PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Personal Development Plan

Personal Development Plan

Task 1

Introduction

When we think of leadership, the ideas of power, authority, and influence may come to mind. I may think of the actions of effective leaders in accomplishing important goals. I may think of actual people who have been recognised for their leadership capabilities. Thus, this study presents SWOT/PESTEL analysis to present leadership plan and organisational management.

My Leadership Development

Not everyone is born with “the right stuff” or finds himself or herself in just the right situation to demonstrate his or her capacity as a leader. However, anyone can improve his or her leadership skills. The process of training people to function effectively in a leadership role is known as leadership development and it is a multimillion-dollar business. Leadership development programmes tend to be of two types: internal programmes within an organisation, designed to strengthen the organisation, and external programmes that take the form of seminars, workshops, conferences, and retreats.

Typical of external leadership development programmes are the seminars offered by the American Management Association. Their training seminars are held annually in cities across the country and address both general leadership skills as well as strategic leadership. Among the seminars offered in the area of general leadership are critical thinking, storytelling, and team development in a variety of areas such as instructional technology or government. Seminars on strategic leadership address such topics as communication strategies, situational leadership, innovation, emotional intelligence, and coaching.

A second approach to leadership development is a technique known as grid training. The first step in grid training is a grid seminar during which members of an organisation's management team help others in their organisation identify their management style as one of four management styles: impoverished management, task management, country-club management, and team management. The second step is training, which varies depending on the leader's management style. The goal of the training is greater productivity, better decision making, increased morale, and focused culture change in the leader's unique organisational environment. Grid training is directed toward six key areas: leadership development, team building, conflict resolution, customer service, mergers, and selling solutions.

Internal leadership development programmes tend to focus on three major areas: the development of social interaction networks both between people within a given organisation and between organisations that work with one another, the development of trusting relationships between leaders and followers, and the development of common values and a shared vision among leaders and followers. There are several techniques that promote these goals. One such technique is 360-degree feedback. This is a process whereby leaders may learn what peers, subordinates, and superiors think of their performance. This kind of feedback can be useful in identifying areas in need of improvement. The strength of the technique is that it provides differing perspectives across a variety of situations that help the leader to understand the perceptions of his or her actions. This practice has become very popular and is currently used by virtually all Fortune 500 companies. Like all forms of assessment, 360-degree feedback is only useful if ...