USA: +1 415 256 4347 
Sign in
Name of Student:
Institutional Affiliation:
Contents
2.1 Assessing My Own Management Skills Performance. 2
2.2. Analyzing My Personal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 6
2.3 Setting and Prioritizing Objectives and Targets to Develop My Own Potential 7
4.1 Explaining How My Own Managerial and Personal Skills Will Support Career Development. 9
Introduction
In today’s challenging organizational environment, managers are increasingly facing the challenge of making improvements on their personal and managerial skills. In many cases, a self-assessment is all it takes for an employee to identify his strengths and weaknesses as a manager. Such assessments can also be used to determine the measures that a manager need to take in order to enhance productivity, to develop other people, to establish inter-group collaborative networks, as well as to support his own career development.
In this paper, I set out to assess my own management skills and to analyze my personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In this essay, I also set and prioritize objectives and targets to develop my own potential. Moreover, the essay provides an explanation on how my managerial and personal skills will support career development. Lastly, the essay reviews my career and personal development needs, current performance, and future needs, based on which I deduce a development plan.
2.1 Assessing My Own Management Skills Performance
The task of assessing one’s own performance in terms of management skills is increasingly being viewed in the context of discourse on performance appraisal (Fletcher, 2001). In this discourse, a distinction has been made between the nature of the performance being appraised and the process being followed in that appraisal. In terms of content, the most common approach entails measuring the manager’s achievement against the goals set out for him. In terms of process, a distinction is normally made between self-assessment and assessment by the human resources department. In this paper, focus is on the assessment of my own personal and managerial skills.
One area that is worth focusing on is the ability to demonstrate self-awareness in the process of executing various management activities. One of the best indicators of congruence between the ratings provided by the HR department and self-assessment ratings is the demonstration of a greater sense of self-awareness (Fletcher & Baldry, 2000). I consider myself an excellent performer in the realm of self-awareness because I tend to improve rather effortlessly wherever the need for change has been highlighted by my organization through feedback.
One of the ways in which I can assess my own management skills performance is by examining how my way of communicating with my subordinates has been changing in tune with the dynamics of the contemporary organizational environment. In recent times, organizational practice has been characterized by a shift from the top-down communication model to the team-working, HRM-driven model (See Figure 1 below). Consequently, managers have had to adapt to this situation abandoning the “telling” approach in favor of a “consultative” approach (Dransfield, 2000). I, too, have changed my management style in an attempt to fit into today’s organizational context; I have started focusing a lot on listening skills with a view to encourage my subordinates to express their views freely.
Figure 1: An illustration showing two communications systems (top-down and multi-channel HRM approaches) (Source: Dransfield, 2000).
In assessing my own management skills performance, I intend to use Campbell & Lee’s (1988) four-step model of self-appraisal. In this model, an individual should begin with an assessment of his own cognitions or ideas and beliefs regarding the job’s requirements. One must know what a job entails to be able to achieve the stipulated goals. The second step involves assessing how these cognitions influence the individual’s behavior as he endeavors to undertake the tasks needed to attain specific goals. The third step involves judging how well one’s behavior has contributed to the desired results. Lastly, the individual reflects on his cognitions about the requirements of the job to determine whether he needs to change them.
In the course of my participation in various management activities, my beliefs and ideas have been shaped strongly by the desire to increase productivity at my workplace. I have been emphasizing on collaboration among groups and teams as well as the ability by individuals to reach their targets on time while at the same time adhering to stipulated standards and procedures. To a certain extent, these cognitions have influenced my efforts to give instructions as well as consult with peers and subordinates on a wide range of issues. However, some challenges tend to arise whenever my peers seem not to share exactly the same beliefs as demonstrated in their behavior. For example, different managers hold different views regarding the best way of striking a balance between organizational culture and organizational effectiveness. On my part, I have been unable to overlook aspects of organizational culture in the pursuit of increased productivity and quality standards.
Regarding the third step of the self-assessment process, I have observed that my management skills have greatly contributed to the company’s productivity. At this point, I may need to single out my communication and listening skills, which have enabled me to consult widely before making critical decisions. Specifically, my listening skills have enable me to create rapport with leaders of virtually all teams working under my supervision. This has greatly enabled me to achieve my objectives, especially inter-group collaboration. The last step of the self-assessment involves reflecting on my initial cognitions about the job’s requirements and making a decision on whether I should change them. In this regard, I initially used to believe that it is easy to balance between the requirements of organizational culture and organizational effectiveness. I used to think that my management skills can enable me to maintain this balance, but I now realize that this is not the case. Thus, feel the need to change my perceptions regarding the shared values of an organization and how they contribute to overall productivity and organizational effectiveness.
2.2. Analyzing My Personal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
As a manager, I have identified a number of strengths that have greatly contributed to the level of effectiveness with which I have been able to attain the stipulated goals. These strengths include listening skills, the ability to maintain assertiveness, promotion of inter-group collaboration, coordination of diverse activities, and the ability to develop people. Each of these strengths has been widely discussed in contemporary management research. For instance, the ability to maintain assertiveness has been identified as a major determinant of one’s management style (Armstrong, 2011).
