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E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education: Open University

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
155 views13 pages

E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education: Open University

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

Uploaded by

Rose Dumayac
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Open

University

E838
EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
AND MANAGEMENT IN
EDUCATION

Prepared for the MA Board by Nigel Bennett, Megan Crawford,


Ron Glatter, Lesley Hagon, Alma Rosalind
Margaret Preedy and Colin Riches

STUDY GUIDE
Nigel Bennett is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Section 3.
Megan Crawford is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and contributed to Section 4.
Ron Glatter is professor in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open Unversity, and prepared Section 8.
Lesley Hagon is an education consultant and Open University tutor. She prepared Section 5.
Alma Harris was staff tutor in Education at The Open University and is currently lecturer in
education at the Centre for the Study of Teacher Development and School Improvement,
University of Nottingham. She prepared Section 6.
Rosalind is senior lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management,
School of Education, The Open University. She chaired the production team for E838 and
prepared Sections 1, 2, 10 and 12.
Margaret Preedy is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Sections 7 and 9.
Colin Riches is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Sections 4 and 11.

Other members of the course team:


Sally Clay Rob Lyon
Hazel Coleman Susan Parker
Maria Geoff Wheeler
Keith Howard Sindy York
Lesley Kydd
The course team and the MA Programme Board would like to thank Janet Ouston, Director of the
Management Development Centre, Institute of Education, University of London, for acting as
assessor; and Marten Shipman, Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Surrey, for
assessing the MA Programme as a whole. The team would also like to thank the developmental
testers and advisers for the course: Mary Bennett, Diane Brace, Orison Carlile, Chris Chetwynd,
Celestine Devlin, Ian Finlay, Arthur Horton, Niki and Jeremy

The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA


First published 1996
Copyright © 1996 The Open University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting
restricted copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London
W1P 9HE. This publication may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of
trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior
consent of the publisher.
Edited, designed and typeset by The Open University.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
ISBN 0 7492 7551 0
If you would like to buy other Open University material, please write to Open University
Educational Enterprises Ltd, 12 Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes MK11 1BY,
United Kingdom.
If you wish to enquire about enrolling on the MA in Education, please write to the Higher
Degrees Office, The Open University, PO Box 49, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AD. If you
wish to enquire about enrolling as an Open University undergraduate or associate student,
please write to the Admissions Office, The Open University, PO Box 48, Walton Hall, Milton
Keynes MK7 6AB.
1.1

E838/SG h/o/Sept96/CAPS
14484/E838sgil.l
Section 1 Introduction

SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
Studying Section 1 should take you about 2 hours.
After studying this section you should:
• know the aims of the course;
• understand the rationale of the course - that is, the approach to
professional development in educational management that has informed
its structure, content and mode of assessment;
• have gained an overview of the subject matter of the course and its
different teaching components (e.g. readers, video, residential school)
so that you get a rough picture of how the different parts fit together;
• noted the three key questions about effective leadership and
management that form the backbone of the course. These will be
addressed from different perspectives throughout the course.
There are no readings associated with this section.

1.1 STARTING OUT


In studying E838 the course team hope that you will be undertaking a journey in
professional development. People develop themselves professionally by using
both formal means, such as in-service courses, and informal methods, as they
learn from their own practice. E838 is founded on the view that effective
professional development requires the integration of both and that this
is best done by individuals using external support structures such as those
provided by this course. The Summative Tutor-Marked Assignments (STMAs),
which you undertake as part of the course, are important means by which
knowledge gained from the course material is integrated with your professional
practice. You will also find activities throughout this Study Guide that give you
the opportunity to consolidate what you are learning and relate it to your own
situation.
E838 aims to serve the professional development needs of a wide range of
people concerned with educational organizations, taking the stance that there are
aspects of management in the work of all teachers and lecturers, not just in the
work of those in positions of authority. A rough and ready definition of
management is that it is working with and through others in order to achieve
particular purposes. The purpose of educational organizations is to promote
desired learning for pupils and students. The management of education,
therefore, means harnessing the energies of other adults, in particular staff,
parents and members of the community, in order to promote the educational
purposes of the organization.
Increasingly schools and colleges have been required to take on more
management responsibilities, while also being held accountable in more varied
and complex ways. The management of educational organizations has
consequently increased in scope and sophistication. This has affected most
teachers and lecturers as management roles and tasks have been expanded,
delegated and diffused. Another factor that promotes the dispersion of
management work in organizations is the view that effective management and
leadership mean motivating and empowering staff to develop their own work in
harmony with organizational goals, rather than relying on a strong hierarchical
structure through which superiors closely supervise the work of subordinates.
When responsibility is delegated to staff then management of their own work
E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education

