Discussion Post: My Management Profile: Self-Assessment
Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.
Imagine a scenario in which a college graduate is filling out an application for a car loan. The form asks for information about the applicant's current position. Now, given that the ink is not quite dry on his diploma, the applicant is concerned that his employment may not impress the bank loan officer, so he decides to write that he is a "manager". After all, that can mean anything, right?
As you start this course, you may want to ponder some very important questions:
o What do you think or what have you observed that managers do? What skills did the manager possess that made him or her either excellent, or a poor performer on the job?
o Why do you want to be a manager? (If you are a manager, consider how you came to be a manager.) Reflect on what you like about the managerial position and what you would like to do better in this position.)
o What skills, abilities, behaviors, and knowledge do you have that you think will help you be a good manager?
Now that you have thought about these questions, it is time to do a little more formal self-assessment in order to recognize your own management strengths and weaknesses. Having a clear picture of your professional skills and areas in which you can improve is the first step in professional growth and an important foundation on which to build your management career.
To prepare for this Discussion:
o Take the management skills self-assessment, using the following link from this week's Learning Resources.
- Mindtools. (n.d.). How good are your management skills?
Analyze the results of your self-assessment.
Post a cohesive response in which you:
o Examine the role and characteristics of an effective manager by:
o Describing what you believe to be the most important things that managers do (i.e. what is the function of the position?)
o Explaining the characteristics that you think are important to be effective in a management role
o Assessing why these characteristics matter depending on what a manager does
- Explain how learning more about yourself might inform your management aspirations. Provide the valuable insights that you gained, including:
o An appraisal of at least three strengths you discovered you possess through the self-assessment that will help you be an effective manager, based on what you have identified that managers do (be sure to include why you selected these strengths, i.e., why the selected strengths will benefit you as a manager)
o An appraisal of at least one weakness you discovered in your self-assessment and how that might impact your ability to effectively manage
o A summary of why having a realistic image of yourself is helpful as you realize your management aspirations
Delineate actions that you can take to ensure that you are an effective manager and how various industries or levels might change the relative importance of various management characteristics by:
o Summarizing specific steps that you can take to make sure you build upon your strengths and either mitigate the effects of your weaknesses or overcome them
o Evaluating the relative importance of various strengths and weaknesses
o Explaining whether the industry or level of management within an organization changes which strengths or weaknesses matter. Be sure to justify your explanation.
Homework: Professional Reflection: 5-Minute Pitch: Making the Case About Your Management Potential
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Applying what you learn to your personal and professional experience is perhaps the best way to retain new information. One way to do this is to add to a regular, ongoing reflection that asks you to apply this new material. Throughout this course, you will be asked to reflect on the week's material and respond to a prompt in a Professional Reflection. Read through the Porter article, listed in the Learning Resources, for more information on self-reflection. You will submit these reflections each week within the same document. In other words, you will continue to build your Professional Reflection as part of one Word document, inserting new headings for each new weekly prompt. Each heading should specify the week and the name of the homework.
Note: In addition to responding to the Reflection prompts each week, you are expected to provide any surprises you learned in the week's Learning Resources, Discussions, and/or Homeworks.
In this first Professional Reflection, you will create a 5-Minute Pitch. Imagine that you are hoping to move into a management position that has become available in your organization. You see the hiring manager, but she has only five minutes available to talk. How do you determine what is important to share in this short amount of time and what you can leave out?
Consider how you would like to present your case to the hiring manager, especially why you would be the best candidate for the management position. You know the hiring manager is very interested in learning about your management philosophy and will likely ask you to summarize the most important skills that you believe managers must have. In addition, you should be prepared to explain the reasons why you think that managers succeed and fail.
To prepare for your Professional Reflection:
o Consider what you believe are the most important characteristics managers possess and why.
o Reflect on the extent to which you have these characteristics.
o Reflect on your management strengths that you discovered as a result of your self-assessment in this Discussion.
o Review this Learning Resources, especially:
- Achievement Unlimited [Achievement Unlimited]. (2010, August 18). Management skills - Why managers fail [YouTube Video file].
- Horstman, M. (2016). The effective manager. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Chapter 1, "What is an Effective Manager?"
- Chapter 2, "The Four Critical Behaviors"
o Wiseman, L. (2015, October 2). New managers: Embrace your rookie status. Harvard Business Review.
o Document: Professional Reflection Homework Instructions (PDF)
To complete the Professional Reflection Homework, compose a document that addresses the following:
Based on what you have read and discussed this week, what would be the most important elements that you could share with a hiring manager in the limited 5 minutes she has available to talk? With this in mind, develop a script for your 5-Minute Pitch as your first professional reflection that cohesively addresses the following:
o After synthesizing the Discussion Board posts with this week's resources, identify the three most important attributes-skills, behaviors, and characteristics-of effective managers and why you have selected these attributes, based on what you believe managers do.
o Evaluate the extent to which you think you have the characteristics that managers possess, along with examples that illustrate these characteristics. (Remember, you are developing a script to make a case about why you would be effective in a new management role.)
o Explain how you anticipate this knowledge will help you be an effective manager.
o Delineate some specific reasons as to why you believe that some individuals are more successful as managers and others are not. Explain your reasoning. To what extent do the characteristics that you outlined contribute to success or failure?
o What strategies will you use to continue to develop your skills and knowledge of your own strengths as they relate to your management success. What will you do (and not do) to ensure that you are an effective manager?
Following your 5-Minute Pitch, respond to the following, in which you:
o Explain whether your opinion about management characteristics has changed as you examine this week's Discussion posts from your colleagues. Describe the ways in which your thinking changed. If you did not change your thinking, what aspects of the Discussion further informed your position? How do you think that seeking input from others can impact your thinking?
o Summarize the three most important things that you learned this week-from the Learning Resources and Discussions-about management characteristics or your own strengths and weaknesses, including why you selected them and how you will apply them to your role as a manager. This may include anything that surprised you.
Be sure to support your Professional Reflection using this week's readings or other credible and relevant resources. You may also include quotes from the weekly Discussion that you think support your 5-Minute Pitch.
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.