Management Development Process – Leadership Learning And Development

Management Development

Discuss about the Management Development Process – Leadership Learning and Development.

The effectiveness and proficiency of a system along with manpower has an implacable impact on the organisation’s performance. The efficiency of the management both in the private and public sector considered to have significant importance determining its success or failure. Considering that organisations across different industries have started to pay more attention on upgrading the skills and knowledge of its mangers. In other words, setting higher performance level of these managers through management development practices.

The shifting nature of the organisation demands a higher level of competencies that may sometime evolves naturally in the system or mostly introduced to the mangers through development and training programs. The essay would discuss numerous theories and models suggested by scholars to support achieving a successful management development. A blend of both education and experience is required to propose change in the traditional management philosophy. Therefore, mangers would need a balance of technical, conceptual and social knowledge through management development programs (Werner & DeSimone., 2009).

The study will discuss the conceptual understanding of ‘new global economy’, its implication on the organization and over the managers leads to their development initiative. Also conducts a critical evaluation over the existing Management Development models & theories and extent to which they create better managers in view of business perspective.

The concept of management development has been explained in numerous ways with different perspective of management, human resource and leadership. It is said to be a structural process through which managers enhance their skills, knowledge and competencies using formal and informal learning methods (Wexley & Baldwin, 1986). These methods idealise to improvise the performance of both organisation or at individual level. According A Carter (2002), the changing nature of organization in the face of technology or striving competition, management development faces change in demand creating continuous upheavals in the organisation.

Every work in the organization is majorly concerned with being effective. One of the key factor of achieving organizational effectiveness is a successful management of introducing change and innovation. A learning organization comes to the picture to advocate and implement change in the management procedures. The process of Management Development and leadership is majorly considered as a process of learning for managers and leaders through recognised opportunities provided by the processes (Sadler-Smith, 2011). As cited by Boyatzis, (1982) a manager is a person whose concept of the organisation in based on the competitive advantage, the work of manager is starts from planning till providing results. On the other hand, leader is the one who has organisational philosophy rooted in its practice and mission; he inspires, motivate as well as can implement change in the system (Campbell, et al., 2003).

Purpose of Management Development

The three most important factors those account for maximum organisational success are Role Concept; it is about how an individual seek his or her approach towards organisational goal and invest time accordingly; Management/leadership skills, the extent to which an individual has upgraded its skills and Inner-game of management explains the inner mind-set that an individual need to controls, source of self-esteem etc. therefore, management development intervention may cover all the areas such as planning , organising, implementing of strategies, coordinating and resources of people, depending upon the nature of the organisation, management role as well as factors such as career planning, etc (Burgoyne, et al., 2004).

As quoted by CIPD, (2014) The word leadership mostly interchange with the term management but it reflects only few features advocating the manager’s role, also they are not always associated with the formal role or functioning of the manager. Irrespective of their differential the general management activities is commonly associated with all the managers which also includes the first line supervisors, need to showcase leadership qualities at some level.

The term manager covers a larger area of work competencies required at every level moving the ladder from middle management to the senior management, handling a team of diverse line managers. It is the manager who often takes the role of project management along with its team of individuals, all with different management development need. CIPD, (2012) suggested that managers at each level require certain skill enhancement associated with people management role, all these skills are required to be developed. It may be a mistake to consider well-qualified people taking promotion would naturally assimilate in the role of people management and other responsibilities assigned to them.

As cited by Tejinder Sharma, (2012) Management development accruing as a result of learning is mainly divided into three categories integrated managerial process, informal managerial process and formal management development process. Learning is a natural process it eventually leads to effective planning, management development is a result of effective planning. The informal managerial development process also called as accidental processes occurs within managerial activities. It has an intension of task performance, may not be planned in advance and has no clear development objectives. Integrated managerial process occurs within managerial activities, having an explicit intension of enhancing both task as well as performance. It is way more structured, planned and is reviewed beforehand, resulting in the development by boss and subordinates (CEML., 2002). Unlike informal process it is owned by the managers with clear development objectives. The formal management development process is way more planned other than the normal managerial activities. The prime intention of this process was managerial development and are therefore structured as per the development need by the developer. This process is also planned beforehand and are reviewed time-and-again to assimilate the learning experiences. This process is owned more by the developers than the managers (Sharma, 2012).

Process of Management Development

As suggested by Holman (2000), four approaches can be related to management development such as: Academic Liberalism i.e. through academic resources; experimental liberalism i.e. something that comes through experience; experimental vocational i.e. where the manager’s experience comes through from practices within the organisation and experimental critic, it is where the learnings has been sought by the managers by becoming critical. The Academic liberalism is provided by universities through different courses or programs facilitated at managerial levels. This was also sought that education is not the only resort to yearn knowledge and skills, therefore work experience is valued at a larger level. It was realised that experience derived from work in hand can prove to be more powerful than book knowledge.

Management development has a prime focus over improving the individual as well as organisational performance through a designed and structured learning process. CIPD (2014) cited, along with the employee belonging to other group, having an initial consideration way ahead in the process planning the management development is required to identify the skills that are required by the organisation, group and individual. To plan management learning and development activities it is important to analyse i.) audit the current as well as analyse the future organization development needs in terms of what knowledge and skill they may require along with the pool of management skill an organization may require today as well as in future. ii.) Conducting an assessment of the current as well as potential capabilities of the existing manager workforce within the organization. iii.) producing as well as implementing management development plans, policies and practices to meet identified need through education and training program.

