Managing Oneself And Reflective Practise Drucker Hackett
Managing Oneself and Reflection Practice What all effective leaders know
Notes de l'éditeur
Peter Drucker (2005) presents a self analysis approach to learning about leadership skills and traits. His core message in “Managing Oneself” is that you must first know your self.
Stephen Hackett (2001) presents an analysis of Competency and Reflection. His review of critical reflection is vital in underpinning Drucker’s Managing Oneself philosophy to remind us to keep our reflections grounded and realistic to gain true value of this self analysis approach to emerge as a better manager…
Reflection is not inherently critical, it can lead to an awareness of the connections, influences and contradictions which exist between the learning context and the wider world. Reflection becomes critical when it has two distinctive purposes: 1. To understand how considerations of power undergrid, frame, and distort educational processes and interactions. 2. To question the assumptions and practices that seem to make our... lives easier but actually work against our own best long-term interests (Brookfield 1995, P8).
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This is an area that few of us look into and truly understand. There isn’t a course that you take to understand How you perform? To most of us, this can be an even more important questions than What are my strengths as people will achieve results by working in ways that they best perform.
In Competency based learning, these elements are not taken into account. It is more about what attributes underlie successful performance (Pithers, 1998, p.47). Rylatt and Lohan (1995, p.47) state that “Competencies are a description of the essential skills, knowledge and attitudes required for effective performance in a work situation.” What most learning facilities forget, is that everyone has a different learning style, not one being the right or wrong way. How does your learning style affect you?
Any number of tests will rate you in regards how well you work with people, to determine your position in your working relationships.
Team Work: Your primary weakness as a team member is what limits your overall team working ability and, in turn, limits your team. Knowing your greatest weakness allows you to consider and actively improve your skill in that area - therefore increasing your teamwork results. Utilizing your strongest teamwork skill allows you to best help achieve your team's goals. Emphasizing your strength enables your team to gel quicker and more effectively, and allows others to overlook any potential flaws.
I asked the question of a number of people around me to see where I truly fit – do I make it as a No. 1 Decision Maker or am I only a No. 2 Advisor. For me, most people came back with the answer that I am the advisor, and I am good in this role. I was challenged by another student to reflect on the true capacity of this role – the advisor – and to see it as a true position of influence where you can spend your time learning, discovering and contributing. The number 1 position seems to be someone who is less involved with the team and is making decisions, ultimately, on their own. I understand with my position in family business, that one day I will be in that decision making capacity, and I believe I will do well as I have the capacity to take on the responsibility of the business and its direction and course. I am a number 1 in waiting.
What is ethical behavior in one kind of organization or situation is ethical behavior in another. But ethics is only part of a value system -- especially of an organization's value system. To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one's own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance, (Drucker 2005)
A small number of people know very early where they belong. Mathematicians, musicians, and cooks, for instance, are usually mathematicians, musicians, and cooks by the time they are four or five years old. Physicians usually decide on their careers in their teens, if not earlier. But most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.
Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself -as it was for the peasant or artisan -- or by a master or a mistress -- as it was for domestic servants. Results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable. From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.
Most people work with others and are effective with other people. That is true whether they are members of an organization or independently
Critical reflection begins to occur when “people question information, ideas, or behavior.” (Merriam and Brockett, 1997, p.284) as cited in Hackett. S. 2001)
Hackett explains that in so doing, critical reflection urges the creation of conditions in which each person is respected, valued, and heard.
Drucker believes that few answer yes. And yet, acting on this knowledge is the key to performance; or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to nonperformance.
In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer. Further, the shift from manual workers who do as they are told to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure.