Evaluation

 

My organization supports personal development and has allocated time for every employee to participate in various activities, such as training sessions, meetings and courses to improve their personal skills. They encourage staff to improve their know-how and often offer new working positions based on personnels needs. We have new positions open in our internal system rather often and it is possible to switch your profession to new, if you wish to do so and have the required skills available. Because of this organizations practices, I don’t feel like there is any significant changes that our organization needs to do regarding knowledge management, for example my superior asks in out personal development meeting what do I want to do in the future and what are my personal goals, then we find ways to achieve these goals: In my previous my goal was to improve my technical competency and as such I attended learning courses and self-studied a lot.

I learned some new areas where I can focus when dealing with leadership: I knew a lot before, as I have done these personality tests and found something new every time but in this I focused more on the managerial skills which was new for me, and I can now dissect my company’s management practices better and pinpoint what can be improved. Especially eye opening was the changing working environment part, I had not previously given much thought to how remote working has affected working, part due that I was previously a radiographer and then mid covid transferred to IT work and had newer done this on location, so I had no perspective on the matter. Knowledge management gave me tools to identify communication problems in the environment and how to tackle them, this can be useful if communication is not efficient. The three year plan is important and good to have an idea how you plan to proceed, the most important thing from that was for me to focus more on the general way my organization works so that I can in the future deal with bigger picture.

Strategic Competency Planning

In three years, I see myself as a senior QA engineer. Viitala list’s six managerial competencies that I should consider: technical competencies, business competencies, knowledge management competencies, leadership competencies, social competencies and intrapersonal competencies (Viitala 2005, 439). In order to achieve my goal, I need to achieve a certain level in all of the aforementioned fields. Technical competency is the number one for me, I need to understand how the development process in our organization is handled on a deep level to proceed in my career. My business competency must grow also as senior QA needs to understand the impact of testing to organizations growth. Knowledge management is important to my next step after achieving seniority as I am planning on becoming a QA manager where part of my job would to foresee the training of my peers and courage them to improve their skillsets so they feel fulfillment from their jobs and see the progress in their expertise. Leadership competency is also needed in the long run, as QA manager title requires some leadership skills to make correct decisions defining the testing process and supporting people. Social competency is also important, as QA work is mostly teamwork and communication is part of this. Interpersonal skills are required for me to reflect my progress and decisions so that I can keep moving forward in the path I have chosen.

My plan in the next three years is focus on different competency areas that I am currently focusing. My main focus till now has been on technical competency, and I have been learning the technical skills required to do my job, all the other sectors have been on the downside. In the upcoming years my aim is to improve my leadership, social and intrapersonal competencies more, and at the same time increase my knowledge on business and knowledge management. My focus is described in the picture below from Viitala. (Viitala 2005, 439).

My knowledge development methods will mostly include self-study, expanding work responsibilities, meetings, and development projects. Self-study is common in my line of work, and I constantly seek more information regarding testing through You Tube and professional sites. I also attend online learning courses regarding testing and coding. Expanding work responsibilities comes with increasing technical competency: I can take more assignments with harder background.  In meetings I have not paid as much attention regarding business and logistics as those were not the main focus with me, but in the future I need to focus more on those meetings so that I can get a better idea on our organization. We have development projects going on, and I am part of one where we try to find bets practices regarding automated testing.

Knowledge Management Practices

Tacit knowledge sharing is the knowledge that is shared indirectly through practices instead of explicit knowledge sharing that is written and formal, in the hospital world we refer to this as silent knowledge ( Mäkelä 2006, 25). Kristiina Mäkelä presents hypothesizes in three categories in which she describes various actions affecting knowledge sharing. (Mäkelä 2006, 115-120).

Hypothesis 1: The more frequent the non-face-to-face interaction, the more knowledge is shared. This is critical issue in my organization as discussion concerning the lack of face-to-face time because of remote work is real. The threshold to ask simple minute questions remotely is higher than in face-to-face interaction, this affects workers and management. Because of this, employers must think of ways to get personnel to return to the office to maximize transfer of knowledge. Also, tacit knowledge can pass more easily when dealing in person versus remotely. We have taken steps to increase knowledge sharing through teams calls, as chat only is less efficient in passing information.

Hypotesis 2: The higher the perceived level of trust in firm affects information sharing. Trust plays a part in our firm when it comes to achieving mutual goals. If personnel don’t trust each other, they will not share information as easy, this is especially true for tacit knowledge, as it is the information that is not required to be shared. Trust is shown as a possibility to ask “stupid” questions without having the fear to be belittled by peers, one way this is created is by having volunteer group activities to get us know each other better. We also have open channel to discussion in which we can even critically challenge common practices without fearing repercussions form colleagues or managers. The management side is open to opposing ideas and while they will not always obviously select the opposite way, the reason for that is given. I am personally pleased with the practices of this company as I have had employers that did not listen to us and were close minded to new ideas.

