Advance Professional Development:

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 1. Summery of my time so far

Family and Motivation:

My name is MD Belal Uddin Sarkar.I was born in a middle class family in 1970 at
Dhaka, Bangladesh. There are altogether six members in our family including me,
father, mother , three brothers and a little sister. I am the eldest son of my family.
Both my parents have high hope for me and they highly appreciate my achievements
so far both in the academic and professional level. This irreplaceable support from my
family strengthened my endeavour and motivated me to become the best in the trade.

Education:
I passed my school certificate or S.S.C exam in 1985 with a first division from Satura
high school based in Brammonbaria under Comilla board. In my school I choose to
study in the science department, because as a child I was mostly interested in how
things work, questioning things such as how aeroplanes fly, how the earth goes round,
observing this enormous curiosity my parents encouraged me to study science in
school. I was a very active pupil and used to participate in all the outdoor sports and
other extracurricular activities in the school, This helped me to improve my skills in
academic work as well. Activities such as debate clubs and scouting groups helped me
to develop my leadership skills.
However in my secondary stage I choose to study in humanities rather than science. I
achieved my higher secondary or H.S.C certificate from famous Dhaka college in
1987 with a first in humanities department. I was given the chance to study
International Relation at Jahangirnagar University, one of the top university in
Bangladesh. I completed both my graduation and Masters degree successfully by
1996 . I was awarded a first class at the undergraduate level and I managed to secure
second class for my Masters degree. Throughout my educational life i have always
tried to perform my best and gain knowledge that would help me with my future
career.
Employment History:
I started my first employment as a diplomat reporter with the company called Media
Agency based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is one of the biggest news agencies in
Bangladesh specialised in media and international affairs. I was employed there from

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1991 till 1996 . It was directly linked with the subject i studied in the university level.
Due to this reason i was able to implement a lot of academic references in my
workplace I learned from my academic lectures. I also gained a lot of practical
experience such as interviewing and researching in the field. As it was first
employment, I learned to work as a part of the team. I was promoted to the post of
senior reporter as result of my dedication and good performance.

In 1997 joined a World Bank project called C.E.R.P as a Junior consultant and
worked there till the end of 2000. This experience of working with an organisation
such as world bank helped me raise my skills and career to another level. I had the
opportunity of working in a world class environment and had the chance to observe
the operation closely.

From 2000 till 2009 I was working as managing director of Chowdhury Group in
Bangladesh. The chowdhury group is a combination of industries and other
businesses. I was responsible for its operation and over all business activities. I
managed to generate profit and increase productivity for the group, as a result I
became the managing director by the end of 2008, and So far I think of it as one of
my biggest achievement. But I believe in going further and do better with my carrier.
I found great interest in developing business and organisation. My success with the
chowdhury group encouraged me to take further study in business and management.
As a result I have decided to complete my MBA and gain the competitive advantage
by using my knowledge to develop business and organisations.

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Part 2:
Its is essential to carryout a Personal skills audit if any individual is seeking a career
change. It helps the individual to understand their strengths and weaknesses and
directs them towards the most effective path. Carrying out the appropriate analysis
can lead to the future success of any individual. There are different ways to conduct a
personal skills audit1(D.Lock ,2005). Some of them are implied below to demonstrate
the authors skills.
One of the best way of auditing personal skills effectively is through the SWOT
analysis. The analysis below lists the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
faced by the author and based on his skill.

Strengths:
I have started working while is was still studying, and I have been working for almost
20 years now in various positions. I think this range of experience and skills are my
main strengths. I received training on communication, team building and motivations.
These range of skills and working with world class organisations has enriched my
experience.
Weaknesses: As far as I know I don’t have any weaknesses but I believe I have some
lacking which can be easily talked through a structured way. Later on this chapter A
chart based on my personal skills audit will help to determine the steps needs to be
taken to tackle these weaknesses.
Opportunity and threats: I believe completing the MBA would help me to acquire
the necessary skills to progress further in my career. In other words it would open a
new door of opportunity in front of me. However, the current economic environment
all around the globe has triggered a lot of competition in the job market. I think I need
to equip myself with the necessary skills to survive such environment.

The table below is a brief report of my personal and professional skills. I have tried to
address some of the key areas of my skills that needs to be developed and how much
it needs to be achieved. It also demonstrates my current situations and difference with
the standard set of skills or expected skills.

