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Managers and Developers In The Information Age
As organizations move toward the new millennium, they are more keenly
aware than ever of the primary challenge of our age: mastering
"permanent white water" (i.e., change) in order to remain competitive.
Key to this challenge is the design of increasingly powerful human
performance technologies. One of the most striking examples of these
changing technologies is the evolution we're seeing from the heroic
model of management (which emphasizes planning, motivating,
controlling, and coordinating employees) to the manager-as-developer
model (which stresses empowerment and which is more interpersonally
intensive and consultative in nature). The manager-as-developer is
counseling team members who are in the process of self-assessment,
goal setting, and self-development and is encouraging them to change,
instead of just reacting in short intense bursts to "critical
incidents" or to a performance appraisal imperative. This is a
significantly more leveraged management technology and represents a
less active (i.e., less heroic) management style than the reactive,
I'm-the-leader-you're-the-follower model of old.
A second human performance technology that is being powerfully
impacted is the whole approach to the management development process
itself. In the past, the sole function of management development was
to facilitate advancement (i.e., "training" prepares people to do
their current jobs better, while "development" prepares them for their
next job). However, in recent years, management and executive
development programs have begun to drive a number of other key
business objectives, as well:
Key Objectives For the Organization
Identify reservoirs of human resource talent and channel them
appropriately (career tracking and succession planning)
Groom high potentials
Help minimize mismatches between what the employee wants and what
the company needs
Assist employees in developing and increasing their self-awareness
and in better understanding their own strengths and limitations
Create leaders and increase individual autonomy at lower and lower
levels within the company
Design, integrate, and implement the HR strategy as a core component
of the organization's overall strategic business objectives
Train managers to be potent mentors
Integrate your approach to management development with other human
resource products: performance management, career development,
recruiting, transfer/promotion, forecasting, and compensation
Key Objectives For the Individual
Be more proactive about self-development
Take more control of your own career (i.e., be more questioning;
plateau by choice; create more degrees of freedom)
Pursue self-development for its own sake and as the motivational
driver of goal achievement
Participate in an active partnership with your employer
Find more varied paths to personal satisfaction
"Retool" yourself for the information age: enhance your ability to
manage change, take risks, handle ambiguity, exhibit interpersonal
finesse, collaborate, build partnerships and teams, and so forth.
Finally, one of the most powerful ways to realize the extraordinary
potential of these two new orientations - the manager-as-developer and
the broad impact of development experiences - is to integrate managers
into the development program of each of their people. This approach
yields any number of benefits to both the individual and the
organization (and the manager, too), as well as maximizing the changes
made by the individual who is participating in the development
process. In this way, learning leaves the limiting confines of the
classroom and becomes much more like a real apprenticeship experience.
Substantive change is much more likely to occur and to be integrated
into a person's day-to-day functioning when that change process is
both experiential and linked to key others in the person's workaday
life. Apprenticing is an age-old concept, but it remains a highly
potent approach to development.
And, yes, managers will also need to become adept at this new role of
partner/coach/advisor/consultant to the "apprentice." But, of course,
these are roles that are now increasingly central to the overall
successful functioning of the contemporary manager. So, it is striking
how holistic the new approach to human performance technology is. If
this potential for integration and consistency across human resource
initiatives is tapped to its fullest, then organizations will have a
tremendous opportunity to achieve the kind of key objectives they're
striving for in the 90's:
Enhanced competitiveness
Innovation and corporate agility
Ownership and alignment
The attraction and retention of top talent
Quality, value, and service
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Copyright 2000, by The Global Coaching Partnership. |
