Leaders as Learners - Assignment Example

School: Topic: Leaders as Learners Lecturer: When creating talent management portfolio, two important areas of learning and development that will be focused for leaders are organization development and leading human resource (HR). Organization development is expected to be a form of learning that is translated across all structures and facets of the organization (Senge, 1997). By implication, the leader ought to learn and develop the act of developing the organization as a collective body rather than focusing on specific areas only.

Within the modern business environment, Silzer and Dowell (2010) saw the solution to core growth among organizations a collective approach that ought to be translated in what leaders do. Leading HR is also a very important area of learning and development that is to be inculcated into the leaders as a way of helping them know how to use people to achieve organizational growth and development. This is because the growth agenda is not expected to be carried out single handedly by the leader.The areas of learning and development identified above are most likely to change if the same talent management portfolio was being prepared or non-leaders.

The reason for this assertion is that, unlike leaders, non-leaders do not bare the direct responsibility of facilitating growth. This is because such non-leaders do not have control over the resources of the organization, including the human resource. It is therefore important that whiles developing talent management portfolio for non-leaders, learning and development responsibility tasks that will be seen as over and above the control and jurisdiction of employees are eliminated (Martin & Schmidt, 2010).

Once this is done, the hierarchies and power structure that exists within the organization can be held intact whiles promoting learning and development among all internal stakeholders of the organizations. As it has been explained above, learning and development among leaders must not be restricted to job-specific areas. Rather, the learning and development that takes place must be as holistic as possible. It can be expected that when learning and development is made to be job-specific, leaders and other people engaged in the learning will only be seeking to develop and emphasize on the areas they are best learned and trained in (Senge, 1997).

For example a leader with background in marketing, when made to engage in job-related learning and development in marketing may neglect other functions within the organization such as production. Meanwhile, it takes the collective achievement of all roles and functions within the organization to measure the success of the organization. Instead of focusing on role-related learning therefore, it is important that learning and development will be more holistic. A mental model may generally be referred to as the thought process of a person about how things work in the real world (Silzer & Dowell, 2010).

In learning and development for leaders, there are a number of techniques that can be used to shape or reframe the mental models of leaders to focus more on the overall mentality of the organization. One such technique that has been practiced over the years and proven to work very effectively is the use of information filters. This is because information filters have been noted to cause selective perception, limiting what the leader perceives as workable in sustaining the growth and development of the organization (Martin & Schmidt, 2010).

One way to do this as part of the learning and development for leaders is by indoctrinating them with the personal and individual beliefs and systems of the organization that he or she leads. This way, the mental model of the leader will be reshaped towards what the organization upholds. ReferencesMartin, J., & Schmidt, C. (2010). How to keep your top talent. Harvard Business Review, 88(5), 54-61.Senge, P. M. (1997). Communities of leaders and learners. Harvard Business Review, 75(5), 30-32.Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. E. (Eds.). (2010).

Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.