In order to conduct a need assessment of the managers as suggested by CIPD (2010), are management competence which stands for a comparison between the existing competencies with the required ones via a specific competency framework in other words Competency Based Approach and other method is through the development centres. These development centres help analyse an individual on the basis of its set criterion and gives a clear picture of individual’s competencies as well as capabilities to the organisation. Multi rates Feedback and full 360-degree feedback are also considered to analyse the individual performance and requirement of management development initiative.

The worldwide expansion of economies is creating possibilities for existing industries to explore new markets and wider customer segment. The international exploration with limitless boundaries, having minimal government regulation is creating new world for existing organisation across the globe. The dynamic level of competition across industries are emphasising industries to explore new markets with diverse cultures, needs and languages. The global organization fear the challenge of retaining management and global staffing with a workforce that has diverse nature of language skills, culture and different set of priorities. Considering the changing trends, the organisations would need to adapt to management development practices to help them adapt to the diverse global and labour market conditions (Hirish & Carter, 2001).

To customised the existing pool of management workforce with the evolving economic trend, management development process initiates practices and approach that involves changing the core competencies of the managers. Practices supporting to management development are imperative to help managers adapt to the new organisation’s culture along with promoting certain ethical values in the system (Friedman & Westring, 2015). The process of management development would help senior managers to learn to delegate human resource responsibilities to the line managers, create corporate unification after a successful merger & acquisition and enhancing exposure to international as well as global markets.

Management development approach to respond to the changing global market need to be anticipatory, to prepare mangers so that they can contribute to long-term success of the organisation; reactive, the managers are capable to respond to unexpected changes or are competent enough to resolve performance related issues; motivational, the managers are required to be motivated enough to have a success career (Burgoyne, et al., 2004).

Management development is a process that needs to be inculcated in the system to upgrade the skills, knowledge and capability of managers to perform at their best level. The approach to create a workforce adaptive to the changing trend as well as management of workforce as a team acts as a management development theories and models. 

Action Learning as cited by CIPD, (2012) is based on an argument that in a dynamic and turbulent business environment the rate of learning exceeds the rate at which the organization is changing. This demands for an organization to stay ahead of competition and stay effective on the same hand. This action based learning mainly facilitates inquiry that enables managers to respond to certain insightful questions, along with that develop the ability to ask similar insightful question as a part of its operational activity. This activity mainly aims at solving problems in group and are considered as a better technique than those traditional form of learning. In some research it has been proved that Action learning is an effective management development technique, providing more opportunity to motivate the managers for future improvement (McCall, 2004).

Coaching serves as a primary task function that is practiced to primarily improvise individual employee’s performance by taking an informal help or through a set of instruction of a skilled colleague. Coaching is one of the prime work-based methods that allows one-on-one training, personally tailored as per the need of an individual in confidence with the manager. The process of coaching in an organization targets higher performance leading to advancement at work level and also focusing on particular skills and goals of the management (CIPD., 2014). As argued by Sandler-Smith (2011), coaching was identified as an unsuccessful tool in many cases due to lack of integration with other L&D activities or wrong type of coaching provided. A viable example to coaching was found with Sainsbury supermarket where coaching was successfully implemented to improvise the competitiveness of its senior managers. The program was proved to be cost saving from recruitment perspective, helping deputy mangers move up the ladder to managerial position.

Mentoring process is where a mentee learns from a mentor having more experience than him on an assigned task or management functioning in general. The evaluation, management and training group has identified certain pitfall that affect mentor programs identified 6 pitfall of the system i.e. lack of manager’s commitment in the process, inadequate person to run the mentorship program, lack of interrelated goals, superficial contact between individual and mentor, lack of partnership and absence of special features in the program.

Conclusion

In short, management development has a significant importance to achieve higher performance as well as managerial effectiveness, improving the manager’s performance and overall capacity. In the new global economy, management development helps managers to adapt to the frequent changes taking place, as a result of expansion or M&A. Management development contribute to long-term success and resolve performance related issues. Coaching, Mentoring and active learning as some of the important theories and models of management development.

References

Burgoyne, J., Hirsh, W. & Williams, S., 2004. The Development of Management and Leadership, UK: Lancaster University.

Burgoyne, J., Hirsh, W. & Williams, S., 2004. The Development of Management and Leadership Capability and its Contribution to Performance: the evidence, the prospects and the research need., London: Department for Education and Skills, Research Report.

Bushe, G. & Marshak, R., 2009. Revisioning organization development: Diagnostic and dialogic premises and patterns of practice. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(3), pp. 68-348.

CEML., 2002. The contribution of the UK business school to developing managers and leaders, London: Council of excellence in Management and Laedership.

CIPD., 2014. Management Development. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/management-development.aspx
[Accessed 14 July 2016].

Friedman, S. D. & Westring, A., 2015. Empowering individuals tointegrate work and life: insightsfor management development. Journal of Management Dev elopment, 34(3), pp. 308-312.

Hirish, W. & Carter, A., 2001. New Direction in Management Development, UK: The institute of employement studies.

Sadler-Smith, E., 2011. Leadership learning and development for managers, Scotland: Edinburgh Napier University.