Misconceptions about Personal Development

There are many misconceptions about personal development & they include;

• How will I spend my money to attend a course when am going to use the knowledge to work for someone else.
• It is my employer’s responsibility to train & develop me on the job.
• I will develop myself when I have enough money because what I earn currently is not enough.
• In-house training is enough.
• Many attend seminars & trainings for the purpose of obtaining certificate alone.
• There are people who will never spend a dime on personal development but will attend when it is free.
• I am okay the way I am.

We are going to analyse each of the misconceptions mentioned above critically.

Employer's factor

You actually do yourself a great favor when you develop yourself & not your employer. Even if your employer collects the certificate from you, he can’t collect the skills or knowledge acquired.

You should know that it is first & foremost your responsibility to develop yourself on any job you are doing or intend doing. It is not your employer’s sole responsibility to train you. If you want to be accomplished you don’t wait for your employer to train you.

Money

Start with the resources at your disposal. You can go for cheap trainings or look for free ones to help yourself. You don’t have to go to MIT, Harvard to build yourself up. The internet is free & available for everyone to use to a realistic extend. You can net-work with people on social media & learn.

The truth is that money may hinder you from doing some things in life but life should not come to a stand-still because of lack of money. Money will hardly be enough in life. You can walk into a library, borrow an internet enabled phone if you don’t have one. There are many resources that can be obtained from google, & you-tube.

If you allow money to become an impediment to your development you may end up at the end of the day never having enough money because your earning power is decided by your producing power or skill level.

Certificate 

If you are among the people whose motivation for attending a course is to be awarded a certificate then you are not ready for self-development. There are many people who will not enrol in a training when there is no certificate attached to the training even when the benefit of such training is on the high side.

Certificate is good but acquired knowledge & skills are better. You can mis-place or lose your certificate or it can be stolen but you can’t lose or mis-place your knowledge or acquired skills & it can’t be stolen.

Let me ask you a question. Assuming your vehicle is faulty & a mechanical engineering graduate comes around & shows you his certificate but can’t do any useful work on your car are you going to hire him to repair your car compare to the road-side mechanic who comes along with no formal certificate but can get your car running.

It is not enough to obtain a certificate without the knowledge & skills endorsed by the certificate. It is better to have the knowledge without the certificate than to have a certificate without knowledge. Being able to translate the knowledge obtain from a training into useful skills that you can apply or use on your job.

In-house training is enough

In-house is never enough. Going out exposes you to new perspectives, approaches, experiences that can’t be acquired in-house as organizational approaches are different. It also gives you the opportunity to network with others.

I can only participate in free courses

There are many people who like to develop themselves by attending courses but hate to spend to acquire the knowledge. They are not ready to invest. They have a free of charge (FOC) mentality. For sure people they are only interested in one question when a training programme is put across to them.

If it is free then I am in otherwise count me out of it.

There are many times when free trainings may meet your career goals, dreams & objectives & there are other times when free trainings may not meet your desired goals, aims & objectives.

I am going to sign out at this point. Thanks for joining us. Watch out for our next episode “The Importance of Personal Development”.

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You may be interested in " What is Personal Development   "

What is Personal Development

Personal development is an ongoing process of self-improvement be it in career, business, relationship, job, or personal endeavor.

Personal development is not a one-off act & can only be carried out consciously after one has done a critical assessment of oneself & discover areas that he or she is lagging behind that needs to be improved upon.

To carry out personal development you need to do a self-appraisal of yourself & list areas in which you are strong & others in which you have deficiency & you need to develop those areas in which you have deficiency to meet your life goals & objectives to be the person you want to be.

You can only embark on personal development after you have done a critical assessment of your skills & talents, & written down your strength & weakness as well as the skills you need to develop to achieve your dreams.

As a graduate or undergraduate engineer, technologist or scientist you need technical skills, report writing skills, critical reasoning & logical thinking skills, and ICT skills to get your job done effectively. If you lack these skills you have to sit down to find out the things you need to do to acquire them in terms of networking, training's, programmes & courses to enroll in to acquire these skills.

Personal development is an ongoing process of self-improvement. It involves the things you do to improve certain areas of your life, job, & personal life.

Personal development is first & foremost the responsibility of the individual in a question.

I am going to sign out at this point. Watch out for the next episode in which we will be looking at “ The Misconceptions about Personal Development ”.

Thanks

Your comments, contributions & questions are welcome.