Hypothesis 3: Shared cognitive ground affects knowledge sharing. In my organization people do share the vision and have the same general focus on the matters at hand. We in general know what is needed to be done as a group and share our knowledge the best we can to move our projects along. We realize that the knowledge we gain ourselves can be useful for others and share that knowledge. This is slightly problematic for management, as their vision might be slightly unrealistic. Here are a few ways to improve our knowledge management practices in the three hypothesis described above. To increase face-to-face interactions, management should make office visits worth-while, this can be done through regular breakfast meetings or arranging group meetings with pastries, we already do these in irregular terms so this would be easy to implement. To increase trust, the management should be more transparent in keeping the staff informed about the status of the organization, and maybe add a regular forum where they would answer staff’s questions and worries. Cognitive ground is hard to achieve, but making sure that everyone understands their works meaning, and gets appreciation when their work is done correctly can increase this, the difficult part is to recognize the invisible work that is important to the company but is not publicly visible, such as maintaining the working platform and servers.

Roles of Manager in Different Working Communities

 Pardeep Kumar discusses Henry Mintzberg’s 10 managerial roles, which are divided in three groups: Interpersonal, Informational and Decisional(Pardeep, Kumar 2015, 13).  Leaders interpersonal roles show up in my in the communication between me and my boss: He is the one who I turn when I’m having problems or need guiding regarding my progress in the company. This appears also as controlled presentation in our public events, managers and leaders do keep calm while employees might party harder. Informational role is the most obvious: Our leaders tell us the current state of the firm and collect data from us, how we are managing our work and how to improve it. Every employee knows that in order to progress matters that require managerial output, they need to contact superiors and not only discuss it between themselves. Decisional roles are also quite obvious in the grand scheme, however in my company employees can make many decisions themselves and sometimes this line is blurred slightly. Also unlike in the paper, change often comes from workers that know how to improve the situation.

Evaluate your own behavior and skills related to Manager´s roles   

Figurehead role7
Liaison role8
The leader role6
Monitor role9
Disseminator role8
Spokesperson role5
Entrepreneur role6
Disturbance handler role3
Resource allocator role2
Negotiator role6

I choose Spokesperson, disturbance handler and figurehead role role. I am not in managerial role currently, but those I can improve. Spokesperson role will improve when I keep presentations on best practices for team members, to increase my skill in disturbance handling in my current role I will seek information on dispute management practices, I already have received some training through my labor union. Lastly figurehead will improve when I will tell people where I work and why they might be interested in working in our team: We are hiring new developers all the time, so positive appearance will keep our company interesting.

Leadership styles

Managerial behavior in my company

I looked our managerial behavior through six most common leadership styles reported by IMD, these styles include: Transformational Leadership, Delegative Leadership, Authoritative Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Participative Leadership and Servant Leadership(The 6 most common leadership styles & how to find yours 2023).

Transformational Leadership emphasizes change and transformation, this type of leadership is typical in my company, our leaders encourage us to find new ways to complete assignments and projects. They support further education and see the value in gaining knowledge.

Delegative Leadership style focuses on delegating initiative to workers. This is also very much present in our daily work, and my boss said that he likes when teams do decisions on their own, and do not require input from higher ups. Of course, not every decision can be made inside teams and some do require the input of the leader.

Authoritative Leadership is partly present, we do have a course set by leaders, however they do focus on not micromanaging teams, as this is considered a bad habit. The course is set and leaders ask us how we can keep that course and what needs to be done.

Transactional leadership is the most far off leadership style present in my company. There are no punishing actions, instead questions such as how we can help to make you succeed are asked. We do get bonuses if we achieve our goals though.

Participative Leadership is also very much present, especially so in our team leaders. Team leads are a part of our team and pass our ideas and thoughts to higher ups to consider. Also Open communication is very much present in or meetings, and different opinions are listened and considered. We in general have a high trust in our leaders.

Servant leadership is partly present, creativity is celebrated but also the course is also considered when discussing new solutions. I think if we went fully with this idea, we would not get things done, the goal is set and occasionally you have to disregard new ideas and solutions as while those might be beneficial in the long run we do have a target we need to hit.

My leadership behavior

The best description of my leadership behavior is consistent with McGregors type Y theory, integration of individual and organisational goals (Tafsirul Alam Tusar , 238). I wish through my actions create trust between co-workers so that we all understand our common goal, and instead of carrot and stick approach would find ways to learn from mistakes and give appraise when it is due. I find myself leaning to Delegative leadership style, I wish to teach and transfer knowledge between my co-workers so that they can solve problems themselves. I find most satisfaction when as a team we find a solution to an existing issue, example a method to write test automation. The Delegative role works when a team is competent and has a clear goal, as stated in the article from IMD(The 6 most common leadership styles & how to find yours 2023.) This also raises an issue when a team is missing the knowledge and will to perform the task at hand. This is a problem that I might have to tackle in the future if I acquire a managerial role in my company. I don’t want to use transactional role to push my team to the direction I feel is the relevant one, so finding a strategy to steer the project in the right direction can be hard, perhaps a touch from participative role to get the idea what motivates colleagues can be used to set the course.

