Leadership and Management Development - Essay Example

leadership and management development al Affiliation) Introduction The well being of the society is dependant partly onthe efficient and effective performance of the organizations, businesses and institutions of all kinds. For effectiveness and efficiency in the organizations, there must be adequate, excellent, and accurate leadership and management skills and capabilities. These capabilities and skills can be developed or learnt by the major parties interested in improving the society’s well being. Therefore, the requirement to perform as per the expectations of the society obligates organizations, governments and their agencies, and individual investors to develop specific skills that define their relation to the belief that performance is reliant on the effective and efficient management skills and development (Carmichael, 2011). This trend highlights the current substantial investments in management and leadership education and training, the development of activities that enhance these skills and the construction of initiatives to address the need for corporate involvement in management of leadership. Nevertheless, in both regional and global business scenes, management holds a decisive and significant role in deciding the performance of the organization. However, other factors such as accountability, human resource management, social corporate responsibility, and public relations play a critical role in the success of all types of organizations. Definitions, objective, and purpose of LMD Organizational development, management, and leadership are all part of a similar process. This process constitutes enhancing the capacity of the organization and the individuals within these organizations in order to achieve the goals of the organization. These factors are closely intertwined to the strategic mission, hence receiving support from all the systems in an organization. The effectiveness of the development plan requires it to have exclusive integration with other processes within the organizational framework, such as the performance management, management planning, job selection, recognition, rewards and mistakes systems. Therefore, leadership involves the direction that an individual or a group of individuals gives to other members of an organization. The role of leadership often coincides with the organization’s expected goals within a stipulated time. Leaders in any organization are often driven by the desire to perform to the advantage of the organization, using their capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of other people within the organization. Management on the other hand refers to the capability to oversee and plan the organization in line with the available resources towards achieving the corporate strategy (Carmichael, 2011). Management often involves coordination of departments within the organization, ensuring the existence of smooth transition of activities from the production to the supply of the products within the organization. Managers are accountable for the failures and success of any organization and this defines the need for all organizations to employ competitive and creative managers who can supervise the organization through different scenarios that define the industry within which the organization operates. The development of leadership and management in many markets consists of a complex mix of higher and further education, informal and formal training by employers. The nature of management and leadership keeps changing as the character of the business environment evolves. Therefore, leadership and management development involves upgrading the skills and capabilities of managers and leaders in the business to meet the competitive threshold of the business environment. The objective of this process is to improve the efficiency of the organization and enhance the effectiveness of service delivery towards the satisfaction of the society and the target group. The purpose of leadership and management development is to ensure that an organization maintains relevance and competence in the business environment, more so with the changing environments that often threaten to derail the operations, reputation, and image of the organization. Effectiveness of LMD and link to performance The leadership and management development processes helps in developing talents within and without the organization. Talent management plays an important role in the employee and employer relations, with the retention of talent solely dependent on the capability of the employer to manage talent. By applying an effective approach towards the development of the management and leadership within its frameworks, an organization enables employees to be more creative and innovative to the advantage of the organization. Development of talent involves rewarding the leading strategies by the managers and leaders by implementing them into the organizational strategy. In addition to developing talent, leadership and management development helps to encourage enthusiasm and commitment within the organization. In many situations that the organization registers failure due to lapses in management, many employees fail to acknowledge the need to develop the available human resources at the disposal of the organization. Nonetheless, continuous education of the executives in the organization enables the organization to be more flexible and knowledgeable about the trends in the industry, therefore encouraging the employees to commit their energies towards achieving the goals of the organization. With development of leadership and management, new strategies arise that enhance efficiency within the organization. With efficiency, the production levels increase and the supply in the markets increase relatively with the increase in production. This motivates the stakeholders to invest more in the executive education as a means of remaining competent in the industry (Carmichael, 2011). Team building and group work form a critical part in the competitive environment of the business. Diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds define the nature of various employee work forces within different organizations. In previous years, many organizations failed to recognize the importance of diversity within the workforce. Given the rise of internationalization and globalization of businesses, diversity in the human resource pool is an instrument that every organization protects and values. Management and leadership development is a tool that enables organizations to incorporate teambuilding in organizations in order to embrace diversity and retain the different talents that originate for the different backgrounds around the world. This process enables the management to outline and eliminate such factors as resistance, alienation, and disappointment amongst the minority groups within the organization. Through this process, all the minds of stakeholders are