Self-management
Management refers to the people who are tasked with the responsibility of setting the strategy of organizations and coordinating the efforts of employees so as to achieve set objectives. Primarily, their plans depend on the use of available organisational resources. Therefore, to be a manager, there are various factors that one has to understand. Moreover, one has to learn continually so as to improve their skills and abilities in leading their organisations. This assignment involves reflecting on five different activities that are related to management.
Each activity is a learning process for learners, I included. Therefore, the knowledge gained is vital for improving my skill levels, understanding class discussions, and enhancing my experiences. There is a reflection on each topic highlighting the various lessons I learned and the importance of that particular study. The reflection is based on the class activity experiences, personal knowledge, and researched findings. Moreover, vital information was obtained from activity reflection sheet, which I used to fill after each topic.
Primarily, information contained in the reflection write up of each event includes; the importance of the activity study at the workplace, importance of concepts studied during each task, ways in which I used the knowledge covered in carrying out the excercise, and lastly, what I learned personally from the activities. Also important to note is that that I perfumed different tasks in different topics. However, I took the initiative of learning other activities that were assigned to other group members or other groups.
Elements of Effective Self-Management in the Workplace
Self-management involves personally taking up the responsibilities of organizational functions (Whetten, & Cameron, 2012, 21-29). Tasks associated with management such as directing, controlling, staffing, organizing, and planning become a responsibility of one’s self. As a result, self-management helps to spontaneously bring an organisational structure to a business establishment. Self-management is, therefore, an alternative to the more familiar hierarchical organizing method.
Various elements need to be understood at the workplace so as to establish effective self-management. This includes understanding the competencies of individuals in an organization, knowing the existing intelligence levels of the workforce and understanding the boundaries that govern one’s freedom to communicate and interact with other people regarding their teams (Cheung, & Cheng, 2016, 17-29). These factors have to be clearly identified so as to understand the nature of organization duties as to whether they are urgent, important, not urgent, not important, or not urgent and not important.
Through this activity, I managed to learn the various self-management levels that a manager has to cope with beginning from my own self to my personal relationship with the business. Moreover, I was able to learn the three different types of intelligence that apply to businesses. This included the IQ, the EQ, and the CQ (Thomas & Adams, 2015, 99-114). From the study, it is clear that for effective self-management, one has to possess both the intelligence and be able to combine them well according to situations.
Another key lesson was learning about various competence areas. There are technical related competencies, human, business, and personal traits competencies. The activity also involved understanding the core requirements for effective self-management. For instance, there are particular qualities such as likeness for solving problems, understanding client’s needs, and being able to work virtually that are crucial for those who want to manage themselves.
The concepts involved in self-management are vital at the workplace. For instance, they help in proper prioritizing of activities to be carried out. Moreover, they are important in dealing with fragmentation, change, or ambiguity. Personally, I was able to self-evaluate myself regarding my self-management abilities. Moreover, I have thoroughly evaluated myself regarding self-awareness and stress management. Borrowing from Johari’s window explanation, I was able to identify and group business information regarding what is known to myself and what is known to others.
Individual Strategies and Techniques for Self-Development
The course description of self-development is that it is a range of activities that are undertaken with an aim of bettering one’s self. It involves learning new and better skills while doing away with bad habits (Garman, et.al, 2012, 219-222). In this activity, I participated in the identification of needs, priorities and choosing options. This was one if the five activities that are important for self-development.
Self-development involves various concepts which are all kick-started by carrying out a self-assessment on yourself. After that, one has to identify their needs, be able to prioritize them and chose the best options. Moreover, self-development requires that one sets smart goals and identify areas of weakness that they can enhance through training and development.
My task involved identifying various personal needs that motivated me towards perusing my career. I had tothink about some other things that made me chose to study for this career apart from financial benefits, recognition, and the ability to afford. I realised that some internal needs led to my preference of my current career choice aside from others.
