Management is an activity carried out by human beings and as such, influenced by their personal characteristics, as determining elements of what has been called the managerial style.
Leadership, the ability to negotiate and harmonize, are part of the personality and in turn define the manager's style as well as his possibilities to obtain results with a high level of performance.
Closely linked to the training of personnel, there is a topic of great importance in the area of Human Resources, it is the one related to Management Development, which refers to how managers' performance can be improved so that they can lead a group of better way.
The purpose of Management Development is to prepare (through courses, workshops, which promote an elevation of knowledge as well as a change in attitudes, supported on the improvement of skills) managers, with the premise of improving the future performance of all the organization.
It could be said that Management Development is a powerful tool to prepare employees, and especially managers, to assume higher-level positions, leading to an increase in the level of managerial talent as well as promotion "from within" in an organization.
To start developing a Management Development system, it is important to determine the managerial needs within an organization, and then verify the managerial talent that is available through the pertinent information that you have of the people who aspire to have a managerial position (performance evaluation, skills, experience, etc.). Finally, the development needs of each person who aspires to the position are analyzed, indicating what they should be trained in and subsequently choosing the one with the best result.
Another issue, not less important, is managerial training in the same job, through important techniques such as:
Job rotation: "Know a little about everything" would be the motto at this point, where an employee is rotated by different departments, so that he gains experience in all the operations of an organization and can discover his preferences in contact with different activities, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. This point is of utmost importance to a manager because he or she could better understand the needs of others.
Mentoring and replacement method: Explains that the person who is going to occupy a managerial position works and is trained under the direct advice of the person who is going to replace and this person is responsible for the training and evolution of the teaching process. Communication between the two actors in this process is essential for quality learning, which would be demonstrated in the subsequent exercise of the activity by the replacement.
Panels of managers in training: At this point, the aim is to provide training and information to mid-level managers about the general procedures of a company and to motivate them to propose solutions to problems or difficult situations that are occurring. The objective is to give these managers experience to improve uncertain situations at the organizational level.
Action learning: it also has to do with training middle managers where they work on solving problems in departments that are not their own and analyze and discuss proposals to later determine results and achievements.
A small inconvenience may be that the full-time services of a competent manager when working in other departments are lost at a certain point.
Management training can take place inside as well as outside the workplace.
In addition to the aforementioned techniques that are developed in the workplace, others can be performed outside of it.
You can find the case study method, where a manager is presented with a written report of a certain problem, he must make a diagnosis and provide a solution; There are also management games, here the groups of managers compete with each other in a simulated market situation, making decisions, mostly computerized.
Other off-the-job techniques include manager training seminars and university-related programs, where continuing education programs, individual courses, and degree programs such as master's degrees or majors are found.
Likewise, they also find the interpretation of roles, in this training a manager in training is asked to assume the leading role in an imaginary situation within an organization; Behavioral models where managers are shown the best way to solve a problem are allowed to practice the correct model and learn from possible failures that may arise. Finally, there are internal development centers that, as the name implies, are located in companies to train potential managers.
Each type of managerial behavior generates a set of relationships and consequences that affect the structure, priorities and quality of an organization's response, the characteristics of which constitute the counterpart of managerial style.
For each type of business, there is a style that maximizes results; The impact may vary if it is an unstructured type of business (management consulting, creative advertising), or a highly structured one (refinery or assembly line).
It is necessary to identify the components of the business most vulnerable to the managerial style, since they are the ones that must be taken into account when defining the manager's profile; which is given by the demands of the processes and mainly by the characteristics of the people to be managed. It is different to manage at a high professional level than at an operator level; to high technical qualification, than to apprentices; in an environment of repetitive works, than in one of variable works case by case.
With what has been stated so far, it can be argued that different personality styles can be outlined, which have different effects on the results. Each personality type has a type of job for which their skills / attitudes are appropriate.
One might conclude that at each stage in the life of a business, a different management style is required.
An important part of the role of management consists of prioritizing and prioritizing each aspect of the activity of a business. Not knowing how to assign the appropriate criticism to each need, distorts relationships and leads to unnecessary conflict (stress) and eventually failure.
