Reflective Analysis & Action Plan for the CIPD Behaviors
Understanding of personal capacity of an individual is always fundamental in ensuring that one can plan for himself or herself in a way that would result in maximum success. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is the largest Chartered Human Resource professional body in the world. This institute offers training services to its members who have various membership statuses depending on several factors. There are some criteria I have to meet to exhibit characteristics of a Chartered member of this organization. Human resource is one of the strongest pillars in any organization, both for the profit and non-profit organizations. According to Spulber (2007, p. 49), employees from the most valuable asset within an organization. This scholar says that employees will always determine whether or not an organization will perform, depending on their effort and motivation.
In the current society, several factors are redefining the expectations of the human resource within the workplace. Employee’s role is changing due to the changing needs precipitated by the technological changes. Employees in the current world must be ready to go beyond their normal limits to meet the demands of various stakeholders within society. Within an organization, employees face intense pressure from customers who are demanding more of their attention each passing day. On the other hand, business owners are also asserting a lot of pressure on employees to ensure that they receive maximum benefits from their investments. In between these two forces are the employees who will be charged by the responsibility of ensuring that these two potent forces are satisfied.
I fully understand that as an employee, I have intense pressure to satisfy various stakeholders within an organization. It is clear to me that I have to be flexible to meet the changing needs of the stakeholders in the market. As a chartered member of this organization, I appreciate that there are several expectations I have to fit within this organization. Within this organization, I am the senior supervisor trainee in Strategic Planning and business support. I report directly to the director, a fact that puts me in a top managerial position within this firm. I, therefore, must exhibit managerial characteristics. I must act as a leader within this firm, with a capacity to handle various issues within this firm. The following are some of the leadership characteristics I am considered to exhibit.
Insights and influences
Given my current position as a current senior supervisor, I always ensure that I think critically before acting. I am also good at handling myself in social conditions. A leader has some characteristics that make him or her unique from other individuals within the organization. I highly cherish authenticity. It encourages followers to act as natural as possible. People who act naturally always tend to give their best. Passion is another significant characteristic I have as an employee in a senior managerial position. As a leader, I know I must be passionate about every action I take within the organization. This way, it becomes possible for the followers to make this characteristic from me as their leaders. The junior employees will develop passion when they realize that their leader has a passion for his or her actions. As a leader, I also embrace creativity. Creativity is very crucial in the contemporary world (Amrosini, Johnson & Scholes, 1998, p. 78). A leader must be able to solve problems creatively. I understand that I have to encourage the culture of creativity in all the employees of this organization. This way, such an organization will be able to be creative in the market.
As a leader, I know I should have self-awareness. I understand that I should realise I stand for and can express this feeling to the junior employees. This way, it would be easy to avoid cases where I issue an instruction, I can change abruptly without a clear explanation for the same. As a leader, I know I must have interpersonal intelligence. This is important to help bring people from different social backgrounds together. The organization brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds. It would require interpersonal intelligence to make these people reason in the same line and work as a unit towards achieving specific objectives.
As a leader, I appreciate the fact that I must have integrity. It is important to note that leadership aims to bring an entirely new approach to doing various activities in s better way. Honesty will be one of the main ingredients in that leadership. It will be possible to tell others to maintain integrity only if the leaders show the same in their actions. A leader must also develop clarity of purpose. The leader must be sure of what he or she wants from the followers and from the leaders —according to Kratschmer (2011, p. 26), having a clear sense of purpose on what one does makes it possible to measure the level of success of an individual. This way, a leader can quickly determine the rate at which the objectives of the firm is being achieved. Finally, I understand that as a leader, I should have a global awareness of various factors in the environment. When the leader in managing a large multinational organization, understanding factors in the immediate context may not make one formulate policies that can benefit all the branches of the firm. Such a leader must have a global awareness of various environmental factors to transform employees and the firm in general towards the desired direction. Besides the above characteristics, I can bring the entire junior employee together in an organization in a way that will make them motivated in all the activities they undertake.
Decisive thinker
I can pick up social cues that indicate social cues. It is essential that in my current capacity as a senior supervisor, I have to be a decisive thinker. I am always aware of my feelings as they change, as a way of ensuring that I act in a manner that is within desirable limits. As a leader, I know I have the responsibility to make decisions that are binding based on the prevailing circumstances. The decision should be binding and should be geared towards ensuring that success is achieved within the organization. A leader should be able to stimulate creativity in the employee. This trait makes a leader be able to challenge the current capacity of the followers with a view of making them achieve the best from them. I always take care to avoid scenarios where the standards set on employees are beyond their capacity. As a result, employees tend not to strain to achieve these objectives. In this case, the challenge will come in the form of soliciting new ideas from the followers (Gerber 2008, p. 37). This way, I have been able to tell followers that they are also crucial in developing policies that can help transform the organization. It involves engaging employees in coming up with a creative solution to the challenges that they face in their daily routines.
Skilled influencer
I am a very persistent person in going after that, which I feel is right. Through this, I can that as a supervisor; I have to be a skilled influencer in my persistence. As a leader, I know I have to always be a role model to influence my junior employees to work within the desired limits. A leader still guides others towards achieving a common goal of the organization. I must, therefore, be ethical in actions, and avoid cases that would lower my status among the junior employees within the firm. I understand that I should try to lead an ideal life, where preventable mistakes are avoided at all costs, especially in the face of the junior employees. It is through this that I will be able to influence followers within the organization. As a leader, I always strive to instil pride in the followers. I also do still make an effort to make junior employees proud of themselves in their actions. Such as a leader, I have gained the respect of the junior employees. Above all, these junior employees have developed a strong trust in me as their leader. They have always been convinced that the path taken by the firm is the right path that would lead everyone towards a common success.
Operational excellence
Finding common ground is one of the most important characteristics that has enabled me to come out as an excellent person in my operational activities. Although I have faced several challenges, I have been able to build a rapport with other employees. The vision of an organization is always very important in achieving organizational goals. Vision helps members of an organization see where the organization is headed. It helps in marking followers to be sure of what the organization expects of them. This requires operational excellence. A leader must be able to pass the organization’s vision in an inspiring and appealing manner. The vision must make sense to the employees, and it should develop an urge to achieve specific results within a stipulated period. The employee should feel inspired. They should develop an urge to surge ahead and achieve some objectives within the confines of their ability. They should be motivated to go a step further in achieving specific goals within the organization. Employees should be made to be optimistic in their activities and made to appreciate that they can achieve when they decide to delimit themselves (Anderson 2011, p. 48).
Driven to Deliver
As a senior supervisor with this firm, I know that I have to deliver. I must have the self-drive to ensure that I make employees develop an attitude that would result in general success. As a leader, I know I will be handling various individuals from different backgrounds. Although these individuals may share several characteristics, some differences make an individual unique. Individual A will have different needs from individual B, however much they may share some characteristic. Individualized consideration is the level at which a leader attends to individual follower’s needs. As a leader, I must be able to give personalized attention to the employees. They should try to make followers feel that they have a personal relationship with the leader. Such a leader is a coach and a mentor of the followers. He or she should, therefore, be able to talk to these people on an individual capacity.
Collaborative
Teamwork is very important in any organizational setting. Bringing together individuals with different character traits is one of the most difficult tasks in an organizational setup. Making such people think in one line may take a lot of time, as they have to get accustomed to one another. Geographical boundaries have been eliminated. Diversity is very common in current organizations. Most organizations currently are characterized by people from different demographics. It is challenging to create an environment where such people would be integrated into a single unit. Despite this difference, I know that as a leader, I must ensure that this difference is played down (Coulter 2009, p. 68). I always strive to ensure that members of an organization work as a single unit irrespective of their diversified culture.
To achieve this, I always try to employ various characteristics of transformational leadership. It would be necessary to develop trust among peers in a way that they will always be comfortable for them to share information as would be appropriate. The first step towards achieving this is developing organizational culture. The organizational culture will supersede any other cultural beliefs that existed before. According to Coveney and Highfield (1995, p. 58), developing a strong organizational culture requires transformational leadership. As a transformational leader, I will be able to instil a new culture in the employees in a way that would ensure peaceful coexistence of all the members of the organization. This would nurture trust among peers. As Daft (2009, p. 92) puts it; this move will create an environment of trust among people within the organization. They will believe that they have the responsibility to protect their peers, and so do their peers. There will be mutual agreement among employees on how to approach different issues affecting the organization in a very candid way. This way, an organization will be able to approach some issues affecting the organization as a team. They will be able to understand how best different tasks can be assigned to different individuals based on their level of knowledge.
