Management Competencies

Introduction

David De Vries of the Center for Creative leadership stated that “You cannot manage others until you can manage yourself”. Great leadership starts with self-awareness. Based on Assignment 01, I was able to identify competencies that I am lacking and which need to be prioritize for my personal and career development. This report explains the steps I was taken to enhance my communication and networking skills throughout the semester, its consequences and further development insights.

Communication

I understand when I make a statement, whether I want it or not, it contains four messages simultaneously. Among all, first of all I wanted to improve my ears on appeal. I am good at telling others what I want them to do, but poor in opening an appeal ear to others.  When other person speaks about what he want me to do, I seems quite ignoring those appeals, which finally lead to poor relationships. So I always started asking others “How can I help you? What do you want me to do?” So they become more direct, which alow me to work on their requirements easily.

Back in my home country, I worked as an executive level government officer. Therefore I had legitimate power as well as reward power over my staff. When I explain any idea, I used to give my opinion without any supporting evidence or facts, because staff members accept all my ideas without questioning. I thought I made correct decisions always, so they accept those ideas. After I come Australia, I start practicing same with my group members and colleagues in university who came from different cultures. But always they questioned me. It makes me feel uncomfortable because I was used to work with a direct power. When I’m questioned and my opinions were not accepted by others, I started focus on skills which can make me more acceptable. I figure out that they don’t believe me as I am not resourceful about my ideas.  I feel like I should come up with Resources and facts to answer them.

So when I go for any specific meeting I analyses the situation and got ready before considering following three criteria.

1. The criteria of true or false (correct/not correct),
2. The criteria of relevance (are the listed facts relevant/not relevant for the present issue
3. The criteria of sufficiency (are the listed factual indicators adequate for the subject or do I need to add more points)

After implementing that strategy, now I feel like I am more inclusive in these gatherings as they see me as a credible person with lot of handy resources. In future I decided to use same technique so I can outperform many professionals in my same career.

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Processional Relationship and Networking

When discussing about networking and professional relationship, I have a limitation of “natural tendency “which prevents me from building proper networks.  In past I was always wondering why I have such a small number of connections. But after studying this subject I understand that “Networks are not gained, they are earned.” So I looked at the ways to broaden my networks and came up with two plans.

First of all I thought about using social media as a networking platform. I had a Facebook account but I didn’t find much useon that as it does not provide any specific platform to share ideas my specialized area, which is public policy.

So I moved from Facebook to Twitter. Twitter has a special option where we can apply some discipline to the topic and select whom you follow. With that I was able to have considerable number of followers with similar interest.  As I was an active member in that thread, one of the senior professional from Birmingham University UK who is a lecturer in public policy, invited me to participate online professional platform as his representative. It will be held in coming December 2019. I believe I can strengthen lot of relationships in that platform.

While I focus on online networking methodologies, I was dedicated to start an informal professional network (IPN).As we are newcomers to Australia, we have only handful of friends.  Some of them came together with us in same flight and some were our old friends who are established in Australia now.  Lot of our established friends have their own networks with 5-10 families. These groups are closed networks, so we cannot take part of them. Therefore I decided to build a new group with three families who came together with us. They also have very few connections and willing to have many friends.  I asked them to accompany one of their friends to our first meet up whom I expect to work as a broker who help to expand our new networks in Australia. Our group is going to be a closed group till it become more established and will open it for new connections future.  The first meetup was really organized in my side though others are not aware that before they come to the place.  I followed 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and convert them in a way we can enhance professional and personal relationships. These were the special strategies I used in first meet up.