Unit 2 1
Professional Development for Strategic Managers
Table of Contents
Introduction
Task One
1.1
1.2
Task Two
2.1: Skill Audit
2 .2:
Task Three:
3.1 Personal Development Plan
3.2
3.3
Conclusion
References
Introduction
In today’s competitive business environment, it is essential for the employees and managers to continuously improve and enhance their skills and knowledge for performing job responsibility and to achieve higher growth within the organizations (Smith, 2012). This report discusses the personal and professional skills required for achieving strategic goals and objectives. Along with this, this paper also helps in conducting skill audit in order to identify own learning style. In addition, it also supports in constructing a personal development plan that meets the leadership development requirements. At the end, this paper also discusses the suitable methods to assess the outcomes of PDP and evaluates the impact of own learning in order to achieve strategic goals.
Task One
1.1
Personal skills required to achieve strategic goals are communication skills, time management, stress management, problem solving and decision making etc. some of them which can be described as follows:
Communication Skills: Good communication skills plays important role for strategic manager, especially at the time of communication with subordinates and the other manager as well as senior officers. Communication includes both interpersonal process such as personal interaction, and conversation through mass media approaches such as newspaper, radio, magazines and television etc (Jacobson, 2009). The effective listening and ability to handle the conflicts can be used to evaluate the compunction skills as it will enable to listen employees carefully and to solve their issues effective to achieve strategic goals.
Interpersonal Skills: Interpersonal skills are goal directed behavior that only used in face to face interaction (Hayes, 2013). This skill is required to motivate the people in the organization for wearing towards the accomplishment of the strategic goals. The motivation among workforce, team cooperation etc can be measured to evaluate this skill.
Problem Solving Skills: Problem solving helps to solve organizational problems effectively and efficiently. Problem solving skillenables to analyze problem, recognize problem and evaluate the effect of different solutions, to pick the easiest and appropriate solution for the problem (Carney, 2011). Problem solving skills helps in achieving strategic goals of the organization by facilitating better ways to work towards their accomplishment.
Time management: Time management is another personal skill required to achieve strategic goals as it helps to increase efficiency and productivity by prioritizing the work as per needs. Setting goal and SMART objective is an important strategy to improve time management skills and to deal with time wasters to increase organizational ability to achieve strategic goals (Carney, 2011).
1.2
Use of occupational standards is effective to assess the professional skills required for achieving strategic goals. Following are some professional skills required to achieve organizational strategic goals:
Leadership Skills: Leading gives the directions, instructions and leads others to follow required direction. To achieve strategic goal a manager has the responsibility to handle his or her staff in an efficient way (Coghill, 2011). The leadership skill is required because without it organization cannot achieve strategic goal and cannot take correct decision and get support from employees. It is because leadership quality enables the leader to influence others to get involved in work and to contribute to achieve strategic goals.
Coaching skills: Coaching focuses on helping other people to learn in such a ways that let him or her keep developing his/her skillsfor contributing more effectively (Coghill, 2011).The purpose of coaching is to increase effectiveness, broaden the thinking, identify strengths and development needs to set and achieve challenging goals of the organization.
Motivation Skills: This skill is an important professional skill required to motivate staff to move them towards desired direction to accomplish the organizationalobjectives, which can be evaluated on the basis of reward or wages and effectiveness of performance appraisal system of the firm (Coghill, 2011).
Mentoring skills: Mentoring skills is defined interchangeably with each of the other strategies: advisor, coacher, counselors sometimes treated as mentor, but goals and interventions are different. Mentoring can be more informal to guide the members for working in a particular way for achieving the strategic goals (Coghill, 2011). This skill enables to be focused on career and personal development, which enable to develop the required skills for the accomplishment of organizational strategic goals.
Delegating Skills: This skill depicts the significance of a leader to assign authority, duty, work or tasks to subordinates or junior officers (Coghill, 2011). This should be done very carefully because the work which should have been delegated is not done properly, the whole responsibility will bear by strategic manager. The ability to improve flexibility and adaptability can be used to asses this professional skill for achieving the strategic goals.
