Developing Personal and Management Skills

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Task one

2.1 Sub section one

2.2 Sub section Two

3. Task two

3.1 Supportive communication

3.2 Motivation

3.3 Empowerment

3.4 Conflict Management

3.5 Team Effectiveness

4. References

5. Appendices

5.1 SWOT analysis

5.2 Skill audit

1.        Introduction

This assignment has focused on the learning outcomes of Developing Personal and Management Skills course. Along with this report, first task would identify areas in reflect on own management and leadership skills and importance of the personal development plan for effective management and leadership. Second part of this report has explained the theory and application of the transferable skills by using best practices of the organizations.

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2.       Task one

2.1 Sub section one 

Modern business world, leadership and management are words we can hear more than all others. They are not same concepts, but must go hand in hand. Making effort to distinct these two concepts is cause more complication than it resolves. The management role can explain as the planning, organizing, directing and controlling. The leader’s basic role is to inspire and motivate the people on right direction. As organization, both concepts are critical for its success. Reflection of the management and leadership skills are more important to the organization to drive this success. Organizations are focused on enhance the employee knowledge by applying learning process within the organizations. Lot of organizations are maintain the learning and development department under Human Resource department to enhance the organization learning management.

There are several models introduced by experts to describe the leadership and management skills. Such as, Kolb’s experiential learning theory, Gibbs model of reflection, Rolfe’s reflective model, John’s model for structured reflection and Cottrell’s reflective practice. These all models are explain the reflect of the learning of management and leadership skills. David A. Kolb introduced Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle model.  According to David A. Kolb, there four major stages in experiential learning cycle. Following diagram has explains the relationship in these four models.

Figure 2.1 – Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

• Concrete Experience – Learning from new experience or a re-interpretation existing experience
• Reflective Observation – Observing the particular importance by doing or observing
• Abstract Conceptualization – Create or rise new idea, or a modification of an existing concept by based on the learnings
• Active Experimentation – The learner applies the ideas created by himself around the world

However, each learner has his own selected path, there is no correct or wrong path on how people going through the experiential learning cycle. The person who entered in to the experiential learning, his learning pattern depends on hid preference. This has influenced by his level of education, culture, career preferences, current job tasks and personality level.  The reflective models we can’t specify or bound in to one frame. It’s differ by person to person, country to country, generation to generation. Organizational culture is a main factor to develop learning of the people. The learning organizations will facilitate and motivate it’s members. That will drive the successful reflection of management and leadership skills in members of the organization. That has explained in the Learning organization introduced by Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne (1989).

“A window for practitioners to look inside and know who they are as they strive towards understanding and realizing the meaning of desirable work in their everyday practices. The practitioner must expose, confront and understand the contradictions within their practice between what is practiced and what is desirable. It is the conflict of contradiction and the commitment to achieve desirable work that enables the practitioner to become empowered to take action to appropriately resolve these contradictions”(Johns,1996) . This is a different model introduced by John C to explain the reflection.

Figure 2.1 – John’s reflection model

This model has based on the five questions. They are enable to break down the experience and reflect the process of outcomes of the learning. Learning always should focus on the reflect of the outcome. That should align with the career objectives of the users as well as development goals of the organizations. If these two can satisfy with the reflection will be positive for the both parties. The role of reflection is a way of motivating the development of independent, qualified and self-directed professionals, the way of creating effective leadership and management teams as well as motivating personal, career growth and make a strong relationship between theory and practice. Benefits of reflective learning are, get knowledge from the experience, developing the skills of professional practice, creating capacity to re frame the existing knowledge and continuous improvement in the practical applications.

2.2 Sub section Two

The Personal Development Plan (PDP) is a practical tool to help on identifying your learning requirement, improve performance and achievements. This process is really helpful for all professionals and it will support you to properly organize your personal, educational and career development. Personal development plan is an action plan, which is based on the self-awareness, values, objective setting, planning of personal development with the career growth, relationship management and self education. The Personal Development Plan engage a concept that specific enhancement of experiences to satisfy the mutual targets of individual career growth and organizational development.   As per the employee existing role and situation, PDP has recognized the most critical areas that need to concentrate on and will provide the right direction for further training and development requirements. 

Personal development plan

Personal development plan can derived from the output of SWOT analysis and skill audit. The skill audit identify the requirement of skills and SWOT analysis explain the personal evaluation on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Personal plan always motivating on the job or inside organization improvement planning as well as external training requirement planning. As per the develop SWOT analysis and skill audit, need to enhance the decision making and planning skills of the employee who is doing that role. For that user should work for enhance the knowledge about business. This has driven by on the job and in side organization development concept. The person who working in the role should move with the senior management team and gain the knowledge about business and apply those learning in to the planning and decision making process improvement.

