Professional Development Report: Strategic Managers at Virgin Group

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of professional development for strategic managers, focusing on the Virgin Group as a case study. It begins with an introduction to professional development and its importance, followed by an examination of methods for evaluating personal skills using SWOT analysis, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The report then explores the professional and strategic skills required to support strategic direction, including collaboration, leadership, negotiation, and mentoring. A detailed skill audit is presented, evaluating skills such as time management, critical thinking, and communication. The report also covers preferred learning styles based on the VARK model, and concludes with a personal leadership development plan to address weaknesses and methods to assess its outcomes. The content also provides a table of contents, references, and a plan to improve delegation and decision-making skills. This assignment is designed to help strategic managers enhance their skills and achieve organizational objectives.

Professional Development
for Strategic Managers

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1: Methods to evaluate personal skills......................................................................................3
P 2 Professional skills required to support strategic direction....................................................4
P3 strategic skills.........................................................................................................................6
P4 Preferred Learning Styles....................................................................................................10
P5:Personal leadership development plan to curb weaknesses...................................................2
P6: Methods to assess the outcomes of the plan against personal work objectives....................5
P7 Impact of Own Learning........................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Professional development refers to learning to earn and maintain the professional
achievement such as coursework or attending conference informal learning opportunities. This is
an all round development as individual to enhance further self study, mentoring etc. will help to
achieve self growth as a representative.
Virgin group is a British multinational brand which was founded by entrepreneur Sir
Richard Branson and Nik Powell. It was founded in February 1970. virgin group has many
subordinates like banking, books, commercial aviation and spacecraft, films, healthcare etc.
which generates a revenue of £19.5 billion per year.
This study includes the access of personal and professional skills to aquire strategic goals
apply strategic decision of the organization. Conducting audit and identifying learning styles and
improving it. Constructing a development plan and implementing it in real practice.
MAIN BODY
LO 1
P1: Methods to evaluate personal skills
A strategic manager as an individual should be aware about the strengths and weaknesses of his
own self as well as his human resource to have clear picture of what organization can achieve.
There are range of skills which are required by managers without which the future development
of an individual and organization both will become impotent. Applying SWOT analysis to
identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and evaluate personal skills required to
achieve strategic goal as strategic manager of Virgin Group.
Strengths: It should be prioritized to discover what are the major strengths of a strategic
manager, considering time management skills to complete given objective before deadline.
Communication or interpersonal skills for effective communication between departments as
Virgin group is a diversified organization and also it will enable Strategic manager to evaluate
customer related problems. Coaching skills enables strategic manager to develop skilled
subordinates to deliver high performance. Prioritizing tasks well in advance gives better
approach towards various tasks. Multi tasking skill is another important strength to switch and
work between different departments(Kaynak and et.al.,2018).
Weaknesses: Lacking decision-making skills and questioning own skills for wrong decisions
and failure is part of weaknesses that should be overcome because it will effect leadership.

Limited level of delegation because of diversified portfolio of Virgin group will provide negative
impact on motivation of employees. Low level of conflict management skills will have issues
underpinning conflicts within employees.
Opportunities: It is important to keep seeking in the options that are available to enhance skills
and qualities. Skills can be developed by getting training and guidance from senior management
in Virgin group along with reading about competitors also provide with an idea of qualities
which can be approached as opportunity(Kaynak and et.al.,2018.).
Threats: It is important to understand threats that can rise from the external as well as internal
environment. Continuous scanning of the internal as well as external environment is important as
a strategic manager to have better understanding of threats. Competitors strategy, internal dispute
can be possible threats.
P 2 Professional skills required to support strategic direction
Professional skills required for virgin group as for strategic direction to meet the needs and
demands of the customers. To achieve a strategic direction and vision to acquire the desired
targets following skills are required:
Collaboration and teamwork: As a strategic director the team needs to have a collaborative
approach towards problem solving. As a strategic director the diversity in the organization must
be kept in mind and communication skills, problem solving skills must be enhanced to meet the
demands and needs of the workers in an organization. Trust between workers and workers to
leaders must be maintained to give a salient working of the firm(Ansoff and et.al., 2018).
Leadership: to handle a team leadership skills must be improved and a team must be well
handled as a strategic manager of Virgin group a leadership strategy must be built. Ability to
influence others towards your tasks to achieve a common objective. Honesty and integrity
towards work and your workers must be shown as the workers are liable on you(Balogun and
et.al., 2015).
Negotiation and conflict Management: ability to listen to everyone and resolving problems is
an integral part of leader. Planning the tasks and operations to be carried out, negotiating
deadlines with your clients will help you to be a professional leader. Power can have a negative
impact on the workers, as not everyone can be happy with your decisions(Boardman and et.al.,
2016).

