Individual Reflection and Personal Development Plan - Case Study Example

Individual Reflection and Personal Development Plan Introduction: The job of a manager is not just getting work done by others. “What makes a manager is responsibility for contribution to the results of the enterprise rather than ‘responsibility for the work of others.’…” The transition from middle management to the ‘knowledge organization’ calls for acquiring additional skills, to “engender in them a spirit of performance”. There are five basic components in the work of a manager. They are: setting objectives, organizing, motivating and communicating, evaluating and personal development. (Drucker 1974, p. 389 & 400). In effect, this means a manager has to manage himself and others by objectives and controls to achieve organizational goals. Secondly, when a professional such as an accountant or an engineer makes the transition form professional to manager he/she has to reorient to accommodate perspectives of others in order to achieve organizational goals. To be able to manage oneself and others, a manager has to acquire skills for effective management; be able to identify issues in self-awareness and individual behavior; acquire effective communication, presentation, interviewing, time management, problem solving, decision-making, team formation and delegation skills. Certain areas of management such as R&D and marketing require innovation & creative thinking skills. While persuasion, networking and stress management skills smoothen inter-departmental work processes, skills in change management and managing cross-cultural issues are needed for managing technology changeovers, mergers and acquisitions and international businesses. The objective of this paper is to specifically consider the following skills with a view to making an inventory of achievements, mapping out a plan for bridging gaps, identifying barriers and required resources and evaluating progress: Effective management, Issues in self-awareness and individual behavior, Effective communication, presentation, Interviewing and time management skills, Problem solving and decision-making skills. Skills for effective management: The transition from skilled professional to a manager, as we have seen, in essence, is adapting to a leadership role. This calls for the acquisition of certain competences, which involve personal development and role development. The components of ‘personal development’ include changes in the individual from minor alterations in work routines to changing habits leading to major developments. Role development entails in far reaching consequential changes such as adapting to a new role to suit individual as well as organizational requirements such as changes in work schedules, changes in organizational goals et al. Before seeking to bring about behavioral changes in others, managers must first identify their intra and inter personal skills, which they have or should acquire to be effective in the new role. They are: Intra-personal skills: Self-awareness, self-monitoring and stress-management skills Inter-personal skills: Communication, motivation, team building, conflict management and feedback. Inter-organizational skills: Networking alliances Yukl mentions supporting, developing, recognizing, rewarding and conflict management as essential managerial behavior for “building and maintaining co-operative relationships.” These behaviors may have other objectives such as “to influence task motivation and facilitate effective completion of the task.” (Yukl 1998, p. 94) Drucker argues that ‘managing oneself’, essentially begins with making an inventory of individual strengths and asking the question: ‘how do I perform?’ While it is not possible to change oneself, one can change one’s way of working to improve performance. (Drucker 2005) Managers can learn effectiveness by adopting a pro-active approach of not just acquiring knowledge but to putting it to practice and holding themselves accountable for their actions. This involves four stages: understanding why events have occurred the way they did (reflection); thinking about the application of theoretical frameworks to practical situations and their consequences (conceptualization); implementing concepts to influence/motivate behavior (implementation) and evaluation of emotional and informational outcomes of plan implementation (immersion). Kolb’s questionnaire is a useful tool to analyze managerial learning style of these four aspects. The questionnaire has forty questions to be rated on a scale of 1 to 7. Some of the questions read as: “I often spend time thinking about what I am really trying to achieve”, “I am often more interested in novel ideas than in those that are practical” and “I regularly devote time to seeking feedback on my projects” etc. (Kolb 1985). The answers are then tabulated in ten rows of four columns each starting with answers to questions 1 - 4 in the first row. The questions thus arranged in four vertical columns pertain to ‘reflection’, ‘conceptualization’, ‘implementation’ and ‘immersion.’ Areas in which the manager scores high are his/her strengths and those in which he/she scores less than the mean score obviously need improvement. Issues in self-awareness and individual behavior: The objective of mapping self-awareness is to develop the ability to identify and diagnose important differences with others. This is the key to manage others. There are four aspects of self-awareness that should be considered for developing a successful managerial style. Values: These are personal standards or moral judgments (which may differ from practices), and are collectively a motivator for organizational success. Drucker argues that managing oneself also means living up to a system of personal values. (Drucker 2005). In his enlightening work “Nature of human values”, Rokeach, draws an exercise for prospective managers to work out. He lists two sets of values, instrumental and terminal to be ranked according to priority. (Rokeach 1973, p. 23-24). The instrumental values such as ambition, competence, honesty, rationality and open-mindedness are a means for achieving the terminal values - the end goals - such as accomplishment, recognition, wealth and prosperity. While there is no right or wrong sequencing the exercise is aimed at creating self-awareness. Cognitive style: A person’s personal characteristics are a