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Robert D.Lock-2005-taking charge of your career, Thomson, Canada

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Here in the chart very satisfactory is scored as 5 , normal satisfactory is scored as 4,
average or normal is scored as 3 , poor is scored as 2 and very poor is scored as 1.

Areas of Professional or Standard current Difference/need

individual skills to achieve
I Technical
Financial skills 5 3 2
Computing skills 5 3 2
II Communication
Language skills 5 4 1
Writing skills 5 3 2
Listening skills 5 3 2
Presentation skills 5 4 1
Interpersonal skills 5 4 1
III Innovativeness
Thinking skill 5 3 2

IV Negotiation skills 5 4 1

V Leadership and
Management
Motivational skills 5 5 0
Team developing skills 5 4 1
Time keeping skills 5 3 2
Problem solving skill 5 4 1
Organisational skills 5 4 1

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Table-1 , table of personal audit , ref- (D.Kush ,2009)2
The table above gives a brief picture of my current skills and what standards needs to
be achieved if I require to improve my weaknesses and make the most of my
opportunities available for me. It also indicates the areas that would provide support
to my strong areas. For example it is indicated in the first section that my main
strengths are based on my management experience and leadership skills gathered
through working for various companies through out my career. It is also visible form
the table that my management and leader ship skills are mostly satisfactory (score
4).And I need little improvement in those sectors. For example according to the table
my motivational skills are very satisfactory and i don’t need to achieve anything for
that skill.

This mixed method of deductive and inductive audit analysed the core skills and
determined the minimum requirement of improvement. For example both the SWOT
analysis and the chart indicates that main weakness lies in technical skills or technical
ability. Technical skills such as calculating financial data or using any complex
computing system are some of the areas that needs to be addressed immediately for
2
Brian D.Kush-2009;Auditing leadership, Wiley and Sons.Canada.

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improvement in the future. The next chapter is going to analyse more based on
leadership and management process.a

Part 3
Leadership:
Leadership is considered as a method or process that enables an individual to control
or influence the opinion and activities of a group of people to achieve a set objective.
Depending on what the set target is , normally leaders are expected to practise their
influence or powers to change the decisions of majority. In other words an individual
with considerable authority over a group of individuals is called a leader (Gold et al ,
2010).3 The group of individuals that are influenced by the leaders are normally set on
a target or a goal to achieve. The set target or goal may not always go the leaders
3
Jeff gold, Richard Thorpe, Alan Mumford;2010-handbook of leadership and management
development, Gower publishing company, surrey England.

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favour, but throughout the whole process the who ever shows the direction or
instruction is considered as a leader. When ever I was in a management position I
have always tried to instruct the team members towards the organisational objective.
What is leadership:
Some of the general leadership characteristic includes qualities such as quest for
challenging tasks, taking risks, inspiring other people, highly skilled in
communicating with people, and accepts others or team members contribution
towards achieving the objective. Some early definition given by academics does
argue that leadership can not be taught , it is a gift of god. For example in an article
written for the famous The Times Magazine, General Archibald Wavell(1941) argued
that the process of leadership can not be learned, he rather identified it as a natural
quality that is already present in an individual (Bryman, 1986). 4 It is in fact true in
some cases but not always. Some qualities or skills of a leader can not be learned
through the academic lessons. Skills such as networking with people, negotiating and
other interpersonal skills can not taught through conventional way. How ever there
are some tools that assists individuals to shine those leadership qualities or skills as
well.
According to L.Daft and Malcic (2008), some of the earlier attempts to understand a
successful leadership concentrated on the leaders personal qualities or traits. In other
words Traits or qualities are recognised as the leaders personal characteristics such as
personal presentation, courage, motivational skills etc. The target of the research
based on the traits of leaders were only to find the best qualities in a successful leader
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and utilize it for the future success (L.Daft and Malcic,2008).
The leadership traits:
Some of the leadership traits are outlined below briefly to provide a clear picture of
the characteristics of a successful leader. I have discussed some of the traits related to
my own professional skills and experience based on the work by L.Daft and Malcic
(2008).
Intelligence:
it is one of the most important trait that needs to be present in an individual who is
leading a group of people. Intelligence enables the leader to create and share vision of
success among the people, thus motivating them throughout the process. This trait

4
Alan Bryman-1986;Leadership and Organisation, Routledge England.
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Richard L. Daft, Dorothy Marcic;2008, understanding management, cengage learning.

