Page 81 - Part-A

Information, Advice or Guidance

Areas for personal development in interaction skills to

strengthen your own contribution to service delivery

Identifying the areas that you are good at can be easy, and it is always nice to be
praised and celebrate your strengths. However, your areas of weakness are, arguably,
more important to identify, so you can put things in place to improve them.

In order to help you understand your areas for improvement there are steps you can
take:

1. Notice if there is anything you avoid doing in the workplace

If there are things that you constantly avoid doing, it could be that these are areas
you feel less confident in than others. For example, dealing with clients over the
telephone, or dealing with difficult clients.

2. Look for patterns in feedback

The importance of getting client feedback was explored earlier in the course. If
feedback is always mentioning the same issue, then it is likely this is an area you
need to develop.

3. Find a team member who you can rely on to give you honest feedback

This is not always easy, but getting honest feedback is important if you are going to
develop your skills further.

4. Look at previous work or client interactions that did not go as well as you would
have hoped.

Looking at a client interaction that did not work out as you would have liked, is a
great way to identify any areas of improvement. Evaluate what went wrong and what
you could have done differently.

Once you have identified areas for improvement, there are many ways in which you
can improve them.

• External training course – for example, if one of your areas of weakness
was a particular subject area then you could find a course specific to that
subject area

• Internal training – Perhaps there is someone in your team or organisation
who has a strength in the area your looking to develop. Maybe you could
observe them or discuss your issues with them.

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