My main personal weaknesses as a manager include a poor understanding of organizational culture, difficulties in forging collaborative networks with peers at the managerial level, and inability to manage effectively the competing interests of diverse stakeholder groups. Harrison & Freeman (1999) provides numerous insights on the challenges that many managers face due to competing interests of stakeholders as well as ways of solving. I intend to be keen on examining such sources of information to learn about how best to accommodate competing interests in the process of managing various aspects of the production process.
Moreover, I have identified two main personal opportunities as a manager, one of them being the acquisition of management skills relating to change management. In this regard, I have an opportunity to act as a change agent in my organization. The second opportunity manifests itself in new areas of learning, whereby I stand a chance of gaining new knowledge regarding the place of organizational culture in the contemporary organization.
In terms of personal threats, the first issue that I have identified is that rapid changes are unfolding today in the realm of managerial practices. I often find it somewhat difficult to keep pace with these changes mainly because of the need to acquire new management skills. In today’s globalized world, an effective manager must respond to organizational change by receiving specialized training. Yet my current commitments as a manager sometimes put me at a disadvantage during the training process due to time constraints and in some cases lack of specialized knowledge. The other major threat takes the form of barriers to change within the organization. To increase productivity, I may need to introduce new models of inter-group collaboration, yet top executives may be opposed to such new structures because of concerns about offsetting the existing power balance within the management structure of the organization. Thirdly, I face the threat of internal pressures to operate within the bounds of the organizational culture even if this will be done at the expense of productivity optimization. Lastly, I continue to face external pressures to increase productivity. However, as literature shows, such kind of pressure is one of the inevitable challenges that managers must learn to handle on a day-to-day basis if they hope to be effective (Harrison & Freeman, 1999).
2.3 Setting and Prioritizing Objectives and Targets to Develop My Own Potential
In an effort to develop my own potential, I intend to set and prioritize four core objectives and targets, which include managing competing interests of diverse stakeholder groups effectively, enhancing my understanding of organizational culture, forging collaborative networks with peers at the managerial level, and improving my management skills in relation to diverse aspects of the production process. Regarding the management of competing interests of diverse stakeholder groups, I will focus on managerial skills that emphasize the critical interdependence among the organization, its investors, employees, customers, constituencies, and communities.
One way to emphasize this interdependence is to embrace network effects and interactions instead of focusing primarily on simple contractual exchanges (Post, Preston & Sachs, 2002). Such an approach helps managers to embrace the concept of a cooperative organization that is founded rational principles. The resulting stakeholder view of the organization can facilitate the creation of not just immense organizational wealth but also invaluable managerial experience on how to address the needs of diverse stakeholder groups. However, Hillman & Keim (2001) warn that it is imperative for managers to limit their scope to the firm’s primary stakeholders if they hope increase their chances of success in creating immense shareholder wealth. For this reason, my focus will be primarily on promoting the interests of the organization’s primary stakeholders.
As I seek to enhance my understanding of organizational culture, I will be on the lookout for aspects of organizational culture that can act as a barrier to the acquisition of new managerial skills. Indeed, organizational is increasingly being cited as a major barrier in firms’ efforts to leverage intellectual assets (De Long & Fahey, 2000). I will focus on four areas where the influence of organizational culture manifests itself at the workplace. The first manifestation involves shared assumptions about what the goals of the organization are. The second assumption is about relationships between individual employees and the organization, such that deeply embedded assumptions about who should portray certain managerial skills may be deeply embedded among the members of the organization. Thirdly, I will focus on culture as an enabler of or hindrance to social interaction. Lastly, I will assess the role of organizational culture as a formidable force that governs knowledge sharing and skill acquisition across the organization.
Regarding the task of forging collaborative networks with peers at the managerial level throughout the production process, I will heed the advice provided by Thomson & Perry (2006), who point out that the dimensions that managers should focus on to become effective collaborators include norms, governance, administration, mutuality, and organizational autonomy. I intend to analyze these dimensions in terms of the complex, variable interactions among them that are normally influenced by both personal circumstances of the manager as well as the environmental context in which the organization operates. Finally, I intend to focus on synthesizing insights from diverse mind-sets to create a comprehensible whole out of a confusing world in which I have been operating.
4.1 Explaining How My Own Managerial and Personal Skills Will Support Career Development
The managerial and personal skills that I have chosen to prioritize will serve as crucial predictors of career advancement (Tharenou, 1997). Moreover, the skills will enable me to promote both equity and productivity, which are crucial enablers of career development in any organization. For example, the ability to coordinate diverse activities will expose me to numerous opportunities for rapid hierarchical advancement. Similarly, my ability to promote inter-group collaboration will be of utmost value in my efforts to achieve career progress particularly at lower managerial levels.
By promoting personal skills, I will overcome numerous career-related challenges, including role ambiguity and turnover intentions. Moreover, personal learning plays the all-important role of mediating between the mentoring role and organizational outcomes (Lankau & Scandura, 2002). On the other hand, relational role job learning will be of utmost relevance in increasing my understanding of the connectedness of my job as a manager to other people’s jobs. The core elements of relational job learning that I will focus on to achieve this objective include management of diverse stakeholder groups, understanding of organizational culture, forging collaborative networks, and improving managerial skills at the operational front.
