Performance and Entrepreneurial Competencies
I am writing this paper on my personal experience during the project. I shall reflect on the performance of mine on some incidents that took place during the project. In order to depict my experiences and performance, I shall make use of Gibbs model of reflection (See Appendix, Image 1). I shall also share about my concerns regarding the idea of opening an Indian snack company in the United Kingdom. I shall also reflect on my ability of getting engaged into the creation process, presentation of my ideas on the entrepreneurial ability and skills and appraising my colleagues or team members. I shall also explain the theories of management that I had learnt during the project on this paper.
I and my team were asked to make a business plan for our project. It was the very first assignment that was given to us. I had no prior knowledge regarding preparing a business plan. However, my team members had helped me a lot in completing the task and I have learnt many things from them. The final result was really fruitful. I have also taken the initiative to develop good cooperation and communication among the team members. Being a responsible team member, I realized that it is my duty to ensure that each and every member is compatible and comfortable with each other. This is because without being working together in a unite way, our project cannot get done in a systematic and effective way. Thus, I am sure that my action and contribution for this project was very helpful and cooperative all through the project days. However, developing this project has required many necessary knowledge in evaluating the marketing threats and opportunities. With the same, it also included a precise calculation of the budget that was required for obtaining the desired resources. Evaluation of opportunities and those of threats have helped our team members to further understand and assess the strengths and weakness of the Indian snack centre, which we have planned to open in U.K. I have also learnt about all the necessary marketing theories for evaluating the external and internal environment for the company. There were many sources given to us to follow and to gather information and knowledge about these theories. I have followed each and every one of them. In this way I have gained knowledge to prepare the final project. There was one member in my team who was just awesome in preparing and planning budget and financial calculation. From him, I have learnt how to set and plan financial budgets for any start ups. To sum up, through his whole process, I have identified that I too have a transformational skill that has helped me to jell up with people (team members) in order to learn new things and to develop effective interpersonal relationship and bonding with one another. During the process, I have also focused on emphasizing on sharing out my knowledge with others, which has further helped me in overcoming my own knowledge gap.
Challenges and Learning Experience
While giving my psychometric assessments, I found out that three of my strengths include creativity, industriousness and taking of control. Although I also have a good sense of achievement striving but I have to work a lot on enhancing a passion towards my work. The task that I was provided with has showed me a fair achievement striving. As discussed by Yan (2014), the term achievement striving is said to be internal motivation for working hard towards achieving a specific goal. I usually put my work as a top most priority but also the desire to achieving a healthy work-life balance. I also prefer to take challenges in doing a task and I think I can perform my best under any stressful situation as well, and this is by assessing the condition and thereafter selecting the best suited solution for the specific situation. I have identified this aspect of mine while researching essential facts regarding the project. All my team members have given extraordinary effort in researching and gathering information concerning the market demand of the United Kingdom. In the team work I have also played a leading role in the management of the team members and I was confidently controlling the situations. However, there were several times, when there was rise in conflicts within the team. Like, for example, in selecting item menu for our snack centre and deciding location for the establishment of centre in the country. At those times, I have recommended various ideas that have successfully solved those issues as well. I have resolved the issue by suggesting several ways to present the ideas of ever member in front of the whole team. I then analyzed the whole situation and collaboratively we decided to choose the one which is best suited and the most effective idea for our project. In this way, I managed the raised conflict among us. During our discussion, we found out that the location of Uclan University is suitable for the establishment our company. This was because in the Uclan University, around 70% of the students belong to other countries and 40% among them belongs to South Asian countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka (Cascio, 2018). All of us found it useful and hence, we then finalized the location. From this nature of mine it is depicted that I always value factual ideas instead of following what the other’s perception is. This Psychometric assessments has also helped me to find that I am quite good in creativity and that I emphasize more on lateral thinking as compared to the conventional and traditional ideas while taking decisions. With the same, the thing in which I lack is that of passion. I lack passion for my works. I am well aware of the fact that this nature of mine may act as a barrier for my future decisions making process. I have the tendency to value the emotional factors more before taking any decision. I get confused tend to mix up my emotional intelligence, logic and intuition. This ultimately results in taking of more time during the decision making process and might also delay action taking process.
Market Research and Communication
Hence, my major competencies are creative ideas in the making of our business so that people can get allured towards our initiatives; working in any stressful situation as well as taking the responsibility of achieving the goals and objectives of the entire team. However, the thing that I need to correct is to give more time to the project and intensify my level of passion.