function of current attitudes, past experience and future expectations, motives, values and interest groupings. Personal characteristics in turn determine the way in which individuals perceive, interpret and respond to information. While all these mental processes function simultaneously, telescoping the outcome in a way, managers should avoid falling into the trap of selective perception and judging others by stereotyping them. Attitudes: They determine a manager’s inclination towards change, adaptability and responsibility. Robbins et al define attitudes as “evaluative statements or judgements - either favourable or unfavourable - concerning objects, people or events.” (Robbins et al. 2001, p. 58). According to Robbins et al., attitudes have three components: the cognitive, which define value statements, the affective, which define emotions or feelings attached to the statements and the behavioral, which define the intended behavior. Interpersonal style: The interpersonal style/s of individuals determine preferences and interaction patterns between people at the workplace. There are six generally identified emotions as openly expressed emotions. They are anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust and surprise. The interpersonal style of a person combines values, cognitive style and attitudes but how these relate to others is what determines the relationship between them. Hogan and Champagne’s personal style inventory model is a useful tool to map an individual’s interpersonal relationship style. The instrument has 32 pairs of questions to be answered. The questions relate to eight broad personality traits, typed into four pairs: introversion, extroversion (I-E); intuition, sensing (N-S); thinking, feeling (T-F) and perceiving, judging (P-J). Both the questions in a pair are to be answered by awarding it a score of 0 - 5 and the results tabulated as per I-E, N-S, T-F and P-J traits. The questions, however, are not listed sequentially, so as to avoid any pre-conception. A score of between 20-21 in one of the dimensions indicate balance and a score of more than 30 indicates considerable strength in it. A person is typified based on the four dimensions in which he/she scored 22 or more, such as ESTP or ISTJ and so on. (Hogan and Champagne 1980) Effective communication: The key to organizational success is effective communication. Yet many organizations flounder because of poor understanding and practice of its mechanics. Broadly the elements of communication include the sender, the message, the medium, the receiver, and the feedback. The message is encoded by the language and culture of the sender and decoded by the language and culture of the receiver. While communication can be verbal or non-verbal (referred to as body language), often there is atmospheric distortion (or noise), which makes sending and receiving of messages more complicated. The process of communication is diagrammatically represented below: Shannon & Weaver Model cited in Clampitt 2001, p. 7. The objectives of communication are to share or seek information, to instruct or motivate. Effective communication provides significant benefits to the organization such as knowledge transfer, openness, trust and coordination. However, for communication to be effective both cognitive and behavioral skills are required. The following examples illustrate the point: Negotiators need cognitive and listening skills to understand and map the mind of the other side and analyze the dynamics of the negotiation process. They also need behavioral skills to clarify issues and put across their case convincingly. When addressing a group of people, cognitive skills help the communicator to understand the audience, anticipate potential discord and adapt to the situation. Behavioral skills help the communicator to engage the audience emotionally by throwing open the issue for a debate at an appropriate time. For ‘communication’ to achieve its objectives, such as understanding and action (in response to instructions) there should be feedback from both sides. Feedback may be formal or informal. An example of formal feedback is the annual appraisal for employees in which performance is rated against stated performance indicators. However, managers gain useful information by informal feedback, which encourages greater degree of openness and support between managers and employees. As the objective of feedback is to promote better understanding, for e.g. the gap between organizational expectations and performance, it should perforce be constructive. At times it may be necessary for the managers to take extra pains to explain issues, objectives and performance ratings etc to employees who may lack experience. Providing feedback to superiors may require tact (understanding their preferences) along with openness and factual information. (Gabarro et al. 1993) In either case feedback is a constructive consultative process. Presentation skills, interviewing skills and time management skills: Presentation skills: Appearing for an interview, addressing a gathering or making a business presentation all have one thing in common. They all require preparation and some amount of public speaking. Whetton et al. (2005) advocate the five ‘Ss’ strategy for better presentation skills. They include: Specific strategy: the presentation should be carefully prepared keeping the objective (information, persuasion etc.) and audience in view. Structure it sequentially. For example, if you are advocating a particular course of action, state the benefits, drawbacks and how the benefits outweigh drawbacks. Summing up: People are not likely to remember everything conveyed in a lengthy presentation, but the first and last points. Therefore sum up important points. Support with evidence: Statistics and other evidence may be provided in easy to read ‘power-point’ slides. Style: In order to enhance your presentation style, practice it thoroughly with visual aids so that you speak naturally and not as rehearsed. Maintain a confident body posture and eye contact. Invite questions at the end to clarify points you have covered. Feedback on the presentation may be collected with the help of an instrument similar to the one suggested by Lok (n.d.) in the “Workforce training and development manual.” Interviewing skills: When we select a candidate for a job, seek to convince a customer about our product or service or in performance appraisals, some kind of ‘interview’ is involved. Even in the first case we may have to ‘sell’ the services with the company as an attractive proposition. According to Messmer, “One of the most valuable and underrated interviewing skills is the ability to listen.” (Messmer 2005) Although, Messmer’s observation is in relation to candidates appearing for job interviews, it is equally applicable to other kinds of interviews as well. The following ground rules are appropriate for interviewing: Help the applicant relax. Begin by asking questions that doesn’t scare him/her off. As the interview progresses, you may move into more specific areas related to the job. Listen. Let the applicant talk. Use open-ended questions. Be consistent in asking all candidates similar questions so you can compare ‘like with like.’ Control the interview when it veers ‘off course’. Consider equal opportunities and affirmative action based on local industrial relations laws. Allow the candidate to ask a final question if he/she wishes. Sum up with your observations. It is not necessary to give away the result of the interview at this time. But in case you do and it is in the negative, try to explain your decision in such a way that it does not hurt the candidate’s self-esteem. In the case of performance appraisals it is necessary to set performance standards and communicate them clearly to the interviewee in advance; gather the required data and allow for two-way communication throughout the interview. The interview should be used as a positive instrument to motivate for better performance, allay fears and counseling in case of poor performance and not used as a ‘blame game’. Time management skills: The two keys to better time management are behavior and attitude. Some of the more important causes for poor time management are personal disorganization, ineffective delegation, inability to say ‘no’ and management by crisis, which follows personal disorganization. Covey advocates prioritizing work into what he calls the “Time Management Matrix”, ‘important’, ‘urgent’, ‘not-important’ and ‘not-urgent’ in that order. Taking up ‘important’ work first, generally, obviates the necessity to making it ‘urgent’ later, thus avoiding ‘crisis management’. In fact according to Covey, the ‘important but not urgent’ type of work is related to most strategic actions such as training, goal setting and relationship building. By taking it up first, one can avoid ‘putting out fires later.’(Covey 1989, p. 151) Problem solving and decision-making: Problem solving and decision-making are like the obverse and reverse of a coin. Solving problems often entails in choosing between alternatives by critically analyzing and weighing options that may have far reaching consequences. The first step in solving a problem is to clearly define it. The second is generating alternative courses of action. The third step is to carefully evaluate choices and choose the best possible keeping the long-term perspective in view. Implementing the choice and collecting feedback is the final step. Bonabeau argues that while for experienced executives, intuition plays an important role over-reliance on it in complex situations may be counter-productive. On the other hand the “new decision-support tools” such as computers “don't eliminate human intuition; they harness its power while remedying its most pernicious flaws.” (Bonabeau 2003) Carlopio et al. identified four conceptual blocks that hinder creative problem solving: They are: Constance: Vertical thinking; one thinking language Misplaced commitment: Stereotyping based on past experience; ignoring commonalities. Compression: distinguishing figure from ground; artificial constraints Complacency: Non-inquisitiveness and non-thinking. (Carlopio et al 2005, p. 245) There are four stages in creative thinking: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. In order to forestall obstacles that pre-empt these processes the following tactics may be adopted: Improve problem definition Invert the familiar and strange Elaborate on the definition Reverse the definition Generate more alternatives Defer judgment Expand current alternatives Combine unrelated attributes Many organizations institute standard operating procedures (SOPs) to resolve many routinely encountered problems. At times, even such organizations may have to take tough decisions at times. However, adopting a procedural approach to solving problems will enhance the chances of taking positive and beneficial decisions and avoid pitfalls. Bibliographic References: Bonabeau, Eric 2003, ‘Don't trust your gut.’ Harvard Business Review. Vol. 81. No. 5 May 2003, pp. 116-123. Carlopio, J, Andrewartha, G & Armstrong, H 2005, Developing Management Skills, Pearson Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forest, NSW Clampitt, Phillip G 2001, ‘How managers communicate’, in Communicating for managerial effectiveness. (2nd Ed.). Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif. Ch. 1, pp. 3-19 Covey, Stephen R 1989, The 7 habits of highly effective people, Simon & Schuster, New York. Drucker, Peter F 1974, ‘The Manager’s Work and Jobs’, in Management - Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. Allied Publishers Private Ltd., New Delhi, pp. 389-506. Drucker, Peter F 2005, ‘Managing oneself.’ Harvard Business Review. Vol. 83. No. 1. January 2005, pp. 100-109 Gabarro, John J & Kotter, John P 1993, ‘Managing your boss.’ Harvard Business Review. Vol. 71. No. 3. May/June 1993, pp. 150-157 Hogan, R Craig & Champagne, David W 1980, ‘Personal style inventory’, The Annual handbook for group facilitators. Kolb, David A 1985, Learning Style Inventory: self-scoring inventory and interpretation booklet. Boston, Mass. McBer and Company. Lok, Peter (n.d.), ‘Presentation assessment’, Workforce Training and Development Pty Ltd Manual. Messmer, Max 2005, ‘Five common interviewing mistakes and how to avoid them.’ Strategic finance. April 2005, pp. 12-13 Robbins, et al. 2001. Organisational Behaviour (3rd Ed.) Pearson Education, Sydney. Rokeach, Milton 1973, ‘Ranking your values’, in Nature of human values. Free Press. New York, pp. 23-24 Whetton, D & Cameron, K 2005, Developing management skills, Pearson. New Jersey. Yukl, Gary A 1998, ‘Specific behaviours for managing relations’, in Leadership in organizations. (4th Ed.). Prentice Hall International. London, pp. 94-116 Read More