Developing talent within your organisation (cont.)
An organisation’s success lies primarily in the hands of its management and leadership. The decisions they make, and the strategies they adopt will have an enormous impact on the organisation’s survival and prosperity. In order to develop the capabilities of their leaders and managers, organisations have a range of approaches to choose from, some of which are listed below. It is important to bear in mind that there is no single approach that will work for all organisations, or for all managers. Some may be better suited to smaller organisations, or to certain levels of management, or there may be a mixture of approaches within the same organisation.
Some of the approaches are:
Competencies - is generally defined as the behavious that employees must have, or must acquire, to input into a situation to achieve high levels of performance, while 'competence' relates to a system of minimum standards or is demonstrated by performance and outputs
Coaching - is about improving skills and performance, usually for the current job, but also to support career transitions. Usually coaches are hired from outside the organisation, but increasingly some organisations expect all line managers to operate as coaches, and it is often true that a young manager will learn more from senior colleagues than from any other source or formal learning intervention
Counselling - is about helping people with personal concerns such as motivation and self-confidence
Mentoring – occurs where an experienced manager offers guidance, encouragement, feedback and support to a less experienced employee. Mentors are usually found outside the line management relationship and mentoring can be either formal or an informal activity
Action learning - Most people learn best by doing. If that process can be structured, so much the better. Action learning sets help to achieve this by making their members focus on solving live issues in their normal working environments by trying out different approaches, with discussion and support from colleagues to help them reflect on their impact.
Special Projects - Increasingly, managers work in cross-functional teams, exposing them to different functions and enabling them to learn about different aspects of the organisation and ways of doing things. Putting people on such teams is one way of broadening their experience and effectiveness
Secondments – This is a form of work-based development that takes the individual out of their normal work unit and places them within a different working environment for a period of time.
Development centres - The purpose of development centres (sometimes known as assessment centres) is to focus on opportunities for personal development, and to gauge potential and help make selections for promotion. Although they take place off the job, they include work-related activities and group work, as well as counselling and psychometric assessments, so they can be included under the heading of work-based methods.
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