MANAGING SELF AND OTHERS

Explore the strategies for career development, lifelong learning, and high performance in organizations. Learn how self-assessment, decision-making, and teamwork contribute to personal growth and success.

MANAGING SELF AND OTHERS

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Evaluate concepts associated with career development strategy...........................................2
1.2 Access the development of a lifelong learning approach and skill development taken by
yourself and others.......................................................................................................................4
1.3 Evaluate and apply a range of strategies that lead to ‘high performance’ people.................5
1.4 Apply such strategies to working as an individual or as part of a team................................7
1.5 Reflect on your personal performance in order to demonstrate learning and self-
improvement................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

List of Tables
Table 1: Development strategies.....................................................................................................7

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Career development process............................................................................................4

Introduction
In an organization, the basis of work for an individual is skills and knowledge. Every person is
assigned with the responsibility of work according to his capability to complete the given work.
This encourages employees to accept the challenges and duties to achieve a high position in the
organization. The current report is based on self-learning and self-managing ourselves with the
concept of professional development plans, SWOT analysis, career development and decision
making. There are some of the development strategies discussed in the report which helps in
improving the skills and knowledge. Lancaster is engaged in the hotel business, and currently, I
am working at the post of manager. My job is to maintain employees of the organization and
encourage them towards the work in the organization. The report describes the steps to achieve
professional development planning and achieving high performance in the organization.
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1.1 Evaluate concepts associated with career development strategy
Career development strategy is the planning which is essential to prepare ourselves for the
challenges, developing capabilities and structure the ability to transform ourselves for achieving
personal goals and success. It is necessary to remain focused towards work which will have a
successful career. In an organization, the best strategy can be to engage in the circle of changes
that are happening around and learning the essential concepts from such change. To achieve
success effective career development planning is very crucial and to identify the strategies which
will suit better for career development planning (Patton and McMahon, 2014).
Lancaster is engaged in the hotel business in London, and I have been working as a manager in
the hotel. I had adopted the career development strategy to achieve my goals and to manage
myself and my employees in the organization. Some of the approaches to career development
strategy are:
Goal setting
It is essential to set goals for the career as this generates a decisive point of view for our career
development. To improve my communication skills, I decided to set a goal for two months, and I
was successful to complete the same in the agreed period with regular efforts. The benefit of goal
setting is that we can manage time and move towards career development step by step.
Self-assessment
Self-assessment means to analyze ourselves and identify where we stand in our development
stages. To prepare career development strategy, it is very essential to determine own skills,
weakness, strength, and knowledge. After the process of self-assessment is completed, we can
adopt advanced learning methods to achieve our current goals and prepare plans for the next
target (Osborn and Zunker, 2015).
Decision making
For a growing career, the most critical aspect is decision making. I have learned to take effective
decision-making form my seniors, and I try to teach the same to my colleagues and other
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employees. Right decision making is very useful for career development as we need to select
career support programmes.
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis means to identify one’s strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. To
develop a career, it is very necessary to focus on strength and mistakes which affects the career.
Being a manager, I had identified my strength and weakness and improved my skills to
coordinate with seniors and team members in an efficient way. SWOT analysis is a very
effective strategy because it helps to overcome the threats to achieving personal goals.
Development of communication skill and coordination will lead to achieving professional and
personal goal. Through SWOT analysis we can identify the stats of career growth and how much
focus we need to build a successful carrier.
Communication skills
Communication means how we interact with our team members, employees and seniors. This
will help an individual in improving customer relationships; maintain professional standards and
achieving goals of the organisation. Through better communication skills we can explain the
needs of various departments and people (Creed and Hughes, 2013). This is the most important
strategy in career development planning as this serves as a base for developing a better career.
Effective career development planning is very simple process if we adopt right strategies.
Attending meetings and seminars
Lancaster organises many seminars for the employees to grab knowledge and develop skills to
develop their career. I manage to attend all the seminars and meeting in order to be interactive
with everyone and develop my own skills and knowledge.