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As a manager, communication skill is playing a significant part of the role. That will help to keep the leadership position of the team, pass the clear and right message among the team and drive the performance. As per the SWOT analysis communication skills has to improve and, PDP will facilitate to achieve that via on the job trainings. Senior management should align with the requirement and facilitate for the requirement via providing opportunities. Coaching and mentoring skills will support to drive the performance of team. That skill will is mandatory for good leader as well as good manager. Team will keep their trust and respect on leader or manager based that skill of coaching and developing them. If the leader has an good coaching skills, he can make a high performance team via coaching and development. Ultimately, that will drive the success of the organization.  Work prioritization will drive the efficient utilization of the employee’s time. Time management and work prioritization should use the external trainings as well as on the job trainings. External trainings will provide the conceptual and theoretical background and on the job will provide the practical application. As professionals, people management and leadership skill is mandatory in operate within the organizations. Specially working as a manager or team leader it’s a mandatory skill to drive the team in to specified goals. Team management and leadership related skill development related theoretical knowledge could gain from the external sources. However, practical application and experience should gain from doing things. Senior management should help to gain that skill to their next layer of the employees. They should share their experience and guide the flowers to develop them as real leaders and managers of the organization.

3.       Task two

3.1 Supportive communication

Communication is a daily activity in human lifecycle and nothing can be done without communication in today’s world. Every person’s expectation is that all people behave, act, think, response, move, learn and communicate just they were made off. Because of dissimilarities and blemish of human nature, none of the people could act same as each other. As per the MacGeorge and Burleson ( 2011), Supportive communication can define “Verbal and nonverbal behavior produced with the intention of providing assistance to others perceived as needing that aid” . Supportive communication is an interpersonal communications that encourage individuals for accurately communicate to audience in challenging situations. This seeks to conserve or develop a positive rapport among the communicator and listener by addressing a problem, providing adverse feedback, or engage in a challenging issue. Whetten and Cameron (2016) has introduced eight attributes of supportive communication. They are,

• Congruent, not Incongruent,
• Descriptive, not Evaluative
• Problem Oriented, not Person Oriented
• Validating, not invalidating
• Specific, not global
• Conjunctive, not disjunctive
• Owned, not Disowned
• Supportive Listening, not One-Way Listening

Organizations are always encouraging the supportive communications. That will support to drive the higher productivity, speedy problem solving, generate high quality output, fewer conflicts between employees and building strong relationships among the team. As example, Lafarge Holcim world no 01 cement manufacturer always encouraging their employees for supportive communication. They have an ethic on their discussion to promote supportive communication. They always using the rules of meetings and constructively building the discussion. The aim of the management also should create a constructive discussion among the teams. That will specially drive for the employee innovations also.

3.2 Motivation

Motivation is crucial factor for organizational development. McShane et al defines motivation as “…a factor that exist in an individual which has the potential to affect the way, strength and eagerness of behaving towards work”. (McShane & Von Glinow 2003, 132). Today most of the organizations would like to have highly motivated employees in their workforce but they do not have an understanding on what are the factors truly motivate their employees. Management of the organizations is primarily responsible to ensure the activities or job roles is done via their employees in a correct way. To get the optimize performance of the employees, they should sufficiently motivated about the organization and it’s leadership. There should be blend the appropriate motivational tools with efficient leadership and management to reach this objective. Two major concepts in motivations and they are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, internal factors and extrinsic motivation comes due to the external factors.  There are several theories introduced regarding to the motivation. The main theory in motivation is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. That has discovered by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Other than that, Herzberg’s two-factor model, McClelland’s achievement-affiliation-power model and McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y Model can show as examples of models.

Organizations are using several techniques to enhance the employee motivation. They can categorize as financial and non-financial motivation factors.  Managers may believe only financial factors may enhance the employee motivation. Through empirical evidence, it is shown that most of the employees non-financial rewards and recognition paly the major factor as better motivation than financial factors. When discussing about financial motivation factors, they are short-term motivations to employees. Most commonly, use financial motivations are salary increments, incentives and bonus. Sturn, Ruger & Company, an American firearm manufacturing company drives the financial motivation aspect. In 2015 the CEO of the company declared the profit sharing as ,“we allocate 15% of pretax profit every quarter to profit sharing as a result, every worker now pays attention and are driving together towards the same direction”. There are several non-financial motivations available in the corporates. As examples, job enlargement, job rotation, offer leadership opportunities, employee recognition and team work.

3.3 Empowerment

“Empowerment is a process in which through the development and influence expand and the capabilities of individuals and teams will be help to improve and performance continuous improvement. In other words, empowerment is a development strategy and organizational prosperity (GanjiNia, Gilaninia, and Sharami,, 2013)”. Empowerment is one of the most effective tool using by organizations to enhance the productivity of employees. With the empowerment, employee has given more ability to use his or her skills, thereby facilitating more decision-making closer to the point of impact. That will make a change in employee mind from feeling powerless to believing strongly in their own personal strengths. The reasons of the highly focus on employee empowerment is rise in global competiveness, the need to respond quickly to the requirements of the customers and adopting the changes in quickly. Current business environment is changing rapidly and making exigent situation to organizations. In order to face that successfully and keep competitiveness in the future, organizations should go beyond the traditional directive management concept. The contribution of the employees are not only expected but also needed to assume an active rather than a passive role in the organization.