The gap that exists between the demands of the type of job and the characteristics of the manager are the indicator of propensity to the result of an organization:
If the style matches the requirement, the conditions are in place for satisfactory results. Otherwise, that is, when the gap is large, the manager must modify her style, redefine the elements of the job, change the organization system or even quit the job.
The best style is the one that works, and in times of transformation such as those experienced by our Latin America, it becomes important to identify the combination of management style with type of organization that will result in success.
Six Management competencies:
- Communication Planning and administration Teamwork Strategic action Globalization Personnel management
Performance evaluation model
The focus is on discovering how productive an employee is and whether they can perform as effectively or more in the future.
It is used to make promotion decisions, promotions, salary increases, layoffs.
Evaluation formats and personal files are used.
360º evaluation.
A self-assessment guide:
Studies show that every time there is a successful case, you have behind you a manager who is primarily concerned with people, making sure that at the lowest levels there are other managers who care about people as well.
Here are some characteristics of the successful manager:
- Emphasize policies and procedures Avoid authoritarian methods Emphasize competitiveness Promote personal development Encourage participation in planning Establish challenging goals Promote personal initiatives Promote new ideas and innovations Provide adequate coaching Clearly establish expected results and diffuse the means of achieving it Incentive communication the senses Independently evaluates the performance of the teams from that of its members Management of change Delegates, delegates and delegates
The most suitable professional is one who, in addition to knowledge, has skills, attitudes and interests compatible with their role.
Training is the process applied in a systematic and organized way, in order to expand knowledge, develop skills and abilities, and modify attitudes. It is also understood as the training and education necessary to perform a certain function or task.
Any variant to train must start with the diagnosis of learning needs, it happens that managers sometimes train without making a previous diagnosis, which brings with it the lack of motivation for the courses received, turning the knowledge imparted as lost time. Therefore, it is important to highlight the top place that the determination of training needs has throughout the teaching-learning process. According to Toma. H. Boydell the word need implies that something is missing, that there is a limitation somewhere.
It is the responsibility of training systems to have instruments that allow them to know what the learning needs of their managers are. This is one of the points that motivated the development of an instrument that allows supporting diagnoses of learning needs as well as measuring the impact of training on management boards.
Between 2005-2007, 6 research works were carried out in a sample of companies from the Ministry of Informatics and Communications and the Ministry of Transportation, which covered around 15 entities; These works confirmed the international tendency to consider leadership as a key factor in increasing performance in the same environment. On the other hand, the need to enhance leadership was found from the improvement of skills, especially those of an intellectual and interpersonal nature.
Cuba has not lagged behind in the research on Management Skills and there are already ministries that are at the forefront of this issue, such as the MIC and SIME, being one of the pioneers in the elaboration of a desired profile of Skills. Management for their managers.
The Competences valued as necessary for a top-level Sime Executive defined them as:
- Competencies for planning and organization Competencies for negotiation Competences for Economic-Financial Operations Competencies for the exercise of leadership Competencies for work with Human Resources Competences for operations proper to the mission of the organization
The aforementioned profile, together with that of Dr. Alexis Codina and that of the MIC that will be analyzed in the next chapter, are part of the efforts that have to do with the development of a Cuban School of Management and that following these efforts, the use of of the following profile of skills for the analysis to be developed in this investigation for being compatible with these Cuban works and with international trends.
As a fundamental part of this work, an instrument has been developed that can make diagnoses and evaluate the impacts of training on business performance. For the preparation of the same, the criteria of different experts were analyzed according to the analyzes carried out previously in this chapter and finally a proposal has been reached that includes many of the basic aspects internationally recognized and shared by the author of this work.
The skills profile with which the analyzes will be carried out will be as follows:
Management Skills:
Basic skills:
- Self-evaluation of the potential as a manager. Self-development of their capacities. Strategic competences: Decision making. Problem solving. Network of effective relationships.
Competencies of personal efficacy:
- Communication Planning Organization Control Teamwork Proactivity
