, at work, in study and in your personal
life.
PERSONAL SWOT
ANALYSIS
 SWOT ANALYSIS
• SWOT analysis is the examination of your situation by looking
at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
• useful on a personal level as a way to identify areas for
development, and as part of career discussions.
• Its simple format, and easy-to-apply structure mean that it can
be used very easily without support.
 SWOT ANALYSIS IS A WAY OF LOOKING
AT YOUR SITUATION BY IDENTIFYING:
• Strengths, or those areas where you have an advantage over others, or
some unique resources to exploit;
• Weaknesses, or areas where you or your organisation may be weaker
than others, and may find that others can do better than you;
• Opportunities, or possibilities that you can take advantage of to help
you achieve your goals and ambitions; and
• Threats, or things that may prevent you or your organisation from
making a profit or achieving your goals.
 PERSONAL SWOT ANALYSIS
• A personal SWOT analysis is you focus on yourself and your goals.
• A personal SWOT analysis, however, may be more useful if you focus on a specific goal or
problem that you want to address.
• This is because we all have a number of very diverse goals.
• The skills and attributes that may help us towards one goal may be irrelevant, or even a
weakness, in another context.
• A threat in one context could be unimportant in another.
 1. IDENTIFY THE GOAL THAT YOU
WANT TO ACHIEVE
• It is important to be as specific as possible. Be clear about timing, that is, when you want to
achieve your goal, and also how you will know that you have achieved it (your success
criteria).
• Thinking specifically about that goal. It may be useful to categorize life goals:
• Academic goals – what knowledge and/or qualifications do you want to achieve?
• Career goals – where would you like your career to take you, what level do you want to reach?
• Monetary goals – what do you aim to earn at a given point in your life?
• Ethical goals – do you want to volunteer some of your time to a good cause or get involved in
local events, politics etc.?
• Creative goals – how do you want to progress creatively or artistically?
• Domestic goals – how would you like your domestic life to be in the future?
• Physical goals – do you want to develop your skill in a certain sport or other physical activity?
 2. IDENTIFY THE PERSONAL STRENGTHS THAT WILL
HELP YOU TO ACHIEVE IT, AND THE WEAKNESSES
THAT COULD PREVENT YOU.
• It is often helpful to consider knowledge, skills, experience,
resources and support that you have available. If you list these
headings separately, you will remember to consider them all.
• These areas are generally internal, that is, they relate to you
personally, and the resources and skills that are available to
you. They are, therefore, things that are generally under your
control.
 3. IDENTIFY ANY PERSONAL OPPORTUNITIES THAT
COULD ENABLE YOU TO ACHIEVE THE GOAL, AND
ALSO THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF WHEN YOU HAVE ACHIEVED IT
• Opportunities are generally external, relating to the environment and those around you,
rather than you yourself.
• They include things like:
• Promotions and financial incentives; and
• Events that are likely to happen at work or outside, such as someone going on maternity leave or
sabbatical, that might mean you have a chance to do something new.
• In identifying opportunities that might open up as a result of achieving your goal, consider
both short- and long-term benefits.
 4. IDENTIFY ANY THREATS
• These are external things and events that are worrying you, or that might happen and
prevent you from either achieving your goals, or taking advantage of the benefits.
 5. REVIEW AND PRIORITIES
• Finally, as always with development activities, and anything that looks like 
strategic thinking, it is a good idea to review your analysis. Ask yourself:
 Is this recognisably me?
 Is there anything that I have forgotten?
• And finally:
 Which areas are most important in each of the four categories in the analysis?
• Try to highlight one, or at most two, things from each of strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats that you think will be most important in achieving (or preventing
you from achieving) your goal. 
• Those areas will be your priorities for action.
• Activty:
• Make your Personal SWOT Analysis

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