One of the major challenges that I have identified during this project was that there is a lack of effectiveness in my non-verbal communication skills and my way of developing the modes of effective communication. Therefore, I have planned to join communication after taking out time from my classes so that I could attain the ability of recognizing what others are thinking of me. My mentor have also recommended me the same and asked me to join the course for developing my emotional intelligence. I have found that this concept will help me to become a good leader in the future, since this will help in understanding the emotions, thoughts of others and to analyze their behavior in a precise manner. Currently, I need much time to conduct meetings for analyzing and judging the thoughts of others but after doing this course I shall be requiring lesser time in the assessment of these aspects as compared to that of now.
One of the other challenges that I face is to present or shape my thoughts in a convincing manner in front of others. During the project I have identified this inability within me, as many of the times I found myself helpless and insecure as I could not frame my ideas into words. Hence, I have planned to learn about writing an effective report by highlighting the advantages of my selected ideas and the disadvantage of these ideas as well. However, I have also realized the importance of learning to confess my mistakes in order to enhance my base of knowledge. With the same, the communication could have been much more effective if we would share more times with each other through formal and informal gatherings. We would have also suggested ideas for showing our interest to work collectively and provide constructive feedbacks so that we all could improve individual personal skills.
At first we were confused about which research method to use. I discussed with my team members about whether to choose primary or to choose secondary research method. We then decided to go for secondary, as in this method we need to gather information regarding out market, which would further help us in long way. All of us worked together to carry out secondary detailed analysis of the market. We found out the data and information regarding the market through this that could provide us further opportunities (Finch, 2016). We all spent most of our time in assessing the secondary research and keep in touch with each other through effective communication mediums. We formed a special WhatsApp Group, particularly for this project so as to produce a continuous and effective communication. Through this, we used to share everything, which we used to find during the research. We also had some bad experiences in this form of communication style. There were times when due to poor network access, we were unable to communicate with each other. At those times we used to prepare written reports for jotting down our findings and then we used to tally with the very report. However, there were times when I found few unnecessary details but as we used to do regular meetings, therefore there were no such confusion created.
Conclusion
There were few problems that I have faced during those meeting. It was of my lack in effective nonverbal communication styles. At that period, I learnt that in a a group discussion or in any meeting, along with the verbal communication, there is a high need for non-verbal aspects like eye contact, body language, finger movements and vocal tone as well (Gangwar, Kumar and Rao, 2013). They also play a very crucial role. Because of lacking in friendly gesture, my presentation seemed to be very rude and disrespectful. However I have overcome this negative quality of mine through maintaining an eye-contact while discussing important things about our project with my team members. I have also maintained a gentle smile on my face because I have noticed that facial expressions often convey emotions. This allowed me to create a more comfortable environment so that all my team members could share all their concern with each other without any hesitation.
With the same, I have also accomplished that when individual thoughts are merged together, it results in an effective business plan (Nuttin, 2014). This is because I have found that each and every individual has his own unique idea regarding a particular thing. During our project each team member used to come up with his or her new ideas and strategies through which we got suitable information that really helped our assessment. At that time, we used to appreciate that member and give him the responsibility to handle that particular section. In this way I have also developed a sense of leadership within team member of my team. At first, we did not address any concept regarding motivating the team members. Later, I realized that in order to attain more effective work from the workers, they need to get motivated (Marchington et al., 2016). This is because, motivational factors helps to a great extent in encouraging an employee. Thus, we decided to incorporate appraisals and giving leadership role at some section of the project to different members to motivate them.
To sum up my writing, I have well tried to reflect on my experience of the project, where I have learnt many great lessons. I have learned many managerial theories such as motivational theory, marketing principles. I have also identified the competencies of each other and factors that could help our company to develop further in future. The project has also helped us to identify the threats that can stop our company to develop but at the end we altogether worked hard to grow strategies for overcoming those adversities. Along with these, I have also enhanced managerial skills, which will permit me to take various responsibilities in the future. Our team has worked hard and has supported one another a lot to complete this project.
As discussed above, from this project, I have learnt a wide range of things and this has made me gather good experiences about handling group projects in way that is expected to achieve the desired results. I shall chisel my strengths and shall work more on my weaknesses to overcome them so that I can no longer lack in my non-verbal communication skills. Doing so, I can surely tackle any challenges I confront to in the group projects.
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