Grooving To a Different Tune...continuous learning and management development

The following is a guest post by Monica Redden... my favorite Australian CoachingOurselves partner :)

I was driving up to my mother’s 90^th birthday party last week, it was a beautiful day and I was contemplating life and reminiscing over the early years with my family.  I found myself choosing and listening to a CD that was from way back in my history and realised how comfortable I was with the tunes and songs; I could predict the words, I could groove to the tune and I felt at ease with the world. 

I reflected on the experience of feeling so at ease and being able to predict every song and word.  It made me think of some feedback I received from clients that have been in a CoachingOurselves management development group for over two years. 

During the interviews I enquired with a number of the participants about what they liked, their favourite topics and why; and whether it had made a difference to them as managers.  Each person identified a different topic and spoke of why it was particularly important or relevant to them and the impact it had on their actions as a manager.  One woman said how Beyond Bullying (by Marilyn Aitkenhead) was very good.  She went on to say ‘you would think as a manager that [managing bullying] would be something you would already have in your kitbag of knowledge-but it was really good to review and reflect and made me act differently to a situation I had, it was very useful.’

Her comment made me think about how managers might be tempted to think we know all that we need to know; or that there is not much more to learn and that it is very easy to remain in a comfortable situation where, like me in the car driving up north, everything is comfortable, predictable and you just keep repeating the same tune or management response over and over again.

In reality, change is occurring constantly in the workplace and managers and leaders need to keep developing their competencies to be effective in their role.  It is not to say that what they now know is of no value, to the contrary, sharing and building on this knowledge with other managers is what strengthens and shapes management practices that fit the circumstances.  The 70:20:10 framework identifies the building blocks for continuous and ongoing learning; particularly the 70% where learning is done on the job and knowledge is shared and skills are developed. 

The CoachingOurselves participants highlighted the value of providing a structure around on-the-job learning so that it is not left to chance that managers will meet together and share knowledge. CoachingOurselves offers over 75 management topics; each is designed to lead discussion and learning from their experiences

and from each other.  Each CoachingOurselves topic has been written by a leading management and business thinker such as Mintzberg, Schein, Kotler, Adler, Ulrich, Goldsmith and others. Instead they met for the purpose of learning and developing new management practices.  Managers valued the learning together and the sharing of expertise and knowledge that related to their workplace and commented on the improvement in collaboration and willingness to work together to deliver strategic results.  They liked the fact that the topics were contained within 90 minutes, were held in the workplace and that there was an array of topics to choose from to suit their interests. 

A quality management development tool such as CoachingOurselves, delivered with minimum fuss or disruption for busy managers, makes it possible for managers to practice management differently. It is just like changing the CD occasionally and learning a new tune, it may be a bit uncomfortable but my repertoire is a bit more diverse and interesting.

If you want to know more about CoachingOurselves contact Monica Redden Consultancy, Australian partner for CoachingOurselves International, check out the three minute introductory video , call Monica on +61 8 8357 1296, go and visit www.monicareddenconsultancy.com.au or www.coachingourselves.com