Developmental Goals
Setting strategic goals is an important component of an effective supervisory development plan. In this respect, I have formulated various personal and departmental goals that I will work towards attaining. My developmental goals target enhancing the five major functions of management that include, planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. Initially, my major goal entails establishing an effective communication within my organization. According to Sullivan & Glanz (2005), effective communication is essential for proper execution of the organizations’ activities. Good communication results to establishment of a team that is aware of the organization’s plans, strategies and the need of working hard to realize the set goals. This ensures that the team is always on the right track that results to a high performance. I will nurture the culture of listening to foster effective communication because a major component of communication entails listening. Prokopenko (1998) notes that a supervisor who listens to others is likely to have employees who are beneficial in identifying and tackling work-related challenges.
Another important goal that I will emphasize includes working hard to ensure that my employees and I attains good training. The work environment is highly dynamic which explains the need of accessing frequent trainings to ensure that my team remains updated. Employees with the necessary training are efficient employees because they are likely to utilize their time in working in constructive activities (Sullivan & Glanz, 2005). This means that as a supervisor, I will have easy times in monitoring my employees because they already know what they are supposed to do. Furthermore, this effective strategy is essential in salvaging the time that would otherwise have been lost in fixing mistakes made out of lack of knowledge. Particularly, my strategy for organizing employees will emphasize self-discipline and reliance. In this context, I will empower my employees by equipping them with all essential skills and tools and then challenge them to work independently (Rothwell, & Kazanas, 2000).
Furthermore, I target developing effective recruitment and retrenchment procedures that will ensure that the most suited candidates are selected for the positions in my organization. This will include ensuring that all candidates pass through a rigorous screening procedure that examines their personal abilities, education background and experience. This will ensure that I am working with highly skilled staff with individuals who can execute their duties accordingly. An important staffing policy will be ensuring that the employees’ promotion is entirely based on person’s ability, skills and performance.
Another goal that I will constantly promote includes focusing on compassionate leadership where the management is willing to listen to the employees’ concerns (Van, Moseley, Dessinger, Van & Van, 2012). I will encourage employees to feel free to present their concerns and opinion without fear of any form of intimidation. Particularly, I will encourage employees to acts as if they were in leadership positions. This will make the employees to appreciate their position in the decisions adopted by the organization. I target establishing a reward mechanism for employees who present excellent leadership attributes and performance. Establishing an effective reward system is essential in motivating employees since it makes them visualize the significance of working hard.
Although I intend to enhance autonomy in my employees, I have a goal of instituting strategic control strategies to ensure that employees are working within the acceptable boundaries and under the right procedures. The formulation of this goal is motivated by the need of establishing a unified team that is working towards a common focal point. The strategy will help me avoid conflicts in the operation ideologies and procedures that may deter the attainment of the formulated goals (Rothwell, & Kazanas, 2000).
Performance Gaps
Numerous factors may challenges the effectiveness of my management plan. Major performance gaps include conflicts, poor cooperation and limited resources. Conflict is inevitable within a diverse team due to differences in people’s preferences, beliefs and ideologies. Conflicts have the potential of challenging the attainment of the formulated goals, which highlights the significance of developing effective conflict-resolution strategies (Van et al., 2012). My management strategy will target ensuring that my department is running smoothly and that I have gained essential respect from my employees by engaging in rational practices, which would build trust upon me. An ideal approach of realizing this entails tolerating critics and utilizing them in reviewing my goals and adjusting them accordingly.
Poor cooperation emanates with the employees who are not willing to embrace the formulated strategies. This aspect affects performance because it results in poor adoption and implementation of the spelt procedures (Van et al., 2012). This highlights the need of developing a strategy for motivating defectors into my ideology. An effective strategy of promoting this aspect includes explaining to the rebels the significance of embracing my position. Particularly, I will ensure that my employees are aware of the benefits of following my strategies and the consequences of abandoning the spelt procedures. Lastly, limited resources have the potential of creating a performance gap because realization of some of my goals requires adequate funding. For example, the objective of promoting effective training can hardly be attained in a situation where essential resources for ensuring the same are missing. In this respect, I will work hard in establishing diverse sources through which I can obtain resources for funding my procedures.
Self-Assessment
My strengths include a strong personality that is characterized with strong personal values and strategic social skills. I am ever motivated into realizing my goals since I find satisfaction in being successful. Furthermore, I have strong convincing power because I have strategic skills for wooing people into adopting my position. I value diversity and consider it an ideal element for improving performance in my team. However, my weakness entails bias towards personal ideologies. I am minimally accommodative because I hardly divert from my ideologies that I view as supreme. This attitude is detrimental because I may often ignore better proposals from others and continue working on lesser productive strategies. This means I need to be aware of this aspect and work towards minimizing it effects especially when making critical decisions.
Input from Others
Through interacting with others, I have learnt various concepts that I can utilize in developing my performance. Initially, I have learnt that the supervisor should have tactical skills for building constructive relationship with others. A supervisor essentially interacts with diverse people at various stages, both inside and outside the firm. This means that I need to work on my personality to ensure that I have the capability of relating with the juniors and seniors in an amicable manner. Furthermore, I have learnt the need of embracing the problem-solving attitude to be in a position of addressing various challenges that emerge while in pursuit of my goals. Lastly, I need to work on my budgeting skills to ensures that financial constrains do not hinder the attainment of my objectives (Ramsey, 1997).
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities needed by supervisors
- Learning and listening skills.
- Knowledge of predicting factors that may affect their strategies in future.
- Supervisors should have ability of communication effectively.
- Have excellent conflict management skills.
- Ability to convince employees into embracing their ideologies.
- Supervisors need to have knowledge and ability of motivating employees.
- Skills for managing diverse attitudes, perspectives and beliefs.
Learning Materials and Strategies
Major learning strategies will include enrolling in frequent management empowerment courses and seminars. This is essential in ensuring that I am aware of the most recent and effective management procedures. Learning materials include available management books and other relevant publications. Other learning materials will include learning from others and past encounters. My strategy will include seeking and re-evaluating other people’s opinions in order to ensure that I am assuming informed decisions (Prokopenko, 1998). This will include accessing counsel from experts, professionals, co-workers and even from my junior staffs. Furthermore, when faced by a challenge that need a critical decision; I will always revisit the past and try to identify similar situations to establish the positions adopted and their consequences. These evaluations can help me adopt the most effective approaches and avoid grievous mistakes made by others.
Gap Analysis
References
Prokopenko, J. (1998). Management development: A guide for the profession. Geneva: International Labour Office.
Ramsey, R. D. (1997). Social skills for supervisors. SuperVision, 58(1), 5-7. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195589918?accountid=45049
Rothwell, W. J., & Kazanas, H. C. (2000). Developing in-house management and leadership programs: Their creation, management, and continuous improvement. Westport, Conn: Quorum.
Sullivan, S., & Glanz, J. (2005). Supervision that improves teaching: Strategies and techniques. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press.
Van, T. D. M., Moseley, J. L., Dessinger, J. C., Van, T. D. M., & Van, T. D. M. (2012). Fundamentals of performance improvement: Optimizing results through people, process, and organizations : interventions, performance support tools, case studies. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer, a Wiley imprint.
