Essay: Potential of Personal Leadership Development as Strategic Manager

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Personal Leadership development as a strategic manager

Table of Contents

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Introduction

This report is based on Certsure LLP. The leading certification body within the contracting industry. It is owned by a partnership consisting of the Electrical safety council and the Electrical Contractors Association. The Electrical Safety Council is a UK charity which strives to keep people safe by helping to minimise the risks of electrical incidents in the workplace and domestic premises. The Electrical Contractors Association is a trade association for the electrical contracting industry having a membership of over 3000 made up of large national companies employing 1000’s down to owner operator companies. Certsure currently operates three brands.

NICEIC which is the market leading regulatory authority for the industry. It has been operating and assessing electrician’s competency for over 50 years. It currently has over 27,000 contractors registered.

 Elecsa which carries out certification and assessments for contractors carrying out work within private dwellings and the green energy markets.

NICEIC certification which has 80 plus training centres within the UK, providing training and assessments for gas operatives, solar, heat pumps and solar thermal hot water.

Analyse the strategic direction of the company

Certsure is the leading voluntary regulatory certification company within the electrical contracting industry. The strategic aim is to retain its position as the leading certification body and to grow by identifying and exploiting areas and opportunities which complement the existing business. Its mission is to provide a positive impact on its customers and its people, supplying a service that is the envy of the competition.

As the business is a certification body and does not produce a product it is reliant on retaining existing customers and recruiting new.

Strategic direction is defined as a course of action which will result in the achievement of the company goals and can be broken down into 4 distinct stages as per Thompson and Martins strategic management Framework. (Jurevicius, 2013)

Completing a swot analysis (CIMADowney, 2007) allows the company to identify where they are now by looking at the external and internal forces of the company

Strengths Weaknesses

Market leader Limited market.

Good existing repeat customers. Currently the most expensive certification body.

Skilled employees. Large labour force.

Transformational Leader Recruiting high calibre staff.

41st in the Times 100 companies to work for. Communication

Established name. Change management

Time management

Opportunities Threats

Expand into other markets. Losing customers.

Become an Examining body. Competition from existing and new companies.

Strategic planning to identify opportunities. Losing staff to competition.

Staff training and progression. Retaining existing Staff.

Competition growing market share due to cost difference.

  The current Certsure managerial style is a mix of the Deliberate approach (Traditional). A modern adaption of the traditional approach is by Johnson, Scholes and Whittington JSW) (Scholes, et al., 2012) and the emergent approach. Within Certsure the strategic direction is decided by the management board in consultation with the senior management and then cascaded through the company. This is because the certification and assessments have to be delivered within strict guide lines, however all employees are encouraged to contribute ideas and suggestions.

The deliberate approach of governing by senior management and ignoring the ideas and input of the lower echelons can prevent companies responding rapidly to changes in the market and could stifle creativity and frustrate employees leading to a breakdown in morale and ultimately affect profits (Agrawal, 2017). The Certsure vision is to retain their position as the leading certification body and they will do this by;

Retaining and the recruitment of high calibre staff by encouraging the staff to be proud to work there and make it an attractive place to work for new recruits, encouraging feedback, acting on feedback, providing quality training and progression, inviting suggestions and staff participation.

Making Certsure the first-choice certification body. Whilst Certsure are the most expensive certification body they aim to increase market share by differentiating themselves from the competition by increasing quality, customer service, social responsibility, impartiality and gender equality, the details are published on their website (Certsure LLP, 2018).

They aim to expand their market share by expanding into other areas, that fit with their mission and vision. They intend to use strategic fit as their strategy building and innovating on existing skills and resources (Drypen, 2016)

Evaluate the strategic skills required of the leader to achieve the strategic ambitions

To enable Certsure to achieve the strategic aims the leader must have the following skills

Skills that are considered strengths but are less important Skills that are considered strengths and are important

Skills that are not considered strengths and are less important. Skills that are not considered strengths but are important and will be require enhancing in the next 3-5 years

The leader must start out with the following skills. Strategic planning- A lack of strategic planning means a company has no focus or objectives and without objectives the company will not grow. The leader must identify and develop the long terms aims of the company, to supply the vision and aims of the company.   The leader must be able to build relationships in order to progress the strategic plan, the leader needs to build relationships with employees, partners and stakeholders. This ensures all believe in the vision and aims of the company thus reducing resistance and getting buy in to the plan. Failure to form relationships would leave the leader struggling to get the support required to push the company vision through. To achieve the vision of the company a transformational Leader is required. This is an important part of strategic management from a business and progression perspective.  A Transformational leader is defined as someone who sets the direction of a company thus helping others and themselves to do the right thing going forward. They create a vision and motivate others to reach the vision, building, coaching and mentoring their teams to achieve their full potential (Mind tools, n.d.) This is in line with Bass’s Transformational leadership theory (Puscasu, 2018). Should the leader lack these skills then there is a risk of not getting the support of the workforce, the work force pulling in different directions, not understanding the vision and aims and the strategic plan failing. To enable the company to progress towards the strategic goals the leader must be able to manage change. Certsure need to expand the markets in which they operate. To enable this to happen the company will need to undergo change. The leader has to use strategies that facilitate organisational change and overcome the resistance to change (Mulholland, 2017). If the change process was mismanaged it would lead to the following