Mentoring: As a leader capabilities to mentor and help the workers must be achieve. As a
mentor appropriate guidance must be provided and immediate help must be given to the workers.
Mentor requires skills to guide the co workers and manages their work with feedback and
guidance(De Luc, 2018).

P3 strategic skills
Based on SWOT analysis of Strategic manager of Virgin group above is the skill audit to have better idea
of what qualities are required to meet the current as well as future needs of the business.
Objectives:
To improve communication skills by the end of year 2019.
To improve decision making skills by the end of year 2020.
To improve managing skills which are required for the better functioning by end of year 2019.
To improve the quality to understand things by the end of year 2019.

2.1 Skill audit to evaluate strategic skills

Need to work on it. Not totally sure Confident
TIME AND SELF MANAGEMENT
Ability to complete provided task before deadline.
Ability to help and guide others in the difficult task and make them perform in
exact way as desired.
Ability to remind subordinates about important dates, seminars, meetings,
presentations, dinners and other important dates in view of the organization.
Reaching seminars and meetings at provided time.
Indulging in productive activities which are important in perspective of
organization.
CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
Ability to find the solutions applying different approaches and considering
everyone's views before taking decision.
Ability to consider all the alternatives before going for the most optimal one.
Ability to work forming teams in different tasks.
Ability to find out desired result from the task and shift approach when above
doesn't work.
ORAL COMMUNICATION

Ability to explain and present own view during group discussion and meetings.
Ability to raise question during seminars, meetings and discussions.
Confident in explaining solutions and ideas to sub ordinates.
Ability to give presentation, explain each slide and answer raised questions in
board room with confidence.

10

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
Ability to create notes and points from the presentation and meetings.
Ability to communicate with subordinates and different departments for sharing
important information and plans.
ANALYSING INFORMATION
Ability to collect the information from different departments of the organization
and frame proper report.
Ability to understand various reports to determine present situation of the
organization and then perform strategic planning accordingly.
NUMERACY
Ability to read as well as understand various graphs, tables and charts to analyse
and derive meaningful information from raw data.

P4 Preferred Learning Styles
Learning styles used are the techniques used to learn the different strategies in learning theory,
VARK learning theory helps in the strategic learning skills of the development of skills. VARK
learning styles consists of four sub points used for learning information:
Visual: This includes learning from the maps, flowcharts, graphs, diagrams etc. in which
learning is done by the observation and interpreting data which can be helpful for the generating
information. Things are better learned by the images and graphs which is an effective way of
learning. This helps in learning and adapting information very efficiently and provide a easy way
of understanding things(Elbanna., 2016).
Auditory: This involves the information which is either spoken or heard, this is an effective way
of learning which can be grasped easily as learning can be easy to understand. This includes
group discussion, e-mails, telephones and other audible means of learning. This method is wide
used in any of the organization as capabilities improves, as in group discussion evolution of ideas
evolve and pass around the circle which helps in easy learning and building capability.
Read/Write: Reading and writing are used to develop the individuals core skills and knowledge
as self assessment is necessary to improve personal skills and abilities. This includes the reports
preparation learning through internet and self assessment of the data using internet books and
various other sources. Firms like schools are very much familiar with this type of learning.
Kinesthetic: It includes demonstrations, simulations, videos and movies of real things, as well as
case studies, practice and applications. It is based on reality check the data or happenings which
happened in real are analyses and interpret in this strategy(Fedorova and et.al., 2017).
This can help the Manager of Virgin Group to enhance as technical skills and to develop a new
strategy of innovation.