Therefore, we can apply the above strategies to develop a good career and it is very important to
identify such strategies which will help planning a successful career.
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Figure 1: Career development process
1.2 Access the development of a lifelong learning approach and skill development taken by
yourself and others
Lifelong learning relates to the activities which help to improve knowledge and skill of a person
in both fields i.e. personal and professional. An individual is required to analyse his own strength
and weakness for career development. The concept is important to gain knowledge about
technology and policies to complete the demand of organisation. Lifelong learning can be done
by following advanced learning methods:
 Personal learning – We can gain knowledge from many sources and areas but the
important part is what we learn and how we apply the same in self management and
career management. Personal learning helps to manage the people around us and the
employees in the organisation. The learning is reflected through changes in our
behaviour, the ideas to completing a given work, maintaining balance between work and
personal life (Aspin et al, 2012).
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 Professional learning – Professional learning means how we manage work; communicate
with people in organisation and our behaviour with the employees. This is the method
about how we utilise our skills and opportunities to complete the given project. This is
one of the advanced learning methods because through professional learning we can
develop our working skills.
 Social learning – What we see is what we learn. Social learning is what we learn from the
people around us i.e. from parents, friends, relatives and colleagues. This helps to
increase our inner strength and helps to eliminate our weakness and negative points.
 Learning form reflection – Self learning through reflection will help to develop better
understanding and achieving positivity from the environment at workplace. I am able to
self reflect my areas and identify the opportunities in working areas (Griffin et al, 2013).
It helps to improve understanding skills and helps in better lifelong learning.
Self management includes personal activities performed by a person during his work relating to
project design, training, attending meetings, preparing presentations etc. Self managed learning
is the appropriate learning through different conditional and operational sources that support to
achieve personal goals.
To attend meetings and conferences is one of the techniques to develop learning and skills.
Lancaster organises meetings and conferences to discuss about effective achievement of goals
and objectives at professional level at regular intervals. This approach of self learning had helped
me to gather information and data about growing market and will help me to fulfil effective goals
such as gaining a higher positioning of manager at the organisation.
Through active participation in technology advancement we can develop our learning in the field
of technology and market. With rise in globalisation, technology has enhanced business activities
and reduced the workload of employees. Internet is one of the effective sources that will enable
to enhance deep learning and gathering more information for suggesting ideas for growth of
business that will lead to attain personal promotions in business (Giacalone and Rosenfeld,
2013). Search engines will help to evaluate different ways to develop skills and overcome the
weakness for delivering effective outcomes.
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The process to identify our own skills and putting efforts to improve those skills is known as
skill development. Skills are of two types like soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills include
decision making, networking, time management, communication, leadership and ability to
manage the work. Whereas, hard skills are related to technical work, designing and
programming. Every type of skill is important to develop our career and efficiencies. I always
emphasised on improving my skills as a manager so that I can manage people around me and
work associated with the employees and team (Schermerhorn et al, 2014). This helped me a lot
in improving my communication skills and interpersonal skills also.
1.3 Evaluate and apply a range of strategies that lead to ‘high performance’ people
High performance means to execute the work by the group of people with their skills and
commitment to achieve the desired goal of the organization. High performance strategy describes
the intentions of the people about how to achieve competitive advantage and improving
performance of the organisation. The leader of the team should be capable to identify the skills
of the team members and interchange the roles and responsibility of the persons if required. High
performance is directly related with team work. There should be a level of trust maintained
between the team members in order to achieve the goals of the organisation along with personal
goals.
To build a high performance team the main role is of team leader. As a manager and team leader,
consistently and frequently I used to encourage the team members and increase energy and
enthusiasm in them. When the employees are inspired they work with great potential and the
goals of the organisation are achieved along with personal objectives and career development
plans. In order to achieve high performance the team leaders should keep themselves updated
about new technologies and market strategies (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). Coordination should be
maintained between team members and leaders in order to discuss the problems otherwise this
gives rise to conflicts among employees. Some of the strategies that lead to ‘high performance’
people are:
Coordinative relationship – Coordinative relationship should be maintained between team
members to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in the work system. Through better
coordination high performance can be achieved as it is a flexible system.