Costs Risks

Downturn in productivity

Employees leaving

Poor quality of work

Lack of motivation

Poor attendance Market share not achieved

Impact on customers

Low morale

Failed change legacy

Stress

Ultimately leading to the failure of the change. This would result in the following.

Cost Risk

Loss of investment

Lost opportunities

Market share not achieved

Revenue not achieved

Damage to reputation

Efficiencies not met

(Creasey, n.d.)

Three skills needing enhancing over the next 3-5 years.

Communication – A leader will have a clear understanding of the strategic vision, but if you cannot explain it in a way that it is understood by the team then it will never reach fruition. By developing communication skills, it will allow the leader to get the vision understood helping to unite the team. The team needs to be on board and aligned with the strategic aims to succeed. Communication also means being available to all employees and stake holders by operating an open-door policy. Moving forward the company need to expand the markets in which they operate.

To expand into different markets the company will need to adapt their existing skill base and recruit new employees to serve the new market. The leader must ensure that the employees have the skills required to operate in the new markets. To avoid existing employees becoming disillusioned with the influx of new employees, it is important that they are given the support and opportunity to upskill. By doing this the employees will feel part of the process which will raise moral and ultimately productivity and quality. The leader must also be able to delegate and assign tasks to others with confidence. This can only be done if the leader has built a team that has the skills and abilities to carry out these tasks. Meredith Belbin devised a theory that effective teams are made up of individuals with 9 different skills with no overlapping roles or missing qualities. (Merchant, 2018)

To achieve the company strategic aims the leader must understand the strengths and weaknesses within the skills they possess. It is vital that they improve the weaknesses and build on their strengths. Should the skills described previously not be improved then the leader will be unable to communicate the company vision and aims, motivate the employees to achieve the aims and incur additional costs relating to failed initiatives. Which will lead to the company losing market share and its position as the body of choice.

Supporting Leadership development

A leader is required to have the necessary skills to achieve the strategic aims and goals of the company. The leader needs to assess where he is as a leader by carrying out self-awareness analysis such as a Johari window (Anon., 2013) or a Swot analysis.

When using the Johari window, the aim is to examine all 4 areas of the window and reduce the sizes of the Façade, Blind spot and Unknown areas. By doing this you will increase the size of the Arena window. This can be achieved by carrying out development activities that provide feedback such as; 360-degree feedback, appraisals, being coached and mentored and psychometric testing. By using feedback provided by others you will become aware of positive and negative attributes perceived by others allowing you to overcome some of the issues preventing your personal development.

The SWOT analysis should be used to identify development needs, agree the next steps to take enabling you to take advantage of the talents and opportunities you already possess.

One of the most important aspects of self-awareness is knowing the most effective method by which you learn. This can be done by completing a learning style analysis such as a Honey and Mumford learning style questionnaire. Honey and Mumford identify 4 learning styles: Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist. I scored equally for Activist and Pragmatist. Meaning that I would be better suited to learning by watching demonstrations, being allowed to participate rather than just attending lectures. I benefit by joining in and trying out and experiencing new techniques not just reading about them. Training needs to be straight to the point and relate to ideas that have a relevance to my work. I will respond to the spontaneity of a crisis situation and will tend to back away from the mundane. Gearing the training and learning experiences to my style will enable me to take advantage of the data.

Having completed the self-awareness analysis and learning style questionnaire we are now in a position to establish the methods of developing the skills previously identified.

Three methods of supporting learning are; Education which is over a sustained period and leads to a formal qualification. This would be used to develop strategic planning skills. One way of achieving this would be to take a senior management training course such as a level 11 Strategic management and Leadership course. Training is used to overcome a knowledge gap or develop a specific work-related skill such as Presentation skills.

 Development is based on personal development, work-based development or a combination of both. The following training methods are suitable for this; ` coaching, mentoring, counselling, networking, reading, this is not an inclusive list and would be most suitable for developing the soft skills such as team work, building relationships, dealing with problem employees.

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Conclusion

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Recommendations

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Bibliography

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Appendices

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