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also gives advantages such as analysing and interpreting information to overcome
certain obstacles.
Passion about the people and drive to succeed:
If a person or individual is not sincere or focused on achieving a certain target than it
impossible for them to reach that objective. A leader needs to demonstrate that
passion towards their team members and also demonstrate the desire to achieve their
targets. I always had a strong drive to achieve my given target with the help of my
team in any given situations.
Knowledge and confidence: These two qualities strongly interrelated. Knowledge
delivers the essential confidence for the leader to lead a team of highly skilled
individuals.
Sociability and integrity: A successful leader needs to be highly social to get the
best performance out of their team members. It is also important that they carryout
their tasks with integrity to have any effect on others. I have always maintained good
relationship with my subordinates and that helped me to achieve my targets in many
occasions.
There is not a lot of difference between management and leadership skills. Leadership
is a part of the management process, on the other hand a good and successful manager
has good leadership skills.

Management:
According to Mum ford and Gold (2004) Management can be defined as a system that
controls activities, resources and evaluates performance in an organisation. The
individuals that are responsible with the authority of controlling these type of
activities can be described as managers. The sole purpose of any management activity
is to carryout an organisational operation within a structure.

Manager:
A manager is an individual that is given the responsibility to manage the employees
within a given structure to achieve organisational objective or targets. Managers
directs the employees in a systematic way towards organisational success. They also
controls the employee productivity and performance.

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During my long working career I have worked in different organisations as managers.
I discovered that the most basic role of management is always almost the same in
every organisation big or small, and that is managers leads or directs the employees
and they have to solve problems .
However it is a proven fact that there are many management activities in business
organisations , therefore their job title varies from organisation to organisation and
some times departments to departments. normally in bigger retail organisation such
as Tesco or Sainsbury has various types of management roles depending on the
organisational requirements, for example delivery managers, store managers, shift
managers, hr managers, production managers, warehouse managers, IT managers and
so on.
There is a general way of differentiating management levels, they can be categorised
as
Supervisors or Line managers: This is a common managerial post in large and
medium sized organisations. This type of managers ensures the day-to-day operation
are running smoothly and efficiently, they also observe the performance of the staffs
or team members at workplace.
Middle Managers: Middle managers are takes report from the line managers and
provides them with guidance and direction to the daily activities based on the
organisational planning and strategies.
Top managers: Top managers are responsible for taking decisions and planning the
management process.
Some of the key activities of any management process are human resource
management, hr planning, hr development, productivity, technical support, sales and
other important activities (Gold & Mumford , 2010). It is difficult to discuss all the
management activities in this short essay. But this activities mentioned above
indicates how important it is to carryout an efficient management activity for an
organisational to reach its objective.

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Part 4
Personal Development Plan:
The second part of this assignment carried out a detailed personal audit. This section
of the assignment will attempt to give a development plan that will focus on closing
the gap of achieving certain skills in a given time frame.
Professional skills title Target Expected time Action plan to Achieve the
frame target
I Technical
Financial skills 5 4 months taking extra lessons in
finance and practising
more practical financial
scenarios.

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 Computing skills 5 4 months Getting used to new
technologies and systems.
Seeking professional help
or lessons from others

II Communication
Language skills 5 2 months Focusing on grammar and
vocabulary including
pronunciation while
exchanging sentences with
others.
Writing skills 5 4 months Will try to attend writing
lessons, concentrating on
grammar and spelling
errors.
Listening skills 5 1 week Making sure paying
attention towards what
other people are saying
and providing appropriate
response.
Presentation skills 5 2 weeks Working on building
confidence, and
developing appearance,
also improving speech and
eye contact.
Interpersonal skills 5 2 weeks working on developing
skills such as listening to
others, presentation skills,
helps improving
interpersonal skills as well.

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III Innovativeness
Thinking or analytical 5 2 weeks Practising IQ tests or
skill working with real life
scenarios or case studies
will help to achieve the
required target.
IV Negotiation skills 5 2 weeks Again working with
different scenarios,
choosing options, taking
decisions and taking help
from professional
negotiators.
V Leadership and
Management
Motivational skills 5 2 months These skills will be
Team developing skills 5 2 months developed by working in a
Time keeping skills 5 2 months organisation and through
Problem solving skill 5 2 months the academic process as
Organisational skills 5 4 months well. All of these
management and
leadership skills are a part
of organisational
management process.

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