engineered towards the goals of the organization. In general, good leadership is a recipe for the growth and sustainability of an organization. LMD as a strategic process Many individuals believe that it is necessary to analyze the current market strategically, draw clear anticipations of the future changes in the market, and derive a plan from these factors to construct a strategy for the business. It is often difficult, however, to predict into the future. The strategy of an organization, therefore, determines the scope and direction of the organization in the long term. Strategy in an organization is responsible for commissioning the communication within the organization, defining the position of the organization within the industry and determining how to utilize the resources of the organization in creating a competitive advantage over the other organizations in the industry. The leadership and management development is a strategic process that in involves aligning the strategies of the organization to the processes of management. It is important to achieve a strategic fit in aligning the goals of the organization to the management of the organization. In this process, the corporate strategies have to align to the operational strategies to achieve a perfect strategic fit. The corporate strategies involve the production at relatively low costs to maximize the profits of the organization. Operational strategies on the other hand incorporate the production of quality products that meet the standards of competing in the industry. In many organizations, the corporate and operation strategy often collide. The shareholders, who formulate the corporate strategy, are unaware of the conditions and regulations that enable the products of an organization to achieve certain standards that guarantee maximum profits from the market. On the other hand, the human resource managers, who formulate the operation strategy, are unaware of the budgetary constraints that may hinder the provision of a certain quality of goods that are desirable to the bulk of consumers in a certain industry (Carmichael, 2011). Therefore, management and leadership development plays a fundamental role in linking the two strategies together, hence achieving a strategic fit. This strategic process involves formulation of a communication channel to convey the concerns of each department. With effective management, the human resource managers can adjust their production to suit the budget of the organization. On the other hand, effective communication and development of training enables the shareholders to allocate more resources towards the production of a certain quality of products and services. In addition to that, this process defines the leadership pipeline of management, dividing them as first line management, corporate management, and operational management. This division of roles ensures respect for hierarchy in the organization and eliminates managerial bureaucracy in the organization. Talent management including link to management development cycle Talent management involves the recruitment, development, and retention of talent within an organization. The leadership and management strategy is effective when it is integrated into the management development cycles. The management development cycle involves the operation of the organization along the leadership pipeline. In the leadership pipeline, the three levels of management include the first line management, the middle or operational management and the corporate or senior management. In linking the talent management to the management development cycles, it is important to highlight the importance of leadership and management development on each of the levels of management in the leadership pipeline. The corporate strategy of the organization involves the coordination of the several units that exists within the organization. This strategy supports the value of the individual units within the business. Talent management enables the organization to develop strong internal competencies that facilitate the organization to meet the departmental requirements. Through leadership and management, the corporate strategy is able to incorporate resources and technologies in these units, thus enabling the top management to raise the capital cost effectively, and to build a reputable corporate brand. At the operational level of management, talent management enables the organization to identify the current and future gaps in skills. This is through succession planning that enables the human resource mangers to adopt such policies as performance review and appraisal. This talent management strategy has to be updated over time, as the competitive analysis is important in defining the effectiveness of the business unit. Through management development, the business unit managers rediscover their core competencies, and use these factors in deriving suitable criteria to meet the needs of customers and the society. At the first line level of the organization, the individual career plans are identified and developed. Consequently, this group of employees has the bulk of ideas that may provide an innovative edge of the organization over its competitors (Carmichael, 2011). The organization should have a distinctive development and learning project that each individual or group undertakes to develop his or her talents. It is from this point that further monitoring and reviews of the employee performance and evaluation follows. This process of talent management in all sectors of the organization departments plays a critical role in defining the flexibility of the management in adapting to changes in the business environment. Performance measurement and assessment It is important to measure the performance of the employees. Measurement guides in evaluating, controlling, budgeting, motivating, promoting, celebrating, and improving the employees. Therefore, performance measurement has a number of benefits that include exclusive control and monitoring over the activities of all the departments in the organization. Furthermore, it encourages improvement of individual employees by maximizing on the effectiveness of the improvement effort. In addition, assessment of the employees’ performance permits the organization to achieve a suitable alignment of the individual input to the goals of the organization. Once the individual mindset is aligned to the organizational performance, each outstanding employee is rewarded according to the input he or she makes in the final output of the organization in the industry. A number of competency frameworks exist to measure the performance of the business. The balanced scorecard is the most applicable competency framework that involves perspectives from the financial, customer, internal and growth outlooks. The economic value added, on the other hand, deals mainly with the financial performance of the organization. This competency framework focuses majorly on the provision