Understand your learning style: how you absorb information better - through seeing, reading or through listening? Knowing your style is the first thing to know about how you perform. Once you understand which is your naturally dominant learning style you are in a position to improve the way you perform. "Don't try to change yourself - it is unlikely to be successful. But work, and hard, to improve the way you perform. The awareness of how we do what we do is the key to self-management and influence. Study what works for you and for others by practicing NLP technology of achievement principles in order to realize your true potential. (Beard, C. & Wilson, J. P. 2002, 636-78)
Developing Yourself and others
Developing people starts with the self. Aim to be the kind of manager who gets the best from staff, and who does the best for them. Consider your values as well as your strengths, weaknesses, and personality. Carry out a Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis on yourself. One of the essential values is honesty. If you are honest with yourself, you will treat other people honestly too. Never work with an organization whose values are unacceptable to you. (Beard, C. & Wilson, J. P. 2002, 636-78)
Do the feedback analysis to show you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Based on this information, form an action plan. Concentrate on your strengths and waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. Ask everyone who works with you to form and adopt an action plan. Test your knowledge to develop your abilities for managing and being managed by considering the following questions:
Do I know what everybody else does?
Do I know how they perform?
Do I know what they contribute and what results are expected?
Work towards a positive answer to each of them. Use "the mirror test" and make sure you pass it. It consists of one question: "What kind of persons do I want to see when I shave myself, or put on my lipstick, in the morning?" (Beard, C. & Wilson, J. P. 2002, 636-78)
Building Your Cross-Functional Excellence
The goal of functional specialists is to optimize individual performance within narrow corridors of their functional expertise. The task of effective senior managers is to seek to balance the skills and capabilities of individual players. They must require that their functional specialists forego the quest for personal best in concert with the team effort. To raise to the ranks of senior manager, you must forego the quest for personal functional perfection and take the transformation from a team member of to the planner, coach, and facilitator of team performance(Beard, C. & Wilson, J. P. 2002, 636-78)
Developing Others
Developing people is achieved by careful, planned and motivational delegation of responsibility and duty. Trust and know your colleagues. "Organizations are no longer built on force. They are built on trust." Rather than relying on your powers, provide a spur, use the powers within ...