Wanted to share a very important experience I had over the last 2 days i.e. July 18 & 19 at our office. Our company had arranged with E&Y for a workshop called "Certified People Manager" Program.
The idea of this program is to help Managers identify their strengths & weakness which are necessary to make them effective managers. Our company had bench marked 5 competencies which are necessary for the level of a Manager. These are
1. Result Orientation
2. Team building
3. Ability to impact & create influence
4. Developing others
5. Business acumen
All candidates would fall into 3 categories for each of the competencies, which are
- Strength
- Partial Strength &
- Needs Development
For the purpose of being a Manager a person needs to have Strength in all the 5 competencies. Some may have partial Strength or "needs development" in which case he/she needs to work on those competencies
To identify these competencies there were 6 exercises both individual & group. We were 14 in all who had to undergo all the 6 exercises in different group combinations. Some of the Group Exercises were
1. Group discussion for Budget approval
2. build a package for an egg
The individual Exercises were..
1. Sorting pending emails / documents quickly
2. Individual Interview
3. Role Play
4. Form fill up for leadership style identification
The structure of the Program was very good & all exercises had to be completed on time.
There were 4 external assessors, all leading HR professionals from the industry who were observing our actions & responses very minutely.
At the end of the second day there was a separate 30 minute individual feedback session for all. I was amazed at the feedback given to me. The minute details that they had looked into & how my competencies were judged was truly amazing.
Based on the feedback received, I would truly want to to work on an area which was identified as "Needs Development". We were also told that a detailed report would be sent to us within the next 3 weeks.
Overall I found this was an excellent workshop & time well spent. I only hope the Company follows up regularly to ensure that people work on the feedback to improve their competencies. One thing that I learned from this workshop is that people focus too much on their Functional skills. However without the correct behavioural aspects there would be serious limitations on our growth. We can use this yardstick while reviewing teams, individual performances & even while hiring people.
If people with correct competencies are doing the relevant jobs they would be much happier which in turn would also benefit the organization in having greater Employee Satisfaction & in turn better business results.