becomes part of their job. Management usually takes up an increasingly dominant


place in a job as the seniority of the position and the size of the establishment
increase.
The course aims to be relevant for the management development needs of a
wide range of people working in different kinds of educational establishment, at
different levels and in different contexts and countries. While the particular
context in which management is undertaken has a crucial influence on what
constitutes effective practice in a specific situation, some general principles and
approaches to educational management are common to different educational
sectors and different countries. E838 illustrates the application of principles and
approaches in different contexts, such as primary schools, secondary schools,
further and higher education and commercial settings, using examples and
literature from Scotland, Northern Ireland and continental Europe, as well as
England and Wales. The course aims to be relatively context-free, focusing on
general principles rather than on the details of organizational practice. There is
much to be learned from other contexts and you need to be alert to how you
can apply what you study about management in general to your own context.

The exact route of the professional development journey you take through the
course is up to you to determine, with the advice and support of your tutor. This
introduction aims to give you a rough map, which you will then fill in with more
detail as you go through the course. Each journey is unique because each person
will set off from a different point and will have different professional
development needs to address. A crucial guide to your journey is not only this
Study Guide but also the booklet Reflecting and Reporting on Management
Practice: a guide to the assignments. Through the assignments you can chart the
progress of your own active professional development, using the course materials
as best suits you within the constraints set by the requirements of formal
assessment. The assignments require you to analyse and report on your own
management practice and that within your organization, making use of concepts,
skills and management tasks covered in the course.

1.2 AIMS OF THE COURSE


E838 aims to improve professional capability in educational management by:
1 developing knowledge and understanding of educational management
theory and practice;
2 promoting the self-development of effective educational managers
through critical reflection on practice;
3 developing an understanding of how context and values influence
educational management.
There are a number of phrases here that require clarification, in particular
'professional capability', 'educational management theory', 'effective educational
managers' and 'critical reflection on practice'. I will examine these terms in more
detail in Section 2 of the Study Guide. Your understanding of what the aims
mean and in particular what they mean for you will develop as you work
through the course. When you have completed the course, it will be useful to
look back on these aims and consider to what extent you think they have been
fulfilled.

The three dimensions of practice: ideas, people and tasks


When studying a practice-oriented subject such as educational management it is
not possible to divorce the subject matter from yourself as a person. I found the
experience of studying management a very marked contrast to studying subjects
such as history, economics or mathematics, which I treated as discrete bodies of
knowledge: they affected my intellectual outlook but did not engage me in an
Section 1 Introduction

assessment of myself as a person. However, studying management led me to


reflect much more on how my personality traits affect the way I conduct my job
and seek to develop it, and how I relate to my colleagues. Since management
involves working through people to achieve tasks and goals, it is inevitably
concerned with how one interacts with others. Therefore if you are seeking to
improve your capability in management you have to work on yourself to effect
changes. There are three dimensions to this, around which the course is
structured.
The first dimension may be labelled the 'cognitive' or the 'ideas dimension'.
It concerns ways of thinking about and understanding your work, the
organizational context in which it is conducted and the interpersonal
relationships involved. These aspects are fundamentally influenced by your
values and the principles of conduct that guide your behaviour. Values also apply
at the organizational level. Increasing emphasis nowadays is given to the role of
appropriate organizational values - a key aspect of organizational culture - in
creating effective educational organizations. It is therefore important for
educational managers to be clear about their professional values and able to
communicate them to others. However, even if not explicitly articulated, our
values influence how we undertake our work and how we relate to others. The
subject of values is a complex and sensitive one: individuals may espouse values
that in practice they do not adhere to and it is often disturbing for a person to
recognize this in themselves. also arise if an individual's values do not
accord with those of their workplace. Different theories of organizational
behaviour reflect different values: for example, the bureaucratic and the collegial
organizational models are based on different views of how work should be
controlled. The ideas dimension in educational management is thus the set of
conceptual frameworks or theories that we use both consciously and
unconsciously to guide our actions. Course aims 1 and 3 focus particularly on this
dimension.

