Leadership Development Plan

Is it possible to develop the leadership potential within you? First you must belief that you have the potential for becoming a leader. It is that belief that becomes the basis when unfolding the leadership potentrial within you.

A thorough self awareness of your strengths and weaknesses is the first step if you are keen to develop the leadership skills. Seeking feedback form your friends, colleagues and close family members is one way to assess your strengths and weaknesses. If you are not so comfortable seeking feedback from thes egroup, then stepping aside and learning to self relflect is another option. You should be able to identify a number of assessment tools you can use to identify your areas of expertise, strengths and weaknesses.

Complete the assessment tool below to gain a better understanding about yourself:

Know yourself

Understanding Leadership

Then start with the ledaership development plan referred in the following document:

Developing The Leadership Within You

Managing Organizational Culture

Why should anyone be bothered about organisational culture? What is organizational culture? A common shared meaning right across the organisation is generally seen as the culture of the firm. In other words that is their way doing things in that place. There seems to be a common understanding among the employees, even though not everyone understand the reasons for doing them. The rituals and work processes are simply adopted as the norm.

Read the following articles at the three links for a better understanding of the topics:

Culture and Chrysler

Understanding Culture

Comprehensive view on Organizational Culture

Relevance of Performance Appraisal

Almost all the organizations carry out employee evaluation on a regular basis. The exercise carried right across the organisation attempts to document the employees' performance using certain standard forms. Though there are some valid reasons for conducting staff performance evaluation, there are people who argues that the annual exercise simply waste valuable time. Citing the various shortcomings of the HR functions they argue that the activity be dropped completly.

Is that the right thing to do? Should we discontinue the practice of conducting staff appraisal?It would be more appropriate to identify the shortcomings of the staff performance evaluation and take corrective actions to deal with the problems, instead of simply dropping it altogether. In this way one can still take full advantage of the benefits of employee performance review. The staff performance is closely tied up to the whole range of HR activities. The overall effectivenes sof the HR functions can't be harnesses without conducting employee performance review on a regular basis.

What should be the approach? The Harvard Business Week attempts to answer the related questions about performance appraisal. Enjoy the article.




Performance Appraisal

MHR: Understanding HR Functions

Read the articles using the link below for a better understanding of the various functions of HRM.


Performance Appraisal

Workforce diversity

Employee Motivation

Managing Your Job Interview

How do you cope with a job interview? Are you prepared to do well in your next job interview. Look at the link provided. read the related stories. Don't forget to search the Internet for additional information on how to manage your next job interview.


Managing Your Next Job Interview Well

What to Wear?

Men's Clothing

What to do after a Job Interview?

Changing Nature of Workplace

The 21st century business corporations are going through radical changes. This appears to be the only way to cope with the challenges facing the business firm. How can these companies continue to attract and retain the best talent. Hopefully the following article from Business week will throw some light.


New Work Place

Flexitime

Managing Meetings - Other Options

Managing Your Marketing Problems

How do you manage your marketing problems? What is 4P's? For answers to these and other marketing related questions, visit the following link

Marketing Problem Solving

Cross Cultural Misunderstanding

Misunderstanding across culture is common. In a global economy, one need to be more sensitive to the cultural differences.Be prepared at all time, so that you will not face embarassing moments.

Cross Cultural Miscommunication

Managing Conflict - Business Communication

How do we handle conflicts in our workplace? Watch both the videos. You should be able to learn something.

Conflict

Intercultural Communication

Understanding Marketing

It is crtical to understand the various aspects of marketing. This is useful, even if your studying non-marketing modules. Try the following link to gain a better understanding about the concept


Understanding Consumers

Introduction to Marketing

International Marketing

International Business

Channel Distribution

Disciplining and Terminating Employees

One can't simply fire an employee without following certain procedures. Conducting a Disciplinary Interview is an important aspect of managing people at work. How do you conduct a disciplinary interview?

The number of steps you need to adopt can be grouped under three categories - there are number of steps you should adopt before the disciplinary interview (preparation/planning elements), a number of practices one should follow during the actual face-to-face encounter (conducting/implementation) and practices one should complete at the end of the disciplinary interview (documentation/review).

One may consider the following steps when you need to conduct a disciplinary interview:

- gather all the relevant data relating to the disciplinary interview.
- Review the personnel folder of the employee for past records.
- take note of employee's contribution
- Verify the facts, so that you will be able to defend your facts.
- Conduct the interview in a private room.
- Be prepared to face 'an angry employee'.
- Explainthe purpose of the meeting.
- Be specific about the issue/incident
- Do acknowledge employee's past achievements.
- Present the facts without sounding too harsh or unreasonable.
- Ask questions to bring out the facts
- Listen actively to ensure that employee do understand what is going on.
- Encourage employee to tell his/her side of the story.
- provide ample time to let the employee defend himself/herself.
- Accept valid reasons.
- Agree on the corrective action.
- Ensure common understanding
- Document your discussions

What about firing an employee? Cascio, in his book titled 'Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits', citing reseraches carried out by others recoomend that the supervisor/manager follow the 'five rules for the termination interview'.

1. Present your decision in a clear and concise manner.

2. Don't argue or debate about the issue.

3. Treat the person with respect.

4. Practice empathy.

5. Discuss the next step designed to let the employee cope with the situation.


The following video clip from Businessweek should be useful to understand the topic.

Firing an Employee