The benefits of employee empowerment are, enhance employee motivation, improve creativity and morale, increased productivity, improved teamwork and higher quality of products and services. As every concept, empowerment also has some disadvantages such as, increase business risk (confidentiality and security risks), creates a blurred chain of command, takes more time to make important decisions and increased arrogance. John Lewis & Partners is an UK based company, they calling their employees as partners of the company and they have the shared the responsibility of the organizational development. That will drive the organization success in collaboration with the management and employees.

3.4 Conflict Management

Folger (1993) defines conflict as “the interaction of interdependent people who perceive incompatible goals and interference from each other in achieving these goals”. According to Mullins (2010), role conflict is identified by inconsistent or inappropriate behavior, and can occur as a result of certain interconnected problems. Organizational conflict arises in any condition, when employees interact in operations. Scholars has made the conflicts classification in different ways. One classification is relationship conflict, task conflicts and process conflicts. Another form of classification is interpersonal conflict, interpersonal conflict /intra group conflict, inter group/Inter departmental conflict and inter organizational conflict. There are several causes may impact on generating conflicts such as, roles and expectations, goal/ objective differences, common resources, specialization and authority relationships.

In organizational context, there are advantages as well as disadvantages in conflicts. Disadvantages of conflicts are, affect on organizational performance, waste time of the employees and management, conflict may lead to work sabotage, employee dissatisfaction and demotivation and people may promote their self-interests or personal gains and. Advantages of conflicts are, enhance team cohesiveness, improving analytical thinking, facilitates an understanding of the employee problems and provides creative and innovative ideas. Establish a better conflict management process and system will support organization to drive employees in to a common direction. As example,the Coca cola company has introduced a whistle bowing policy which has the authority to speak up any employee about the mis practices or unfair treatment. That will help to reduce conflicts among the employees. If they have an issue, they can directly contact independent party or top management person to aware about that. 

3.5 Team Effectiveness

As per the Kozlowski and Bell (2003: 334) teams can be defined as the “collectives who exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, share one or more common goals, interact socially, exhibit task interdependencies, maintain and manage boundaries, and are embedded in an organizational context that sets boundaries, constrains the team, and influences exchanges with other units in the broader entity”. Team effectiveness is the team’s capacity to accomplish the targets or objectives administered by management team or the organization. As per the Bruce Tuckman (1965) there are four main stages in team development such as, forming, storming, norming and performing.

Many of the organizations are using team concept to enhance the performance of the organizations.  For this required combination of knowledge, experience, several skills and competencies. Most of the time project based team assignments are promoting due to the easy measurement of performance of the team. As example Australian based Ansell Company has using special project based team assignments and measuring the performance of the team in manufacturing divisions in globally. To identify team effectiveness, scholars have introduced several models such as  Lencioni Model, Hackman Model, GRPI Model of Team Effectiveness , T7 Model, LaFasto and Larson Model, Katzenbach and Smith Model. Advantages of effective team management are  development of leadership qualities, gaining new perspective, division of work, shared responsibility and improves communication skills. If team management not efficient, consequences may face by the organization as unequal contribution and participation of members, clash of ideas will drive for a conflict, one team members desire to outshine the rest.

4.       References

• Johns, C., 2009. Becoming a reflective practitioner. John Wiley & Sons.
• Johns, C. and Graham, J., 1996. Using a reflective model of nursing and guided reflection. Nursing Standard, 11(2), pp.34-38.
• Pedler, M., Boydell, T. and Burgoyne, J., 1989. The learning company. Studies in Continuing Education, 11(2), pp.91-101.
• Burleson, B.R. and MacGeorge, E.L., 2002. Supportive communication. Handbook of interpersonal communication, 3, pp.374-424.
• Burleson, B.R., 2009. Understanding the outcomes of supportive communication: A dual-process approach. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 26(1), pp.21-38.
• Gerhart, B. and Fang, M., 2015. Pay, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, performance, and creativity in the workplace: Revisiting long-held beliefs.
• Ugboro, I.O. and Obeng, K., 2000. Top management leadership, employee empowerment, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction in TQM organizations: an empirical study. Journal of quality management, 5(2), pp.247-272.
• GanjiNia, H., Gilaninia, S. and Sharami, R.P.M., 2013. Overview of Employees Empowerment in Organizations. Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review (Oman Chapter), 3(2), p.38.
• Fowler, C., 2013. Workplace conflict: A phenomenological study of the types, processes, and consequences of small business conflict (Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University).

5.       Appendices

5.1 SWOT analysis

5.2 Skill audit

Please refer to file no. 2