The second dimension consists of personal and interpersonal behaviours or skills.


Course aim 2 is particularly relevant to this dimension. Personal skills are those
that can be performed on one's own, such as time management, the ability to
write clearly or think strategically. Interpersonal skills are those that have to be
performed in relation to others, such as making people feel valued, listening,
chairing a meeting, interviewing, giving feedback, influencing and motivating
others, and so on. Improving on these skills requires us to examine our own
behaviour dispassionately, which in turn necessitates understanding how others
perceive our attitudes and actions. This means accepting both praise and criticism
and drawing conclusions from what is often conflicting evidence, as different
people in different situations perceive us differently. The conclusions drawn from
reflecting on our experience of practice lead us to change how we behave, with
the intention of improving it. It is not easy to carry out this type of reflection: it
requires self-confidence and maturity, an acceptance that one cannot be perfect
or even good at everything, and an organizational context in which being
prepared to acknowledge ignorance, failure or weakness is valued as essential to
personal and organizational learning, not treated as evidence of inadequacy.

The third dimension is made up of the tasks of educational management and


how these are undertaken. Management tasks are usually clustered into a set of
discrete functional areas. In educational management the main functional areas
usually distinguished are teaching and learning (the curriculum broadly defined),
human resources, finance and physical resources, the external environment
(which includes marketing) and the overarching function of strategic
management. E838 contains four distinct functional areas:
• strategic management, which includes the external environment;
• the management of teaching and learning;
• financial and resource management;
• the management of people.
8 E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education

At first sight it might seem that these topics are concerned with learning about
educational management, rather than with learning how to manage, and can
therefore be learned about by using our cognitive faculties only, as one might
learn theories or facts. However, in carrying out these functions, educational
managers apply their personal and interpersonal skills in interacting with others
and select their actions in relation to the conceptual frames of reference they
employ. Therefore when we are concerned with performing the functions and
associated tasks of educational management, we are once more back to focusing
on the educational manager as a person, with a set of values, concepts and
theories (the ideas dimension) and a set of skilled behaviours (the people
dimension) that are used in managing the functional areas. In this way the ideas
and people dimensions are applied to the tasks dimension, which is associated
with course aim 1 in particular.

A crucial influence on how management is understood, carried out through


people and performed is the context in which it is done. This context consists of
both the internal workings of the organization - roughly what is referred to as
organizational culture - and the external environment in which the organization
is located.
Expressing the three dimensions as ideas, people and tasks may lead to the
representation of management as a noun - as a subject to be known about.
However, in order to emphasize that managing is an active process, which one
knows how to perform, the three dimensions can be expressed as active verbs -
thinking, being and doing. Though one can know about management without
necessarily knowing how to manage, the two aspects of management knowledge
are interrelated and for effective practice reinforce each other. The course
assignments help you to interrelate three dimensions of ideas, skills and tasks
(and hence knowledge about and knowledge of how) by asking you to analyse
your own management practice and that of your organization using concepts,
ideas and procedures drawn from the course.
The basic relationship between the three dimensions and the organizational
context is shown in Figure 1 as an outline map of E838. At the centre is you the
individual as an educational manager and student of E838 who uses ideas to
work with people within an organizational context in order to perform certain
tasks and achieve particular purposes.

