Action Plan for Implementing My Professional Goals and Career Plan
Making the right career choices ensures that one finds fulfillment and job satisfaction. The process of making an individual career plan, therefore, requires utmost devotion and objectivity. Having taken a self-assessment in which I prioritized my values, interests, aptitudes, it was easier to match these traits with an ideal career. A more in-depth career exploration informed my choice of becoming a life coach. This career matches my values and interests, fulfills my lifestyle, and guarantees more excellent future job prospects. As such, developing an action plan towards achieving my professional goals and career plan becomes the main objective of this paper.
Assessment and Inventory Result
The results from my top five work value card sort were; flexibility, influence people, moral values, responsibility, and working with others.
Flexibility meant that I could freely work with my schedule without any restrictions. I can, therefore, make convenient working hours suitable to both the firm, clients, and me as well.
Influence people meaning that using my position as a coach, I am expected to positively influence the attitudes, opinions, and life perspectives of others.
Moral values depict that the firm cultural values, beliefs, and customs resonate well with mine, and therefore, my working environment is friendly and comfortable. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Responsibility shows that the career in the chosen firm allows me to make and implement my decisions, provided they mean well for the company.
Work with others in a given task mean I can develop a close working relationship with my workmates. Through such a link, we can work towards common goals and objectives.
My career inventory skills were coaching, dealing with unknowns, experimenting, goal-setting, and learning new tasks or skills.
Various psychological theories and concepts in collaboration with learned skills of creative and critical thinking can be used to analyze the significance of the values as mentioned earlier and inventory skills (Lee, 2018). Behavioral theorists like John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner explains that human behavior is acquired through conditioning. As such, skills like coaching, experimenting, and learning new how to do new tasks can be enhanced through conditioning. In my career as a life coach, I will require to influence people’s attitudes in life, and using conditioning can quickly provide positive transformations. As the theorists put it, conditioning enhances critical skills like self-regulation and the ability to determine possible outcomes in any decision taken.
Humanistic theorists like Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow argues that human beings have inherent basic goodness. People can do well to others always. As such, values like responsibility and working in collaboration with others can be achieved if they all intend to mind the welfare of each other. When people expect to be taken to account for their actions, there is a likelihood they ensure to practice positive behavior. They carefully analyze their behavior, interpret the possible consequences for their actions, and remain open-minded to other people’s opinions. While working in a firm, humanistic theorists support the idea that they will avoid causing conflicts, like violating the company’s cultural beliefs and practices. My moral values, therefore, will guide me to uphold the standard traditions within the company.
Cognitive theory focuses on the internal states of human beings. The levels of our cognitive abilities define competencies like problem-solving, motivation, decision making, and critical thinking. My inventory skills, include dealing with unknowns, experimenting, and learning new tasks, have been perfected by my cognitive domain. According to Ritter (2017), through the psychodynamic approach, I will influence a person’s self-awareness in their current and future behavior. I, therefore, intend to exercise these traits throughout my career to realize growth and professional competency.
Goals and Career Plans
My guiding philosophy has been that excellence is defined by our attitudes, but not skills. Throughout life, I believe that to succeed; we need a positive attitude besides acquiring all the skills and competencies required in any specific field. It is, therefore, paramount that we approach life challenges with a positive attitude. My career goals and plans include gaining new skills steadily, building a network, becoming an expert at life coaching, and building my brand. To achieve these goals, I endeavor to use my values like taking responsibility for my actions, collaborating with others through cohesive teamwork directed tasks, flexibility consistently. Through my skill inventory, such as coaching, experimenting, dealing with unknowns, and goal setting, I intend to expand my boundaries in reaching my life goals and objectives.
My professional goals and career choices resonate well with my values and life interests (Coultas and Salas, 2015). My interests include; building relationships, helping others, adventures, explorations, listening, and experimenting with new ideas. My central motivating values are independence, success, honesty, integrity, leadership, ambition, and helping others. These interests and values have helped in shaping life coaching as my career choice. The career entails more of assisting others in capitalizing on their strengths, overcoming their weaknesses, improving their thinking, develop their empowering habits, and eliminate their limiting attitudes, among others. To succeed in achieving all that is entailed in this career, I enjoy building a rapport that can provide a platform for me to assist others in becoming better at what to do.
My values and professional values are congruent. Professionally one is required to be honest, show empathy, and portray good personal judgment, and bear quality communication skills, be a team player, respectful, and open-minded among others, (Yarbrough et al., 2017). These values align well with my practices, self-interests, and values.