This included factors such as satisfaction, career recognition, and passion, among others. Moreover, I discovered that it was important to prioritize needs (Joy, et.al, 2012, 17-23). This is because all needs however insignificant they may seem may affect a person’s decision-making and the process of personal development in many ways. Needs have to be prioritized in order of their importance and urgency. However, one needs to be careful with needs that seem to be urgent because in most casesthese needs are less significant to a person’s self-development.
The other two self-development concepts; goal setting and conduction of a needs analysis, are also vital. This is because the goals a person sets goes a long way in defining the skills one might choose to better through training and development. On the other hand, a needs analyse is important as it indicates the areas a person needs to improve on.
In my task, I depended majorly on carrying out my personal needs analysis, assessing myself and going back to evaluate the goals I had set earlier which led me to peruse this career. These activities were important as they helped me complete my task and identify what means more to me between job satisfaction and financial benefits.
Elements of Effective Interpersonal Relationships in the Workplace
Interpersonal relationship refers to a deep, close, and strong association between two or more individuals. The period which the interaction lasts may be brief, or enduring. In this concept, the interpersonal relationship is based on business interactions. However, as per the topic, the relationship needs to be formed in various contexts including cultural, social, and economic influences.
Effective interpersonal relationship is influenced by certain abilities. I was able to understand that communication is crucial for forming and maintaining relationships. This is because people who are in a relationship need to communicate and understand each other. As a result, communication skills have to be enhanced for effective management. The course was very wide and as a result, it enabled us to be introduced to reaction time as a critical factor in communication. This is the time taken for one communicating party to respond to the other party after being spoken to (Steiner, 2011, 153-156).
At the workplace, interpersonal relationships are imperative. As part of my activity, I was able to learn that the relationship that exists between working individuals in an organisation influences the output that comes from such people. For instance, a junior employee is likely to give his or her best if he has a good relationship with his supervisor or manager. Moreover, I felt that strong interpersonal relationship at the workplace helps to maintain workplace or rather professional ethics. Consequently, this goes a long way in creating an enabling environment for business operations (Adams, 2014, 327-330).
My task during this activity involved assessing various conflict management approaches. According to my Adams (2014, 340-343), conflict arises when individuals fail to understand each other due to the existence of a bad relationship between them. Using individual elements of effective interpersonal relationships, I was able to comprehend how one can be able to manage conflict in the workplace.
As per my findings, having good workplace relationship helps in minimizing conflicts that might arise in the workplace. On the other hand, good and efficient communication between disputing parties helps in managing already existing conflicts (Byrkjeflot & Jespersen, 2014, 448-451). These discoveries were important to me because they erased my initial beliefs.
This is because I used to think that interpersonal relationship, especially at the workplace, has no influence on conflict. Moreover, I used to believe that only professional relationships existed at the workplace. However, this is contrary to the activity studies as both interpersonal and personal relationships can exist at the workplace
Personal Leadership Approache Qualities and Their Impacts on Others
Personal leadership simply refers to the leadership of the self. It involves personally taking the responsibilities of all life aspects affecting you and leading them towards a direction that best suits you. Various qualities of personal leadership were discussed in this seminar. However, the qualities were not presented directly but were put forward in the form of theories. These theories include; leadership trait theories, leadership behaviour theories, contingency leadership theories, leadership transformational theories, and charismatic leadership.
For the theories to apply and be effective, certain influencing tactics have to be put in place (Donsophon, Jhundra-indra, & Raksong, 2015, 59-76). I was able to understand that tactics are means through which individuals who hold leadership positions transform bases of power into various specific actions. Moreover, the topic expanded my knowledge of personal leadership by describing the meaning of each of the nine influencing tactics.
Primarily, these tactics included; legitimacy, reciprocal exchange, rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, personal appeals, consultation, coalitions, pressure, and integration. To add on that, I was able to learn about three specific responses to personal leadership that influence tactics.
This are resistance: comes about when the target to be influenced repels the request, compliance: comes about when the target of influence obeys a request unwillingly, and commitment which comes about when the target of influence agrees and supports a request (Joyce, Nga, & Mun, 2013, 505-519). Lastly, I was able to understand the most efficient influencing tactics and the least effective tactics as well as the direction of influence in an organisation.