Context —

Figure 1 A map of E838


Section 1 Introduction 9

1.3 COURSE COMPONENTS AND CONTENTS


The teaching components of E838 are:
• this Study Guide,
• four readers:
Reader 1: KYDD, L., CRAWFORD, M. and RICHES, C. (eds) (1997)
Professional Development for Educational Management, Buckingham,
Open University Press;
Reader 2: CRAWFORD, M., KYDD, L. and RICHES, C. (eds) (1997)
Leadership and Teams in Educational Management, Buckingham,
Open University Press;
Reader 3: HARRIS, A, BENNETT, N. and PREEDY, M. (eds) (1997)
Organizational Effectiveness and Improvement in Education,
Buckingham, Open University Press;
Reader 4: PREEDY, M., CLATTER, R. and LEVACIC, R. (eds) (1997)
Educational Management: strategy, quality and resources, Buckingham,
Open University Press;
• Reflecting and Reporting on Management Practice: a guide to the
assignments;
• a C60 audio-cassette 'Preparing to write your assignments';
• an E60 video 'Leadership in action' and an accompanying workbook;
• residential school and an associated booklet.
The residential school will provide you with structured opportunities to engage in
practical activities concerned with building and working in teams, in order to
undertake a case study on management.
In devising a route through E838 the course team was faced with the problem
that the material has to be studied in a chronological and hence linear sequence.
However, understanding and practising educational management requires a
holistic approach, as Figure 1 demonstrates. In order to undertake a particular
task effectively you need to understand the context as well as the task; this
requires knowledge of appropriate conceptual frameworks, processes of thinking,
procedures for action and ways of behaving. Though there is no one correct
logical order for studying the various elements of educational management, the
course team decided to use a structure that begins in Section 2 with the
individual and his or her professional development. Section 3, on understanding
educational organizations, then provides the underpinning conceptual framework
for understanding and interpreting educational management. Aspects of this
conceptual framework are applied and exemplified in Sections 4 and 5, on
leadership and team working. With the resulting knowledge of interpersonal
skills and processes, you are then ready to study organizational effectiveness
(Section 6) and managing change for improvement (Section 7). The course then
considers the four major functional areas of educational management - strategic
management and the management of learning, resources and people.

All the main topics are covered in the four readers and amplified and developed
further in one or more of the other components. Table 1 sets out a plan of the
Study Guide, showing how the sections relate to the three dimensions of practice
- ideas, skilled behaviours and tasks - around which the course is structured.
The section numbers are listed in the first column. In the second column are
shown the parts of the four readers that are associated with each section. The
main topic addressed in each section is listed below the dimension heading to
which it relates most closely. (Of course, the dimensions overlap to an extent, so
that a topic may cover more than one dimension. For simplicity, however, we
mostly link one topic to one dimension.)
10 E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education

Table 1 A plan of the Study Guide

Ideas and Management


conceptual Skilled functions and
Section Reader frameworks behaviours tasks

2 Reader 1, Part 1 Professional self- Reflective


development practice
3 Reader 3, Part 1 Understanding
educational
organizations
4 Reader Part Leadership
and video
5 Reader 2, Part 2 Team working
6 Reader 3, Part 2 Organizational
effectiveness
7 Reader 3, Part 3 Managing Managing
change for change:
improvement vision;
planning;
adaptability;
sensitivity to
people
8 Reader 4, Part 3
management
9 Reader 4, Part 1 Managing for
quality: meeting
learners' needs
10 Reader 4, Financial and
Introduction and resource
Part 2 management
11 Reader Part 2 Managing
professional
development
12 All Review: consolidating and looking forward

1.4 THREE KEY QUESTIONS


Three key questions are addressed throughout the course. These serve to link
and integrate the topics outlined in Table 1 so as to give you a holistic
understanding of educational management. These key questions are:
1 What are leadership and management in education?
2 What are effective leadership and management in education?
3 How do individuals and educational organizations improve and become
more effective?
Sections 1 and 2 of the Study Guide begin a preliminary examination of these
key questions. You will be continually improving your understanding of the
issues raised in these three questions as you work through E838 and undertake
your own professional development. It will be useful to record your growing
understanding of the three key questions as you work through the course.

What are leadership and management?


The title of E838, Effective Leadership and Management in clearly
implies that there is a difference between leadership and management. At the
outset I should say that there is no agreed single definition of either of these
Section 1 Introduction

