NOTES ON PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PORTFOLIO
Revised January 2018
Robin Matthews
Section 1 Introduction
I decided to exemplify the personal development portfolio through short paper reflecting on my own experience. The paper is divided into 4 sections; the first concerned with my learning experiences up to the most recent past, the second, with my learning experiences of the interval 1990 to date and the third with future intentions. With respect to the future we have bear in mind the fragility of everyone’s life. I personally like one of Woody Allen’s anecdotes; How to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.
The break down into 4 parts can be illustrated diagrammatically with a timespace diagram. In figure 1, the first part of the paper corresponds to the past, the second part to my present or current system state and the third section corresponds to the future.
Figure 1
The entire exercise is about self-reflection. A very important issue about self-reflection, which I can only remark on briefly, in passing, concerns Who is reflecting on whom?
This is a question about consciousness. What is consciousness and What does it mean to say that a person is conscious when for a large part of the time we act automatically and without really being self-aware. The question of consciousness involves deep psychological, philosophical, and spiritual questions. In the past hundred years or so it has become an issue for cognitive science and artificial intelligence.I particularly like to illustrate self-reflection with the picture in figure 2 by Rene Magritte.
Figure 2
Section 2 Recollecting the past
I’m going to write this section with reference to myself just give you an example of how you might approach the assignment. So take the examples that I give as providing an illustration of the way you might approach the first part of the assignment.
I divide this section which is concerned essentially with my past learning experiences into 2 subsections. In the first, I relate some personal stories that illustrate important personal influences and experiences. For example, I may relate stories illustrating how relatives or teachers influenced me positively; the birth of children, flashes of understanding coming often from unexpected and sometimes trivial events; how a certain points in my life I have experienced intense peace (Barakat, as Sufis describe it). Also relate how some things, like the death of my father had what I now recognize as a traumatic effect.
In the second subsection, I try to introduce some objectivity by using results from various personality tests, leadership aptitude tests and apply experiential learning theories, for example Kolb’s theory (ELT), or the concept of meta cognition, to my own situation.There are a wide variety of personality tests available for free on the Internet and I will provide some links to the relevant sites but I’m sure you can find many others. It would be very interesting for you and for a research paper, if you were to prepare tables or some other format which enabled comparisons of your performance on the various tests – similarities and differences. I am particularly fond of the Jungian framework which I think is very broad application.
It is also important to compare one’s own assessments with that of other people in the group. Such group work is a very important part of the course. It is both a rewarding task and a challenging one because the group is drawn from so many different nationalities, ethnic groups and religious or nonreligious affiliations.
Section 2 Reflections on the present
This section addresses the present or current system state as illustrated in figure 1.
Section 2 links the past and the future, identifying particular strengths, experiences from the past that enable you to accomplish your vision of the future; taking stock of where you are now in terms of what you need from the programme and what kind of efforts you need to make to achieve your vision, which may have changed since you began the program.
If I were doing the assignment myself, I would review the present fire the following categoriesresearch/scholarship,
(a)experiences in business and as a consultant and
(b)as teacher on executive programs.
Section 4 The future
Referring to the right-hand side of figure 1, I note two directions the first concerning globalisation and opportunities for personal development through working with people from many different cultures and ethnicities and the second with the complementarity of science and religion.
A precept common to many traditions is “Seek knowledge….” Globalisation has offered huge opportunities to do so.
For many years I have been interested and involved in spirituality/mysticism and the intention of synthesising it with the methodology of science.A core aspect of mysticism is the unity of all things and events. Spirituality should be reinstated in social, political and economic science. Attention to unity, incrementally, may lead to a more empathetic conduct of international policy by our leaders and eventually to greater compassion.
Separateness is an illusion. In reality, all things and events are connected and there is only the one; unity. Separation of spirituality or mysticism from science, physical, social and economic science, though it happened for good reasons in the natural sciences in the 15th century, has been too prolonged.
Section 4 Further reflection and conclusions
The past present and future are deeply interwoven as this note attempts to illustrate. The future is conditioned by the past and the past is influenced by the future in that we tend always to project ourselves into the future through our visions dreams and intentions. Figure 1 has both a reverse as well as a forward direction. In another sense the past and the future are both present in the present, in memories, intentions, fears and hopes.
I hope to add further sections later and there are a couple of related notes; on mindfulness and leadership available on my website.