My primary activity involved analysing and assessing charismatic leadership. As per my findings, this type of leadership involves having the ability to motivate and inspire. According to Thomas (2014, 335-337), Charismatic leaders are able to achieve excellent outputs by inspiring and motivating their juniors to be committed to their organizational course and be able to perform at the topmost levels.
I was able to understand that motivation achieves this through use of the knowledge gained in studying influencing tactics (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2013, 56-61). Moreover, I was able to comprehend that the choice of a leadership theory or style is mainly influenced by factors such as sequencing of tactics, the ability to use a tactic, and the relative power of a tactic. Overall, the seminar was very educating especially on ways to effectively lead others well and be able to obtain optimum outputs.
Engaging with others in the workplace
There are various factors which govern the level of engagements at the workplace. This seminar revolved around enhancing professionalism through workplace engagements. This means that irrespective of the engagements carried out at the workplace, professionalism has to be observed and fostered through them (Heller, 2012, 307-315).
Various terms and concepts come into play regarding workplace engagements. These concepts include ethics, diversity, cultural stereotypes, and CV evaluation. Through the study of this course, I was able to understand the meaning and importance of these terms and other factors as explained below.
Ethics refers to the generally accepted code of conduct. Different workplaces have distinct ethical requirements. However, most of these requirements are closely related as they are all aimed at enhancing professionalism. As I discovered through studying the topic, ethics is the chief influencing factor regarding an individual’s professional development (Holden, et al., 2012, 245-254). This is because it ensures that one sticks to the right behaviour so as to uphold the organization’s morals and values.
On the other hand, diversity refers to accepting another person as they are. In this concept, the seminar involved enlightening us on how to accept other people irrespective of their ethnicity, origin, gender, or skill levels. I was also able to understand the relationship that exists between diversity and stereotyping. Stereotyping can be said to be a product of diversity in which people develop certain thoughts about individuals with certain traits (Steiner, 2011, 150-156).
My activity during the study of this topic involved analysing diversity and ways in which people are different. These are the tasks that were assigned to group three. In handling my task, I relied on the concepts stated to be important regarding engagement of people in the workplace. For instance, in understanding diversity and how people are different, I considered various stereotypes that are associated with my culture and those of my group members.
Diversity and ethics are crucialin the workplace. Ethics helps maintain professionalism and ensure good working relationship between juniors and their supervisors and among employees (Kalbers, & Fogarty, 2015, 64). On the other hand, diversity helps an organization to have a broad range of skills. This is because people from different backgrounds and cultures offer different and unique skills. Moreover, an organization is able to enjoy a broad view of options from a diverse workforce.
Conclusion
Efficient management is essential for the success of an organisation. Therefore, individuals tasked with the duty of managing have to possess various vital skills in order to achieve desired organisational objectives. From the study, there are different ways of managing. This is because; there exist many theories which explain different modes of leadership. For instance, charismatic leadership is different from traits leadership theory. However, a choice of a leadership theory might not be sufficient to steer an organisation to success; it needs to be accompanied with other abilities.
Having self-management qualities, effective leadership qualities, and high level of professionalism with the capacity to self-develop helps one become a good manager. In the assignment, I was able to use the knowledge and skills I gained during the class discussions to carry out my own activities. This means that various management concepts can be grasped easily if one has interest and the desire to learn.
Regarding self-management, one has to learn to differentiate important and urgent factors from the non-insignificant. This is vital as it will help the management in prioritizing organizational activities. On self-development, managers have to understand their needs and choose the sections that they can improve through further skill acquisitions through training and development.
On the other hand, leaders have to be able to choose good leadership styles that will be effective. This is important as it will help them to appropriately use the leadership influencing factors to motivate employees and be able to obtain optimum results. The exercise was very educating; I was able to learn many new concepts relating to management and how to use them.
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