concepts: different writers use the terms with different nuances of meaning, as
you will appreciate as you study the readers. A key issue is whether leadership
subsumes management or management subsumes leadership.
The first approach views leadership as dynamic and overarching, concerned with
establishing vision and direction for an organization, communicating this to other
members of the organization, influencing them to change in desired ways,
empowering others and fostering an appropriate organizational culture. In
contrast, management is restricted to those activities that are directed at ensuring
that the organization fulfils its purposes: it therefore involves planning,
ordinating, monitoring and controlling. In this approach management is about
ensuring that the organization functions adequately, runs smoothly and copes
well with its day-to-day routines.
The other approach is to treat management as the overarching concept, within
which leadership is subsumed. For instance, the 'management of change' forms a
distinct body of research, knowledge and practice, in which leadership plays an
essential role. Similarly, 'strategic management', since it is concerned with vision,
mission and direction, is closely connected with leadership. Some people prefer
to think of management as the overarching concept because it discourages the
automatic association of leadership with positions of authority, and management
as something carried out by those at a lower level in the organization.
The course team wish to emphasize in E838 that leadership should not be
associated only with positions of authority or seniority; it is a quality that can and
should be possessed by people at all levels in an organization who are able to
exert initiative and influence. For example, a primary school mathematics co-
ordinator would need to exercise leadership in persuading all the teachers to
agree to, implement and evaluate a new curriculum policy; a teacher governor
would need to do so when persuading governors to arrange classroom visits
which focus on selected aspects of teaching and learning.
You may come across the term 'administration' with reference to management.
Again, there is no clear acknowledged distinction between management and
administration. In North America the term 'educational administration' is used to
mean educational management. On this side of the Atlantic the word
'administration' is sometimes used to describe the routine aspects of running an
organization, as distinguished from decision making, which is the province of
management. As it is difficult to distinguish between the two processes
consistently, it is usual in Britain to treat management as including administration.

What are effective leadership and management?


The word 'effective' often tends to be used as if it were synonymous with 'good'.
To be more precise, the term refers to the extent to which some end, goal or
objective is achieved; hence effectiveness cannot be assessed without some value
judgement about what is desirable having been made. However, it is often
difficult to agree educational goals because education serves a variety of
purposes on which there is no general consensus of opinion. Furthermore,
educational objectives and outcomes are often difficult or impossible to measure
and therefore criteria for educational effectiveness are not easy to apply.
Consequently educational effectiveness is frequently judged in relation to
qualitatively assessed processes within educational organizations as well as with
respect to outcomes or outputs, some of which can be quantified.
In you will meet a number of different perspectives on or theories about
organizations - particularly in Reader 3 - each one of which implies a different
conception of effectiveness. Effectiveness can apply to the actions and qualities of
individuals (an effective teacher or manager) or to organizational performance.
This latter aspect is examined in Reader 3, Part 2, which introduces you to the
management implications of research on effectiveness in educational
12 E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education

organizations. One of the key variables associated with organizational


effectiveness is quality of leadership. The role of leadership in the management
of change for organizational improvement is examined in Reader 3, Part
Considerable thought has been given to the question of what constitutes effective
management practice. One approach, which you will meet in Section 2 of the
Study Guide, is to define a set of management competences that a person needs
to demonstrate in order to be accredited as 'competent', as in the Management
Charter Initiative's list of competences for National Vocational Qualifications
(NVQs) at levels 2/3 and 4/5. Management competence is thus defined as the
satisfactory performance of a set of managerial tasks designed to cover
comprehensively all the functional areas. For example, one such competence is
'Identify and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the management team'.
Another approach focuses instead on the qualities and behavioural skills required
to ensure effective performance in a job. Yet another approach (for example the
Teacher Training Agency's Headteachers' Leadership and Management
Programme) defines educational management effectiveness in terms of both
functional tasks, such as assessing and reviewing standards of students'
achievements, and personal qualities and abilities, for example giving a clear
sense of direction and purpose (Teacher Training Agency, 1995). The problem of
establishing management competences and capabilities is examined further in
Section 2 and is also closely connected with the third key question of the course.

How do individuals and organizations improve and


become more effective?
This key question is about development. It is posed twice: for the individual and
for the organization. While the processes of individual and organizational
improvement are to some extent different, they are also closely related because
an organization can improve its performance in relation to desired goals only if
the individuals within it improve their practice. Individuals' capacities to improve
in turn depend on the culture of the organization and the support it offers for
undertaking formal and informal professional development.
E838 is based on the view that individuals improve through a systematic process
of reflecting on their practice; this process helps to make explicit aspects of
practice so that it can be better understood, and encourages the individual to
think of ideas for further improvement. Section 2 of the Study Guide provides a
basis for the conceptual understanding of what is involved in learning to improve
professional practice. Reflection on practice is a process in which individuals
subject their experience of practising their job to critical analysis. This involves
some form of data collection and analysis, which is best conducted with
colleagues in order to learn by sharing ideas and experiences. Reflection is an
iterative process: ideas for improvement, or for new responses to changed
conditions, that come about as a result of reflection are then put into practice and
become the subject of further reflection.
In E838 you are encouraged to develop skills in reflective practice through the
assignments. You are expected to reflect on aspects of your practice in relation to
particular management tasks and skilled behaviours that you select for
improvement. When undertaking reflection on practice for an externally directed
purpose - such as for E838 - you are encouraged to treat it as quite a time-
consuming activity, involving carefully collected and analysed data. However,
there is usually no time for this kind of reflection on one's daily practice. One
solution is to select only one aspect of your practice for reflection - as you are
asked to do for the assignments. Another useful approach is to reflect regularly
but very briefly in writing on the incidents of the day or week. One example of
this approach is given by Mills (1995), who suggests keeping a diary for
reflections at the end of the day and of the week. In this diary you can note
briefly things you did well and not so well, errors you should put right and ideas
Section 1 Introduction 13