Task Two
2.1: Skill Audit
S / Strength / Written Communication skillsSelf confidence
Problem solving skills
Strong education back ground
Leadership skills
Delegation
W / Weakness / Language problem
Time management
Lack of motivation ability
Team work
O / Opportunity / Capabilities to learn something new
Develop power to influence others
Resource utilization ability
T / Treats / People use different language
Lack of long term continuity to achieve goals
People feel negative aspect for my efforts
(Sources: Julia (2013) and Kevin(2013))
The SWOT analysis method is used for skill audit, which enabled to identify the strengths and weaknesses of in the skills. The above table also depicts that the opportunities to develop new skills for contributing in the organizational strategic growth (Sandra, 2009). The strategic skills needed to meet current and future career requirements can be determined by comparing the results of skill audit with the National Occupational Standards (NOS) and National Vocational Qualifications (NOQ) standards those determine the individual skills, which are effective to meet current and future leadership requirement. These types of standards are the statement of performance that describes the capability of people for specific occupation (Julia, 2013). According to these standards, a leader should have skill of resource allocation and their optimal utilization. According to this standard, I lack with this skill, which needs to be developed due to scarcity of the resources and increasing cost of resources for the firms (Sandra, 2009).
At the same time, national standard has provide work based qualification that give the opportunities to learner for determine their role according to job. Today organization environment is very complex and competitive therefore NOQ has define different standard such as knowledge, problem solving skills and understanding capability of leaders for success in competitive environment according to current and future leadership requirement. I am quite good in these skills, but at the same time, I need to develop time management skill as lack of this skill may affect the ability to capture market opportunities (Charalambos, 2015). Along with this, the current lacking in oral communication and continuity in performance may affect my effectiveness to contribute significantly towards organizational goals accomplishment in future career, which needs to be developed.
2 .2:
There are several techniques, which can be used to identify preferred learning style such as inventories and questionnaires, psychometric testing, Fleming’s VAK/VARK modal, Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Honey and Mumford etc. (Trevor, Joe & Gill, 2013). For identifying the preferred learning style, Honey and Mumford techniques is used, which categorizes the people on four aspects as per their learning such as activists, reflectors, theorists, pragmatists etc.
Activist: Activities are those people how learn by the doing activities. They have open-minded approach for learning and involving themselves without new experiences (Leni & Diane, 2011).
Reflectors: People those learn by self observing and thinking about what happened relating to work. People use collecting data and their experiences for appropriate conclusion (Kevin, 2013).
Theorist: People those learning through understanding the theory behind the actions and uses concepts, models and facts for engage learning process. It approaches drawing new information in logical theory (Colin & John, 2013).
Pragmatists: People those able to see how learning practice is putting in real world and use experimenters and trying to use new ideas, technique and theories in work (Trevor, Joe & Gill, 2013).
According to this technique, my preferred learning style is reflector as I prefer to gain experience by involving in tasks. I review the experience to learn new skills and knowledge, which enable me to improve myself. Along with this, I also use other’s experience to learn from them, which is effective to increased learning on the basis of problems faced by me or others. But this learning style increases my dependency on others, which sometimes affect my privacy and confidence.
Task Three:
3.1 Personal Development Plan
Skills / Objectives / Action Planned / Resources / Planned MeasuresSpecific Actions / Complete by Month
Communication Skills / To Improve verbal and written skills / Read grammar, tutorial, books, articles, etc. / 2 Months / Books, articles, journals, news papers, etc. / Evaluation from the tutor
Proficiency in Speaking / News and programs which are in English language will be looked out and listen them regularly / TV, radio, news papers, etc. / Feedbacks from peers and self-evaluation
Command on language / Notes and articles will be written and submitted
Take initiative part in group discussion / Psychometric test, group activities, etc. / Recordings of discussion
Time Management skills / To build up knowledge about time management concept and its importance / Read books, articles and journals related to the time management / 1 month / Books, articles, journals, etc. / Feedbacks from the tutor
To follow proper routine / Effective time table will be prepared / Suggestions from seniors and peers etc. / Evaluation of the alignment of distributed wok as per the time table
To develop proper format of time management to complete work in estimated time / For this action plan will be prepared / Further studies, plans, etc. / To evaluate and check the progress of work
Motivation Skills / To develop the understanding about concept of motivation / Read motivation related books, articles, peer journals, etc. / 1 Month / Books, articles, journals, etc. / Feedbacks from seniors and colleagues, self-evaluation,
To learn ability to motivate team / Involve in motivational activities
Take initiative part in team motivation / Membership in consulting groups / Feedbacks from the colleagues
Team Working Skills / To develop knowledge towards the theoretical background of team management / Read related books and articles etc. / 2 Months / Books and related paper / Evaluation from practical knowledge
To improve abilities for work in a team / Involvement in teamwork activities / Memberships of teams those work with the other teams and groups / Feedbacks from seniors and team members
To develop better understanding towards the achievement of goals of task due to involvement of teach team member / Preference for the Group task at workplace / Supervisors suggestions / Feedbacks from supervisors, seniors and colleagues.
