Eighty-eight Assignments for Development in Place

Lombardo, Eichinger

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 1989
• Print ISBN: 9781882197200
• eBook ISBN: 9781604916850
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

The Center for Creative Leadership's continuing studies of executives have found that learning on the job is the best way for a person to develop. Often people are given new positions in order to provide them with developmental experiences. But what if such a transfer is not possible? This report contains eighty-eight assignments that offer individual development opportunities on a current job.

Helping Managers Get the Most From Their Experiences

Learning won’t occur by itself when managers are given developmental assignments. It’s quite likely that many managers will rely on past habits and try to apply old skills to new situations. This is in fact what often happened, as a group, for the executives we studied who derailed. They relied on comfortable habits, and their learning formed no pattern they could use later. As a result, their management behavior changed little.

For managers to learn something of long-term value to them, they need to specify what sort of transition they are making—from what to what? The essence of this issue is that the manager will have to give up, or at least modify, some comfortable habits in order to grow.

Some transitions feature something the manager has never done before, such as going from a task where things are running smoothly to a disaster or fix-it problem. Other transitions feature a progression—significantly more responsibility in a challenge they have faced before. As an example, some executives who went on to be successful start-up managers at age 40 had mini start-ups earlier in their careers: In their early 20s they hired a secretarial pool; later, they started a small department; in their early 30s they started up a new product; later, they were a second-tier manager in a start-up. By age 40 they were prepared to start up a major department or function.

Typical transitions that developmental assignments may require are:

• From dealing with a problem person to dealing with a problem group

• From team-building with non-experts to team-building with experts (or vice versa)

• From responsibility for a piece of a system or project to responsibility for the whole

• From managing an existing facility to planning the rent or usage of a new one

Specifying the nature of the transition one is making is necessary for targeted development to occur. For example, a first-time project manager might need to make the following transitions and have a strategy for each:

FROM	TO	SAMPLE STRATEGIES
1. Technical expert	Manager of experts from other areas	Seek tutoring; seek counseling on major conceptual umbrellas to organize learning; targeted reading
2. Managing known people	Managing a new group	Set up pilot task to help manager see the group in action (assess their needs and skills, size them up)
3. A well-functioning group	A group where conflict is rife	Have meetings to seek mutual agreements, negotiate ways of working together, isolate conflicts and deal with them

The danger is always that a new task may be met with old behavior, using management techniques that worked well in the previous situation. Managers need awareness of the developmental transition they are making and a plan for dealing with it.

To gain from the situation, they need not only to try different tasks but also to learn something from their efforts. Some examples of methods of helping managers learn from their experiences are:

______seeking tutoring in new technical areas or tutoring in how to handle different leadership challenges

______placing them with a role model who exemplifies how to do something well

______keeping a learning diary

______asking them what they have learned often, and what habits they have that are getting too comfortable for them

______having regular dinner meetings with those who face or have faced similar leadership challenges

______attending coursework targeted toward self-awareness of strengths, weaknesses, and limits, or which addresses a compelling problem they face on the job at present

______having them construct a learning plan (how will they size up people? team build? create a symbol for change or rallying cry? deal with the boss?)

In a brief paper such as this, only cursory treatment can be given to what can be learned from experience. For fuller descriptions of learning, the reader is referred to several publica...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• How to Use This Article
• Background: Experiences That Develop Managers and What Makes Them Developmental
• Eleven Challenges Common to Developmental Experience
• Assignments for Development in Place
• Setting Up a System for Development in Place
• Helping Managers Get the Most From Their Experiences
• References