Motivation
There psychological principles that motivate people in overcoming challenges to realize their professional goals. The first principle is socialization. This principle advocates for building a sense of belonging in people. In a life coaching career, there is great importance to help people belong. As a way of socialization, one could initiate informal conversations with intentions of establishing a person’s liming factors to their potential success. To reach my professional goals, stimulation as a psychological principle is a crucial pivot. Stimulation helps in creating or increasing alertness, creativity, and production through actions. Other fundamental principles include identity and control. Through association, people develop a sense of identity, which is vital in realizing their strengths and untapped potentials. Developing self-control is also crucial in motivating progress towards achieving professional goals and objectives (Lucariello et al., 2016).
The most useful of these principles is stimulation and socialization. To achieve my goals as a life coach, I need to develop stimulation techniques in my work. I should strive to awaken my desire to be more creative, productive, and alert through changing their environments and other actions. Through socialization, I should develop a sense of belonging and better team playing skills so that I identify with other people’s needs in life. As a result, I will establish my problem-solving techniques in helping to trigger them to capitalize on their strengths, overcome their weaknesses and clarify their goals and priorities while, on the other hand, using the same platform to realize my professional goals.
SMART Action Plan for my career plan (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound), as illustrated by Deiorio (2016).
- My short term goals
| Short- Term Goals | Time-line |
| Secure a job a life coach in a recognized organization | Within three months after graduating |
| Increase performance measure | Within a year |
| Build a network | In one year
|
| Improve communication skills | One year |
- Long term goals
| Goal | Timeframe |
| Getting a promotion | Within three years after employment |
| Become an Expert in life coaching | Within four years |
| Gain leadership position | Within five years |
| Build my life coaching brand | Within six years |
- I will achieve my goals through the following actions
| Action | Target Date for completion/ How to |
| Apply for life coaching in different recognized firms | Three months after graduation · Online submission |
| Improve my performance metrics | One year after employment · improving efficiency at work · Ensuring customer satisfaction · building a reputation at work |
| Build a Network | One year · establish contacts who yield valuable feedback · provide to be introduced to new opportunities |
| Improve communication and any other related skills | One year · through teamwork · being culturally aware |
| Get a promotion | Three years · Display valued qualities at work · Portray competence qualities |
| Become an Expert at life coaching | Four years · Add academic knowledge · Display authoritativeness in job execution · Establish a sizeable loyal network |
| Gain leadership position | Five years · Assume interim leadership positions · Display leadership qualities · Share visionary ideas with management |
| Build own life coach Brand | Six years · Becoming influential at work · Commanding respect · Reserving financial requirements to start the brand
|
- In case of challenges, I intend to overcome through the following action
| Hindrance | Resolution |
| Interview Rejections | § Seek mock interview arrangements with practicing life coaches |
| Limited promotion prospects | § Improve my performance metrics |
| Lacking time for personal growth | § Consulting management for consideration § Exploit organized training |
| Poor communication skills | § Finding a mentor § Engage in more activities related to public speaking |
- I intend to Review my career action plan every three months.
Conclusion
Achieving one’s professional goals and aspirations is no mean task. It requires personal assessment and inventory skills, setting of SMART career goals and plans towards a SMART Action plan. Through the application of critical thinking skills, psychological principles can be used to motivate an individual to overcome the challenges along the way. One values, attitudes, and interests play a crucial role in defining the success of their professional aspirations. It is, therefore, paramount that one’s values and practices should align with the career chosen for life fulfillment, actualization, and satisfaction.
References
Coultas, C. W., & Salas, E. (2015). Identify construction in coaching: schemas, information processing, and goal commitment. Consulting Psychology Journal; practice and Research, 67 (4), 298-325.
Lucariello, J. M., Nastasi, B. K., Dwyer, C., Skiba, R., DeMarie, D., & Anderman, E. M. (2016). Top 20 Psychological Principles for PK–12 Education. Theory into Practice, 55(2), 86-93.
Lee, Y. L. (2018). Nurturing critical thinking for implementation beyond the classroom: Implications from social psychological theories of behavior change. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 27, 139-146.
Yarbrough, S., Martin, P., Alfred, D., & McNeill, C. (2017). Professional values, job satisfaction, career development, and intent to stay. Nursing Ethics, 24(6), 675-685.
Ritter, S. M., & Mostert, N. (2017). Enhancement of creative thinking skills using cognitive-based creativity training. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 1(3), 243-253.
Deiorio, N. M., Carney, P. A., Kahl, L. E., Bonura, E. M., & Juve, A. M. (2016). Coaching: a new model for academic and career achievement. Medical education online, 21(1), 33480.