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Open and clear communication – People should communicate with each other to share the
information in effective manner and for enhanced team work. The team members should choose
appropriate method to send and receive messages between them in order to eliminate
miscommunication and if any confusion arises then it should be clarified by the members.
Participative leadership – Leadership refers to the responsibility of accepting feedback and data
from the members and developing the strategies to achieve the goals. The leader should be a
responsible person who can manage himself and the team. He should be a person of high
performance skills which is reflected in the team work (Anitha, 2014).
Effective decision making – Decision making is a process to choose best alternative and
resources for the given project. Effective decision making is very important for high
performance people. Both positive and negative aspects should be considered for effective
decision making.
Goal development – For high performance it is very necessary to identify the goals and develop
the strategies for good performance to complete the desired goal. The objective should be clear
and specified to avoid confusion and uncertainty in the project.
Roles and responsibilities – Manager, team members and leader should understand their roles
and responsibility towards work. They should understand their commitment and responsibility
to complete the work on time.
Lancaster is a high performance organisation as the motion of the work is controlled and
employees work in organised way. As a manager I was confident about my strategies and work
system because I had self-learned this from the surroundings of the organisation. To achieve
high performance my focus is to manage employees around me and guide them to learn through
self-learning process. Through self-learning and self-managing people understand what they are
supposed to initiate and can quickly observe the factors to complete the work with high
performance. High performance organisations choose potential leaders who are groomed for
success. They encourage employees to focus on decision making process and accountability to
develop a better career.
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1.4 Apply such strategies to working as an individual or as part of a team
To work as an individual and a part of team the strategies should be formulated to fulfil current
and future needs of the organisation. Self-managed learning and professional development plan
are the two methods through which goals can be achieved. Reading and observation are guide to
meet own development needs and can be applied in different working areas. The development
personal and professional standards can be done through evaluation of own skills and
knowledge.
Table 1: Development strategies
Development
strategies
Actions for development
Decision
making
In an organisation there are different sectors for taking decision of the respective
sectors. I manage to analyse the decision making process to learn the effective
decision making.
Time
management
Time management is one of the important factors in self-managing and team
management. I learned to manage time to accomplish the work and also devoting time
for my self-learning process.
Team working To develop the skills of communication interaction is very important with team
members and other staff. I emphasised to encourage every person for discussion and
taking part in meetings.
Leadership To perform the duty of a leader it is very important to develop one’s own skill to
manage the entire team. Therefore, it is important to learn from seniors to develop the
skills of leadership.
Professional development plan should be initiated by the manager after identifying the skills and
goals of the employees and keeping in view the objectives of the organisation. The plans should
be viewed and updated by the management according to the changing needs of the employees
and organisation (Nancarrow et al, 2013). For career development, professional development
plan are very important as they focus on achieving the objectives of personal goals. It should be
supported with discussions and strategies which will lead to development in career objectives.
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The professional development planning can be initiated by following steps:
 Self assessment should be carried out by every person in the team which will help to
identify the strength and weakness.
 Next conduct assessment to analyse personal skill level and awareness of environment.
 Needs of the organisation and the department should be determined.
 Opportunities should be identified for the employees and team members.
 Progress of the employees and the team members should be reported to senior
management.
Therefore, the steps discussed above will help professional development planning in enhanced
manner as it considers many skills like technical skills, personal skills, professional skills, social
skills and communication skills.
To work as an individual and as a part of team I need to take training which will help me to
analyse my own skills and strengths. This will also help me to develop my decision making skills
and enhance my quality to work. As a manager I will be able to improve my leadership quality in
managing the team work. To maintain effective balance in work system optimum utilisation of
resources plays an important role keeping in view the future objectives. We need to learn the
effective utilisation of resources through professional development planning in order to balance
the needs of organisation. Professional development planning is very effective to manage goals
and achieve organisational objectives.