for altering things in the future. She gives as an example Fiona, a deputy head
who spends five minutes a day and fifteen minutes at the end of the week on
keeping a reflective diary.

Good
I tackled Geoff (the headteacher) about the effects of his statement in
the staff meeting.
(Geoff had informed the whole staff that, sometime in the next two
years, all Year Head posts would be abolished and replaced by vertical
Pastoral Heads.)
After speaking to Geoff, I dealt with the expected reaction of the Year
Heads. I soaked up a lot of anger and remained calm and
sympathetic.

Bad
i. I lost my temper with Geoff for the way he revealed something
that was still under review.
ii. I was short tempered with Gwynne (a member of the secretarial
team) when she quizzed me about the rumours.
iii. I was vague with Linda Year Tutor), who was obviously upset
by the news.
Put right
i. Apologise to Geoff for losing my temper but reinforce my
disapproval. Try to convince him to meet with the Year Heads as soon
as possible.
ii. Apologise to Gwynne. No excuses!
iii. See how Linda feels.
Alter
Never approach the boss when still angry.
Never avoid people who are anxious or upset.
Face and deal with problems - but wherever possible, plan and
prepare the meeting.
(Mills, 1995, p. 44)

1.5 A FRAMEWORK FOR EFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT


A suggested framework for you to use in undertaking your professional
development through is set out in Figure 2. You are not expected to use it
for this purpose immediately. For now it is to help you take stock of the
overview of you have just been presented with, and to give you an initial
idea of what lies ahead as you progress through the course. It is also relevant for
the assignments you will be doing. After you have worked through Section 2 of
the Study Guide you will be in a better position to apply this framework to your
professional development. As you progress through E838 you will understand
more about the interrelationships between the individual, group and
organizational levels and the key management processes highlighted in the
framework.
The first step shown in Figure 2 is to assess where you are currently in relation to
the job you do, the management tasks or competences it requires and the
personal and interpersonal skills, behaviours and qualities you possess. Various
approaches to this are suggested in Section 2, and there are in-text activities that
will help you.
Section 1 Introduction 15

You will need to work out a strategy for progressing from where you are now to
where you wish to be. This will involve using the three dimensions of people/
skills, ideas and tasks, and considering how you need to relate these to the levels
of the group, the organization and possibly the external environment. This
process should give you some ideas about how you can use this strategy in your
own professional development and, if relevant, to improve the practice of your
team and the organization in which you work.
Through the process of reflection you will be able to evaluate your management
practice. This will enable you to judge how well you are doing, what needs to
changed, whether your initial assumptions need to be questioned and altered.
Reflection encourages you to learn consciously from experience.
The processes in the framework are iterative. The strategy you adopt and the
development that occurs will shift your current position; reflection will alter your
perceptions and bring about a reassessment of plans and actions. So the cycle is
repeated.
The framework is presented as a linear sequence of stages and factors. However,
in practice, when you are actively engaged in self-development, problem solving
and task accomplishment, the ongoing situation is unlikely to follow a
predictable sequence. You may not be clear about where you wish to go with a
particular management problem, or events may require you to adjust where you
go or how you get there. Intervention and change can thus occur at any point in
the cycle.
As you chart your own progress through the course and work through the
material and the associated developmental activities, you should find it helpful to
return to the framework shown in Figure 2. You will then be able to fill it out by
selecting from the course ideas, skills or procedures that you find helpful for
understanding your own management context and informing your own
management practice.

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