Career development issues

There is little question who is responsible for assess­ing training needs and planning strategies to meet these needs. Most organizations hold the supervisor responsible for seeing that subordinates are trained to do their jobs. However, assessing career goals and the education and skill development needed to achieve these goals is another matter. Who is responsible for employees’ career development is very often not clear.

In helping employees assess career goals and education and development needs, the supervisor has to decide how far his or her responsibility in career counseling extends and how far he or she is willing to go to provide help.

Most experts on career development believe the employee should have final responsibility for managing and developing his or her own career. The supervisor can help in many ways but should remain a helper–not a decision maker, but a facilitator of decisions. In this role, supervisors should follow good counseling practices:

• Ask questions

• Listen actively

• Provide information

• Help focus ideas

• Give feedback on strengths and weak­nesses as they are perceived

• Refer the employee to other sources of information (and perhaps a professional career counselor if

needed and if avail­able), and

• Assist the employee in developing action plans

A Learning Organization...

· Is not a label but a philosophy to embrace;

· Nurtures new and expansive patterns of thinking;

· Sees reality objectively;

· Has the capacity to multilaterally create and focus upon a shared picture of the future;

· Has the ability for a team to synergistically produce extraordinary results through coordinated action;

· Is a workplace safe for thinking;

LEADERSHIP IN A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

A Learning Organization can be defined as an organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990).

Learning organizations use shared leadership principles to maximize their resources and develop leadership capacity within individuals. The organization can be described as one that learns continuously and transforms itself. Current literature on leadership development characterizes the leader as a coach, facilitator and guide. Images of leadership have shifted from expert, director, and controller to catalyst, information sharer, and coordinator.

Leadership in learning organizations is based on cooperative and collaborative partnership approaches.

Individuals and their actions are the basis of a learning organization. The culture of the organization, including its history, vision and mission, and both official and informal policies and procedures, forms the

context for individual activities and their impacts.

Senge described five disciplines:

1.) Systems Thinking;

2.) Personal Mastery;

3.) Mental Models;

4.) Building Shared Vision; and

5.) Team Learning as the foundation of a learning organization.

Match employees to target customers

Every business interaction is ultimately between two people – an employee and customer, or the employee who designs the customer interface and that customer. Most high-performance business relationships are heavily influenced by emotional compatibility.

Therefore, the employee selection process should begin with carefully selecting employees who will first best match the targeted customers, then the company. Although we lack understanding of the emotional state of the customer at the beginning of an interaction, it is possible to hire for and then match emotional predispositions of employees, e.g. sales, service to particular customers. This entails matching employee human attributes with customer human attributes. After a firm segments their customers by human need, it can then match the emotional attributes of employees to emotional attributes of customers. One of the ways to accomplish this is through applying classic personality typing during employee screening. The firm can then hire ‘‘personalities’’ who best match how the firm delivers its value to a certain segment of customers.

When employee and customer human attributes are not matched, it is stressful to the employee and increases the chance that the customer will not be satisfied. In many cases, management will end up chastising the employee for apparent performance shortcomings when in fact it is simply a mismatch of emotional attributes between employee and customer. Matching can be accomplished by creating customer needs profiles and employee needs profiles for particular customer ‘‘need’’ segments and employee roles respectively. The critical component of matching employee to customer is the first focus on what emotional end state the customer desires; next is hiring employees whose natural ability is to create such an end state. This goes far beyond the conventional job description of roles and tasks. When customer/employee emotional matching is embedded into core hiring practices, not only does customer and employee fulfillment increase but so does employee efficiency and effectiveness.

Ultimately, employees’ ability to fulfill customers is determined by their inherent human characteristics. Below is a comparative table of people with high self-esteem versus low self-esteem illustrating this principle.

Match employee values to business values

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In order for a firm to achieve its cultural and value objectives, it is critical to hire employees with a personal value system consistent with the firm’s cultural and value objectives. From the employee’s perspective, if the firm’s culture (value system) is out of sync with the person an employee believes himself or herself to be, the employee will be less effective, less productive, and less committed. In addition, the firm will be creating undue stress and possible emotional damage to its employees as human beings. More specifically, if the firm’s objective is to deliver humane and kind service to its customers, employees who are treated in the same fashion will be more likely to create this environment for customers.

The people who happen to be working as an associate for some business do not go through a miraculous transformation when they walk through the doors of that business. They are the same human being they always were. Employee stress arises when associates are hired because of their personality of wanting to please customers and yet the business has many restrictions that inhibit their ability to please customers. If an associate is empowered to please their customers, they will be a happier and a more content associate.

Leader’s Promise to Employees

I’ll ACKNOWLEDGE you – recognize your worth

I’ll be ACCOMMODATING – change things for your needs

I’ll be ACCOUNTABLE – take ownership of my decisions and their outcome

I’ll be COMMUNICATIVE – openly exchange ideas/information with you

I’ll be CONSIDERATE – think of you first

I’ll be COURAGEOUS – bold and tenacious, even when it’s tough

I’ll be EMPATHETIC – sensitive to your feelings

I’ll be ETHICAL – do what is right

I’ll be FAIR – balance your needs with others

I’ll be FLEXIBLE – open to alternatives

I’ll be GENEROUS – give more than expected

I’ll be HONEST – tell the truth

I’ll have HUMILITY – give credit and avoid self-importance

I’ll be INSPIRING – provide enthusiasm toward a goal

I’ll be LOYAL – always there for you

I’ll be PERSONABLE – easy to be with

I’ll be RESPECTFUL – recognize your dignity as a person

I’ll be SUPPORTIVE – provide help and remove barriers

I’ll be TOLERANT – accept you without judgment and forgive mistakes

I’ll be TRUSTING – believe in you

I’ll be TRUSTWORTHY – do what I say and what needs to be done

Source : Costumers are People, The Human touch. John Mckean 2002