Managing Your Career

Managers have to be prepared in facing the changing progress of their organization and in response to the dynamic competitive environment change. One has to reach or create opportunities-experiences and relationship from which they can learn.

How Managers Learn and Develop

It is mention that to be effective managers must adapt to the situation they are facing and must learn from experience to overcome difficulties from psychological perspectives, attitude and values consistent with their roles and responsibilities.

The following describes 3 leadership and competencies strategy of managers and skills required to which they should use to should meet competencies and reach leadership functions

1. Establishing direction: developing a vision for the future and strategies needed to produce changes needed to achieve that vision.

a. Skills required ; inductive reasoning; strategic and multidimensional thinking, ability to turn complex, ambiguous data into a straight forward, easily communicated vision and strategy, and the ability to take risks.

2. Aligning people : communicate to teams to influence and bring them toward to achieve the vision

a. Skill required ; ability to build credibility , empathy, to communicate and empower them toward the same direction

3. Motivating and Inspiring: to be energizing on people in order to overcome political, bureaucratic and resource barrier to change by satisfying unfulfilled human needs

a. Skills required : ability to acquire power and exercise influence to change the behaviour, attitudes and values of different constituencies

Leadership is a not about charisma, but moreover comes from the pre-work socialization such as personal integrity, high energy level, and a strong drive to lead and mostly are learned. Different lessons are learned from development assignments, relationship with significant bosses and hardship. Managers who are able to grow beyond their initial strength and develop a broad choices of talents are more likely to progress in their careers, the have the necessaries abilities to meet the changing demands of their jobs.

A different view comes from McCall and his colleagues from observation that of experiences exposures does not guarantee a person will learn something from it. According to them, the lessons must be dug out if complex, confusing and ambiguous situations will be tough to incorporate. In order to change and grow, manages must look into self and introspect and analyze their attitudes, behaviour, and values and it should be documented as self to be honest. One must risk to disclose shortcomings and open themselves to constructive criticism.

Choosing the Right Positions

2 things need to be considered when starting for building a career and choosing which job opportunities to be pursued:

a. How good is the appropriateness between who they are and the position and the organization

b. How good is the appropriateness between who they are and who they want to be.

Consideration such as how fit are the managers characters with the corporate values (personal values match with corporate values) and, what learning opportunities does the organization or the environment offers.

Managers has to look for situations in which their strength are really needed, weaknesses are now serious drawback and their core values are consistent with those of the organization, ; stretch shouldn’t be too big or risk too great.

Special Dilemmas of Early Career

One has to be aware of their strength, limitations, motives and values, in order to make the