of better motivation and information to the managers for better decision making in order to increase the shareholder confidence. Apart from the two frameworks, the activity based costing competency framework is a development structure that aims at providing advanced insight on the allocation of overhead costs to individual customers and products. This framework connects the expenses of the resources at the disposal of the company to the activities that the company undertakes in provision of products and services to the society. Through this framework, an organization will ensure that expenses will flow from the resources to the activities before transformation into products that will be consumed by the market. Moreover, the Quality Management Competency Framework involves assessing the quality of products before conveying them into the market (Carmichael, 2011). Over the past years, many multinational companies have overlooked the need to assess the quality of their final products, hence losing a bulk of their traditional loyal customer base. In contrast, the quality management framework enables the organization to assess and establish the quality of the goods and services that the organization produces. This framework enables the improvement of the quality of products, further encouraging the diversification of the company into other sectors of the economy. Evidently, the quality management framework is responsible for cultivating the spirit of innovation amongst the management and employee work force within the organization. Training and development activities as part of LMD The activity of learning is continuous and gradual. Similarly, the development and training activities of the organization change depending on the current trends on the business environment. The development of employees requires an approach that is consistent, flexible, tolerant, and educative. It is the responsibility of the organization to undertake the process of training and developing employees in line with the tenets of the leadership and management development process. However, the development of the employees depends on the collective responsibility of both the individual employee and the management of the organization. The success of the leadership and management development activities depend on a myriad of factors. The management should establish a relevant job description that forms the basis of the managerial training and development. Upon realizing talent, the organization should provide the regular and appropriate training to these prospective leaders in order to shape them for the competencies of the job. The organization should encourage managers to develop individual plans by incorporating their ideas into the operation of the organization. In the process of undergoing difficulty, it is the obligation of the management to support the managers and leaders in a bid to show their importance to the survival of the organization. Nonetheless, a number of training and development activities define the nature of LMD. Individual development planning involves the preparation of a prospective plan by the individual employee by the help of a qualified human resource manager. It focuses mainly on the requirements of the individual, based in the position of the organization. This process involves self-assessment, the evaluation of the work environment and the current position of the organization, the identification of activities that will oversee the development process and the implementation of the action plan. On the other hand, cost effective methods for the development and training of managers involves the suitability of the process to the organization context, the collective agreements and the contracts of employment. Such methods include on-the-job experience through assignments, forums, field trips, job expansion, job aids, job shadowing, job rotation, peer-assisted learning alerts, and special projects. Relationships and feedbacks entail building an operational framework that links various employees to human resource managers through mentoring, coaching, performance appraisal and networking (Carmichael, 2011). Classroom training envisages such activities as workshops, seminars, and courses. In contrast, off the job learning involves an individual effort to train and develop skills through self-study, professional associations, reading groups, and enrollment for part time courses at colleges or universities. Training and development activities help in the development of the management cycle as it equips the managers with information about the various working systems of other competing entities in the industry. In addition to that, through collective activities, the talents of various individuals are connected to produce an effective working environment. Summary and Conclusion In this report, the role of leadership and management development comes into perspective. The current tends of organizational involvement in the processes of training and developing talents are highlighted in this report. Furthermore, the strategies that define the operations of an organization are distinguished in this report, with respect to the challenges that the managers face in linking the operational strategy to the corporate strategy of the organization. Moreover, this report contains the need to transform the organizational frameworks to the relevant levels that are able to guarantee competition within the industry. To improve the organizational performance, this paper highlights the practices of the managers, identifying the reason behind the push for cultivation of ethical practices in management of talents within the employee work force. The organizational strategy is always to improve the experience of the target group enjoying its products and services. It is the core responsibility of managers to oversee the process of linking the cost effectiveness of the production process to the supply of quality products. The effectiveness of this link guarantees the organization a competitive advantage over other organizations in the industry (Carmichael, 2011). However, as depicted in this report, the collision of the operational strategy and the corporate strategy often creates a stalemate in many organizations that do not invest adequately in development and training of managers and leaders. Therefore, to eliminate this problem, the LMD must be aligned with the organizational strategy to guarantee its effectiveness. In conclusion, it is a challenge to link the performance of the company solely to managerial competency alone. However, the management of talent in the organization creates an ample atmosphere for internal growth in competition within the organization. Coupled with adequate motivation, training, and development, the process of LMD can provide significant advantages to the success of an organization. Reference Carmichael, J. (2011). Leadership and management development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More