3.2
There are various methods that can be used to evaluate the outcomes of PDP such as regular reviews, comparison of achievements against original objectives, feedbacks, and personal reflection on learning, etc. Through adopting personal reflection, it is determined that I become successful to obtain my set PDP objectives in effective way. The positive feedbacks from the supervisors and colleagues helped me to determine the outcomes of PDP in concern of developing my communication skills. It also helped me to enhance my inter-personal skills in effective way (Mayor, Gomez & Chang, 2014). After completing my PDP, I also received positive feedbacks from the seniors, colleagues and sub-ordinates regarding motivation skills. The outcomes of PDP plan helped me to motivate employees and other people in different situations effectively.
At the same time, the preparation of work time table and action plans was effective for me to develop my time management skills. On the basis of personal reflection, it can be interpreted that I was able to allocate time for the different tasks according to their priorities. It enabled me to manage my time and improve my skills to manage work within the personal and professional life. On the other hand, after analyzing regular reviews from my team members, seniors and colleagues, it can be interpreted that I have effectively developed my team working skills as I enabled to work in a team with more efforts and motivation. It also enabled me to develop understanding about the importance of achievement of goals to ensure the success of team within the organization (Andrade, 2013).
But, at the same time, I was unable to achieve my some of the set objectives related to the motivation skills due to less knowledge about the motivation skills and the characteristics of persons. It created issues for me to learn abilities to motivate team in different situations effectively. For this, I will need to work on the motivation skills and read motivation related books and articlesand take practical knowledge to motivate teams within the firm.
3.3
It is evaluated thatmy developed communication skills would be helpful forme to achieve strategic objectives as these skills will helpme to communicate important information to the customers. It will be beneficial for the firm in developing a better relationship with the customers. Along with this, time management skills have a positive impact on the achievement of strategic objective because these skills would be helpful for me to accomplish the assigned and urgent tasks on pre-defined time. It will also support me to determine the priority of work within the personal and professional life, which will support me to achieve my strategic goals in a significant way (Halonen Santrock, 2012). In addition, the up-gradation of motivation skills would be effective for me to encourage people and teams in their work and access positive outcomes in order to ensure the success in organizational and personal life.
On the other hand, team working skills would also be effective for me to achieve strategic goals in significant way. It is because the developed team working skills would enable me to work in a team collectively and achieve desired outcomes, which will support me to achieve effective reward and compensation that will be supportive in achieving strategic goals significantly (Locke & Latham, 2013).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that PDP help for me to fill the skills and knowledge gaps, which will be supportive for me to achieve growth and success in the personal and professional life. Through conducting PDP, I was enabled to develop my communication, motivation, time management and team working skills that will contribute in the achievement of strategic goals within the department.
References
Andrade, C. K. (2013) Outcome-Based Massage: Putting Evidence Into Practice. USA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Carney, E (2014) Personal Skills 123 Success Secrets - 123 Most Asked Questions On Personal Skills - What You Need To Know. UK: Emereo Publishing.
Charalambos, P.C. (2015)Career Skills for Doctors. USA: Springer.
Coghill, N. (2011) Shakespeare's Professional Skills. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Colin, B. & John, P.W. (2013) Experiential Learning: A Handbook for Education, Training and Coaching 3rd ed. USA: Kogan Page Publishers.
Halonen, J. & Santrock, J. (2012) Your Guide to College Success: Strategies for Achieving Your Goals. USA: Cengage Learning.
Hayes, J. (2013) Interpersonal Skills: Goal Directed Behaviour at Work. USA: Routledge.
Jacobson, S. K. (2009) Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals. USA: Island Press.
Julia, H. (2013) Literacy for QTLS: Achieving the Minimum Core.USA: Routledge.
Kevin, G. (2013) Skills Development for Business and Management Students: Study and Employability. UK: Oxford University Press.
Leni, W. & Diane, B. (2011) The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: From Theory to Practice. USA: John Wiley & Sons.
Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P. (2013) New Developments in Goal Setting and Task Performance. UK: Routledge.
Mayor, J., Gomez, P. & Chang, F. (2014) 50 years after the perceptron, 25 years after PDP: Neural computation in language sciences. USA: Frontiers E-books.
Paul, D., Thomas, P., and Cadle, J (2012) The Human Touch: Personal Skills for Professional Success. UK: BCS.
Sandra, M. (2009) The Minimum Core for Information and Communication Technology. UK: SAGE.
Smith, J. (2012) Personal Development Planning - What You Need to Know: Definitions, Best Practices, Benefits and Practical Solutions. USA: Emereo Publishing.
Trevor, D., Joe, H. & Gill, T. (2013) Teaching Young Adults: A Handbook for Teachers in Post-Compulsory Education.USA: Routledge.