Management Skills

Week 1- Introduction to Leadership Skills & Self Awareness- present Johari Window

Doing an Alexander- Alexander- Author: Kets de Vries (2003)

Young Alexander

• Fearless, strong, tempestuous, eager to learn, ambitious and competitive
• Tame the beast (horse)
• Incisive strategist, brilliant tactician – going outside of the box
• Positive Traits: integration, fairness, multiculturalism, uniformity of currency
• Negative Traits: temper, multi-faceted personality, victim of own success

Lessons

1. Have a compelling vision that speaks to the collective imagination

• Effective leaders must be able to convey the situation and where to head
• Know where to go and how to get there
• Need to know how and when to stop

1. Develop a creative strategy responsive to enemy strengths

• Know how to make a vision reality
• Ex: Alexander was a brilliant military strategist

• Master of competitive analysis
• Adapt quickly to enemy tactics
• Interpret opponent’s motives

• Maintain an excellent information system

1. Create a well-rounded executive role constellation

• Know how to shape a committed team 

1. Model excellence

• Set the example of excellence – Alexander fought alongside his men

1. Encourage innovation
2. Manage meaning to foster group identification

• Use simple language to hypnotize your people
• Motivate them to give exceptional effort

1. Encourage and support followers

• Encourage people for excellence in battles
• Give special attention – recognize individual contribution
• Be able to listen, pay attention, and help your people

1. Invest in training and development

• Train present and develop the next generation

1. Consolidate gains

• A leader who advances without ensuring stability of his/her gains stands to lose everything

1. Plan for succession

• Power is an easily ignited explosive that must be transferred with care
• Ensure competent and viable succession

1. Create mechanisms of organizational governance

• Unchecked power creates hubris, contributing to decline and fall
• Checks and balances are needed to prevent faulty decision making and the abuse of power

Educating the Modern Manager- Author: Hogan, R & Warrenfeltz (2003)

What is learning?

Learning is defined in two ways

In tradition phenomenon Gestalt psychology, people construct mental models of the world and then use the models to interpret reality and guide their behaviour.

• Learning is equivalent to constructing new or enhanced mental models, no emphasis on on the importance of concrete skills
• Drive: is driven by “epistemic” hunger by a desire to understand or master the world—even at the expense of physiological needs
• Learning is primarily driven by errors and mistakes
• We learn more from our failures than our successes (Pinocchio)

Behaviourism suggests a change in behaviour after an experience.

• In any case a person could have profound understanding of the world but unable to drive a car
• Behaviourist model  education is a process of azquiring skills with noe emphasis on the process of deeper udneratnading
• Drive: driven by efforts to meet physiological needs (hunger,thirst) and shaped by the hedonic and instrumental consequences of these efforts
• Behaviours that are rewarded are learned
• Behaviours that are not rewarded are retained

2 reason why distinction is arbitrary

• Researchers of skill acquisition have recognized for at least 20 years that mental rehearsal improves physical performance (behaviour, we learn by doing)

• learning by doing thins unsuccessfully, conceptual understanding follows action, but depends upon reflection on the action
• In our view, the most important lessons that executives can learn are twofold: (1) evaluating the mental models that they hold regarding their capabilities and others' expectations of their performance; and (2) how these mental models are ex- pressed in overt or behavioral terms (social skill)

Learning and Development

In the behaviourist tradition, development is essentially random and depends on the sequence and kinds of demands that come up during an individual life history.

• Adding behaviours or skills to one’s repertoire as they become necessary
• Timing of the skills is not important – earlier experiences are just earlier, not more influential
• The path of development is bidirectional and incremental, one can learn or unlearn skills as appropriate

In the classic developmental tradition, development has a direction and an end point; it is internally programmed and spontaneously unfolds based on input from the environment. Qualitative transformation

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