Additionally, the skills will also enable me to survive the uncertainties of contemporary trends in career development, which are characterized by downsizing and flattening of organizational structures. In this case, emphasis should be on personal skills, which are instrumental in defining my self-concept (Schein, 1996). A self-concept will be an indispensable tool for enabling me to identify and promote self-perceived talents. It will also act as a career anchor by virtue of helping me to reconcile life and occupational experience thereby providing a stabilizing force that will guide my choices relating to work-life balance and self-development. Moreover, the acquisition of these skills blends well into the current corporate practices that continue to stress the importance of building a learning organization. After all, managers should always at the forefront of these transformative initiatives, meaning that they should lead the way in the acquisition of requisite personal and managerial skills.
4.2 Reviewing My Career and Personal Development Needs, Current Performance and Future Needs to Deduce a Career Development Plan
My career and personal development needs are anchored on the need to achieve the desired organizational goals and exploit emerging career opportunities while at the same time overcoming task-related weaknesses and threats. I intend to become a manager who is not only good at listening to people and promoting inter-group collaboration but also one who can overcome the aforementioned personal threats, including organizational change, lack of specialized knowledge that can I can use as a basis for further managerial training, internal pressures arising from an inaccurate understanding of organizational culture, and external pressures to increase productivity. Going forward, the main opportunities that I need to exploit are the acquisition of management skills relating to change management and the pursuit of new areas of learning on the complexities of organizational culture in the context of the contemporary organization. At the same time, the development plan that I deduce from this analysis should seek to address the aforementioned weaknesses, especially the management of competing interests that are being projected by diverse stakeholder groups.
In terms of current performance, I would award myself an average rating, an indication that I have a lot of work to do before I can gain considerable confidence in my career progress. Whereas the current strengths may be highly rated in a lower-level managerial context, they can be considered grossly inadequate by middle-level and senior managers. Thus, my future career needs have a lot to do with improving my managerial skills with a view to enhance my career-related competitiveness. Consequently, the career development plan that I deduce is made up of three pillars: evaluation of past performance to identify the most appropriate career path, the present pursuit of a definite-career development goals, and participation in forward-looking career training programs aimed at improving career competitiveness in today’s highly dynamic workplace.
Conclusion
In conclusion, based on an assessment of my own managerial skills, I consider myself an excellent performer particularly in the realm of self-awareness. This is because I tend to improve rather effortlessly wherever the need for change has been highlighted by my organization through feedback. My main strengths include listening skills, the ability to maintain assertiveness, promotion of inter-group collaboration, coordination of diverse activities, and the ability to develop people. However, there are several weaknesses that I intend to prioritize in an attempt to develop my potential, and they include managing competing interests of diverse stakeholder groups effectively, enhancing my understanding of organizational culture, forging collaborative networks with peers at the managerial level, and improving my management skills in relation to diverse aspects of the production process. As I endeavor to improve my career development prospects, I seek to reorient my managerial and personal skills to enable me to survive the uncertainties of contemporary trends in career development, which are characterized by downsizing and flattening of organizational structures. It is against this backdrop that my career development plan addresses past performance, present career-related efforts, and future-oriented managerial training needs.
References
Armstrong, M (2011), How to be an Even Better Manager: A Complete A-Z of Proven Techniques and Essential Skills, Kegan Page Publishers, London.
Campbell, D & Lee, C (1988), ‘Self-Appraisal in Performance Evaluation: Development versus Evaluation’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 302-314.
De Long, D & Fahey, L (2000), ‘Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management’, Academy of Management Perspectives, vol. 14 no. 4, pp. 113-127.
Dransfield, R (2000), Human Resource Management, Heinemann Educational Publishers, Oxford.
Fletcher, C & Baldry, C (2000), ‘A study of individual differences and self-awareness in the context of multi-source feedback’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 303–319.
Fletcher, C (2001), ‘Performance appraisal and management: The developing research agenda’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, vol. 74, pp. 473–487.
Harrison, J & Freeman, R (1999), ‘Stakeholders, social responsibility, and performance: Empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives’, Academy of management Journal, vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 479-485.
Hillman, A & Keim, G (2001), ‘Shareholder Value, Stakeholder Management, and Social Issues: What’s the Bottom Line?’ Strategic Management Journal, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 125-139
Lankau, M & Scandura, T (2002), ‘An Investigation of Personal Learning in Mentoring Relationships: Content, Antecedents, and Consequences’, Academy of Management Journal, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 779-790.
Post, J, Preston, L & Sachs, S (2002), ‘Managing the extended enterprise’, California Management Review, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 6-28.
Schein, E (1996), ‘Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21st century’, Academy of Management Perspectives, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 80-88.
Tharenou, P (1997), ‘Explanations of Managerial Career Advancement’, Australian Psychologist, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. pp. 19-28.
Thomson, A & Perry, J (2006), ‘Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box’, Public Administration Review, vol. 3, pp. 20-32.