1.5 Reflect on your personal performance in order to demonstrate learning and self-improvement
With the help of self-learning and self-improvement I had developed my skills and gained higher
position in business. To achieve the objectives and personal capabilities time and activity plays a
crucial role in organisation. To achieve higher position in Lancaster I worked on strategy to
collect feedbacks and suggestions from different departments and applied the changes in my
work field. Self-learning helped me in learning and developing my skills of communication,
analysis and decision making. I learned to assign the work to the person who possesses the
quality and knowledge according to the project and the person should have enough knowledge to
utilise the resources available with the organisation in efficient manner.
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I worked on developing my professional standards and technique of time management.
Analysing my senior management I started the system of rewards distribution to the competent
persons in order to encourage them towards work and organisation for long term. This technique
also helped in developing the loyalty of employees for the organisation and work system. One of
my purposes was to increase the profits and revenues for the organisation along with improving
efficiency of the employees. However, to overcome the weakness interest should be developed
towards work and strength should be utilised. I used to obtain guidelines and suggestions from
the senior management which helped me to maintain flow in work.
To maximise our personal performance we need to identify the business strategies and
profitability criteria of the organisation. The skills can be developed by self-learning and by
attending training, seminars, meetings and group discussions. We learn about achieving the
customer satisfaction and identifying the needs of the customers and their demands after our skill
development (Lee, 2017). The proper management of our work and employees eliminates the
problem of profit making and high turnover in the organisation. Management of time and
development of skills helps in efficient delivery of services.
As a manager in Lancaster I developed my strategies and plans to obtain customer satisfaction
and managing the team for various projects with resource and cost allocation. Self-learning
helped me a lot in acquiring higher position in the organisation and now I am able to manage
myself and others with the assigned work and responsibility. I have developed standard
guidelines for the staff to accomplish the given work so that there are no chance of duplication of
work and methods. Preparing guidelines for the unexpected certainties is also one of the difficult
tasks but it was managed through learning and experience from the environment of the
organisation.
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Conclusion
On the basis of above research, we can conclude that success can be achieved in career through
plans and improvement in skills. However, by implementation of proper steps we can achieve the
desired goals for ourselves and for the organization. Report has also discussed strategies for
increasing the knowledge and development in plans for self-management and management of the
employees. The report emphasised on techniques of learning for various fields such as seniors,
organizations environment and from development programs. I achieved success by following the
above strategies and steps in my career.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Anitha, J., 2014. Determinants of employee engagement and their impact on employee
performance. International journal of productivity and performance management, 63(3),
p.308.
Aspin, D.N., Chapman, J., Hatton, M. and Sawano, Y. eds., 2012. International handbook of
lifelong learning (Vol. 6). Springer Science & Business Media.
Creed, P.A. and Hughes, T., 2013. Career development strategies as moderators between career
compromise and career outcomes in emerging adults. Journal of Career
Development, 40(2), pp.146-163.
Giacalone, R.A. and Rosenfeld, P. eds., 2013. Impression management in the organization.
Psychology Press.
Griffin, C., Holford, J. and Jarvis, P. eds., 2013. International perspectives on lifelong learning.
Routledge.
Kehoe, R.R. and Wright, P.M., 2013. The impact of high-performance human resource practices
on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Journal of management, 39(2), pp.366-391.
Lee, G., 2017. Leadership coaching: From personal insight to organisational performance.
Kogan Page Publishers.
Nancarrow, S.A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P. and Roots, A., 2013. Ten principles
of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1), p.19.
Osborn, D.S. and Zunker, V.G., 2015. Using assessment results for career development.
Cengage Learning.
Patton, W. and McMahon, M., 2014. Career development and systems theory: Connecting theory
and practice (Vol. 2). Springer.
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Schermerhorn, J., Davidson, P., Poole, D., Woods, P., Simon, A. and McBarron, E.,
2014. Management: Foundations and Applications (2nd Asia-Pacific Edition). John
Wiley & Sons.
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