Stewardship
Stewardship is very relevant in maintaining a pool of highly skilled employees. David (2008, p. 72) says that innovation is very important in the current market. All the resources and human resource should be managed ethically and responsibly. Stewardship is marked by the nature or task of organizational systems. In other words, stewardship should aim at achieving positive results. Leaders should, therefore, commit themselves to change to achieve the desired goals within the organization and to make employees work within the expectations of various stakeholders. For a leader in acquiring skills, he or she must embrace the tenets of stewardship. Moreover, stewardship is only achieved through a variety of skills (DeAnne, Gary, Hyde & Tipping 2004, p. 68). The two variables are closely related, implying that leaders should know how to acquire them.
To achieve this, it would require that I develop strong characteristics of transformational leadership. Scholars define transformational leadership as the ability of the leader to bring about change in the organization. In other words, the leader must learn to do things differently for him or her to be declared a transformative leader. In particular, transformational leadership refers to the ability to influence the organizational standards, outlooks, ways of life, and behaviour of employees. This entails closely with other leaders in the organization, as well as incorporating employees in the decision-making process. Improving the performance of the organization entails changing the habit and behaviour of employees. This would include changing the behaviour of individuals. In many organizations, people are known to resist change because it interferes with their ways of life. In this regard, leaders must allow their juniors to adjust slowly. Without skills, the leader must not be able to offer sustainable leadership. Skills play a critical role in ensuring that leaders succeed in their endeavours.
Courage to Challenge
As an employee in a senior managerial position, I know that it is my responsibility to raise the morale of workers in their daily activities. Workers feel valued when the organization incorporates their ideas into the decision-making organs. Stewardship is associated with consultation, democracy, fairness, and collectivism. This means that a leader rarely comes up with ideas without obtaining the views of other stakeholders. Several scholars suggest that stewardship raises the morality and motivation of workers. Stewardship affects both leaders and followers (Fayol, 1949, p. 38). This implies that it influences their performance at the workplace. In places of work, workers feel motivated when they are consulted. For instance, an employee would be more productive in case he or she is consulted before changing the working hours. In some organizations, employees boycott work because they are not consulted before new policies are implemented. It is established through research that new employees respond positively to non-material rewards as compared to the material reward. Offering stewardship is one of the non-material rewards. This is because stewardship encourages human relations that are based on consultation (Frynas & Mellahi 2011, p. 89). On the side of employees, they feel honoured and appreciated, while managers would have an opportunity to perform well because employees would be willing to cooperate in every aspect.
The transforming effect is felt in the entire organization, meaning that all stakeholders stand to benefit from transformational leadership. A transformational leader will always aspire to explore new opportunities. Such leaders know that growth is achieved through change, innovativeness, and improved working environment. In many organizations, it is argued that transformational leaders are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the status quo is avoided at all costs. In this regard, such leaders instil a sense of adventure in the organization. Moreover, they scan the environment to establish fresh and new ideas. In other words, this type of leaders would always do everything to ensure that things are done differently in the organization (Gerber 2008, p. 27).
Personal Identity
As an employee in a senior managerial position as I am, personal identity is very important. The ability to understand self in the current changing society is very important. One of the leading characteristics that I have embraced in my current position is the ability to embrace change. In organizations, change is inevitable. However, some individuals in organizations are always resistant to change. Change comes with several effects, which are mostly negative to those who are reluctant to embrace technology. In this regard, the change should be implemented in a very careful way to avoid any conflict. Change is one of the most important factors that an organization must take into consideration when drawing its strategic goals and objectives (Gerry & Scholes 2008, p. 56). Change is constant. This statement is intriguing, yet it is the best definition of change from a philosophical point of view. Change and constant are two extremes under a normal dictionary definition. However, from an analytical perspective, change is constant. Scholars argue that change brings nothing new. It only enhances what is already in existence.
The overarching purpose of change management is to accelerate the speed at which people move successfully through the change process so that anticipated benefits are achieved faster. As such, the change should not be viewed as a shift from what is the norm. The only issue is that it brings new methodologies of handling the daily activities (Hill & Jones 2010, p. 28). I have, therefore, devised means and ways through which I could maintain a positive environment where employees under my leadership can embrace change as a way of improving their performance within the organization. As explained above, although it is a big challenge to bring this change among the employees, it is also important to appreciate that this would be coming after a huge effort. This is what I have always strived to achieve in my current position.
I highly cherish planning in all that I engage in within this society. I always avoid engaging in any activity that is not carefully planned for. In his book, the former leader of the Strategic Management Society reprimanded himself and others for their sightless adherence to the strategic forecast practice. His disputation rests with the exploration of the authoritative, scientific explanation to the future. He demonstrates how planning can asphyxiate obligation, constrict an organization’s dream. It can also make change unfeasible and lead to the politicization of an organization. However, the only solution offered is planning and transformational leadership, which is compatible with change. Proper planning prepares individuals for change. Organizations must always ensure that people are psychologically prepared before they are introduced to changes. For instance, the organization should take employees through a training program to allow them to acquaint themselves with the new policies in detail. On the other hand, transformational leadership allows employees to amicably prepare before they are engaged in new policies.
Dedication to work is another characteristic that has kept me going in my current position within this firm. According to Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2011, p. 38), the world is a large field full of challenges, especially to those who are focused to achieve success. This scholar says that to succeed, an individual needs to be dedicated to all the activities he or she does. Otherwise, the entire process can be full of so many challenges. I have embraced dedication in various actions I undertake as a senior employee within this organization. As a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, I know that the entire organization looks upon me for guidance and general management of employees. I appreciate the fact that the director expects me do deliver to the firm, through making every single employee work to his best of capacity. This is the main reason why, in my current position, I do not report to any manager, but the director. I have dedicated my time to understanding the employees and constantly motivating them to achieve the best of the results within the expected time.
I have also maintained resilience in most of my activities. I know that resilience is always important in meeting complex deadlines within a challenging market environment. To achieve such an environment, an individual needs to maintain a high level of resilience. It is through this that I have been able to maintain a constantly motivated group of employees who are willing to go the extra mile to deliver the desired results.
Self-Management Skills in the Workplace
It is always important to be in a position to manage self within the workplace to ensure that one works within the expectations. Self-management skills at the workplace have enabled me to achieve a good result for the last few months I have been to this place. The first aspect of self-management skill is the ability to manage one’s time. Time is one of the most valuable assets which, when mishandled, can lead to serious disruption of a series of activities within the organization. Managing time requires one to develop a plan on how to spend the available time. Every activity should be planned for in a way that would ensure that the best results are achieved within the organization. Achieving this result would require one to be able to define every activity clearly and concisely. This will help avoid cases where some activities are given less time, while others are given more time than they need. I have developed an ability to define various activities based on its requirements, both in time and material needs. This has helped me in planning various activities. As a result, I have been able to manage my time very well and within the expectations of various stakeholders. Self-management skills also include the ability of an individual to exercise self-control within an organization. As a leader, I have learnt to avoid any personal feelings with other employees. This has helped me amass respect from employees.
List of References
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Anderson, M 2011, Bottom-Line Organization Development: Implementing and Evaluating Strategic Change for Lasting Value, Elsevier, Burlington.
Coulter, M 2009, Strategic Management in Action, Pearson Higher Education, New York.
Coveney, P & Highfield, 1995, Frontiers of Complexity: The Search for Order in a Chaotic World, Fawcett Columbine, New York.
Daft, R 2009, Organization Theory and Design, Cengage Learning, New York.
David, F 2008, Strategic Management: Concepts, Pearson Higher Education, New York.
DeAnne, A., Gary, N., Hyde, P & Tipping, A 2004, Ten Guiding Principles of Change Management, Booz & Company, New York.
Fayol, H 1949, General and Industrial Management, Pitman, London.
Frynas, J & Mellahi, K 2011, Global Strategic Management, University Press, Oxford.
Gerber, K 2008, Marketing communication, Pearson Education, Cape Town.
Gerry, J & Scholes, K 2008, Exploring Corporate Strategy, Pearson Education, Limited, New York.
Hill, C & Jones, G 2010, Strategic management theory: an integrated approach, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
Johnson, G., Scholes, K & Whittington, R 2011, Exploring Corporate Strategy, Cengage, New York.
Kratschmer, P 2011, Organizational Culture is Highly Resistant to Change: Discuss, GRIN Verlag, New York.
Spulber, D 2007, Global Competitive Strategy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.