Changing Work Environment

Leadership Trends for 2023

Stephanie Neal defines three leadership trends for 2023: Get Ahead of Burnout, Confront the Trust Crisis and Lead Virtual and Remote Teams Effectively (Neal, Stephanie 2022).

How do these trends impact the working practices in your workplace?

I have a colleague who is returning to work after a burnout, and the effects are still visible. Burnout prevention is important, and steps to minimize risks are taken.  The impact should be that leaders communicate and are aware of the stress that employees have, this can be seen in meaningful communication between workers. As mentioned in the A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers, steps to reduce social isolation should be made to increase workers well-being.  (Larson ,Barbara, Vroman, Susan & Makarius Erin 2020). Also leaders should focus on themselves to alleviate stress, as it can manifest as lack of productivity and rumination, this further increases the possibility of a burnout. (What Drives Leadership Stress — and How to Deal 2023.)  This would manifest as a training for employees and leaders to recognize stress and take preventive steps.

Building trust between the workforce and leaders is important as only 46% of the people does trust the leaders, says 2023 Global Leadership Forecast (Neal, Stephanie 2022). The leaders should start to create safe environments for people to feel comfortable, and able to express their opinions and take risks. Also transparency is key: Tell your workers openly what is going on in the firm (Lewis , Abbey 2022). This should result in more open communication from our management in our meetings.

In my current job most of my communication is done virtually, and as such virtual leadership is important. Most of the steps described in A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers are already taken. We have short daily meetings in order to see if any problems has arisen, social meeting is set in calendar for every day named “virtual café” for non-work related chat and other message pathways to reach colleagues if urgent matter is at hand.(Larson ,Barbara, Vroman, Susan & Makarius Erin 2020). I feel like my company has mastered this part, as an IT firm it needs to have robust communication through virtual teams. One thing that this sift might bring is an introduction protocol for new team leads so they can catch up in the correct way to hold virtual meetings.

How do these trends impact the required managerial and leadership skills in your work and your workplace?

Burnout prevention requires leaders to be able to recognize employee stress beforehand and take actions. This might show up as more person focused training in which leaders learn how to spot and care burnout. For employees this might show up as more check ups from leaders on how they are managing.

Trust building might show up more as open communication, and delivering more information about company to employees. We might get more negative status notifications about company from leaders, but this will build trust in the long term as then employees will not thing that company is hiding things from them.

Summary

As year 2021, will the year 2023 be different for the leaders. More focus on the people must be made, so that they will feel connected to the workplace. Leaders must adapt to virtual teams and find ways to communicate efficiently to report the company status and keep up how personnel is coping.

What Kind of Manager/Leader Am I?

I completed two personality tests, one in nwlink.com and other in 16personalities.com. Both gave me similar results and are in line how I feel about my current skills.

What are my strengths in the managerial work?

16personalities.com categorized me as a Campaigner ENFP-A type, the other page gave me similar results. My strength is in innovation and open mindedness. I feel this is true as I often try to come up new ways to complete tasks, and I’m not afraid of change. In my current job as a QA-Engineer I try to learn new things and get excited easily when I learn or can teach others new skills. Also both tests indicate that I have good skills to understand other opinions, which I think also applies to me. I often think how colleagues around act and what the underlying cause for their actions is.

Am I able to get excited and inspire others?

As those management personality test indicate, I feel often get excited. The most I get out is by reading some theory and applying it in my work. QA-Engineers job is perfect for me as it allows to see ones growth in practical terms: My testing protocols are easier to read, my automated tests improve every time I learn new ways to do them and I can teach my colleagues efficiently when I have a conclusive picture of the matter at hand. Inspiring others is something I need to work on, I have not had opportunities to improve this skill, as mostly teams just have one QA-Engineer and current communication methods, such as teams do not offer the best platform to do so. 

How do I react to changes?

I am working in an IT firm that develops electronic patient registry, and change is something that happens a lot. Teams that I work in change rather frequently and working protocols tend to alter quite often.  I am quite adaptive person, and changes in my working environment don’t cause too much stress but also have noticed that too much new things cause me to get tired and my quality of my work suffers. If I can’t see the benefit in changes at hand can lead to a resistance on my part, and I need explanations why such alterations are needed. I find that reasons for changes should be made clear so that it will be received positive light. The optimum for me is gradual changes spaced out on a period, so that my brain doesn’t have to be on full processing mode all the time and I have time to adapt.

Which areas should I develop in order to become a better manager/leader?

Planning is something that I currently need to improve, as I often make decisions on intuition, which is not bad option either, but good plans for future are needed also. Delegation and Execution parts in the nwlink test were the lowest, and especially execution part of me needs work.  I tend to postpone important decisions in my personal life so I have to watch out for that If I ever will be in a leading position, in working environment postponing difficult choices can pile up a big mess.

Summary

Its always useful to reflect what your strengths and weaknesses are so you can improve your leadership skills, and this assignment did just that. While areas to improve in order to become a better manager, is important,  finding ways to inspire others to do their best is something I have to think especially hard. Inspiration of others is no easy feat and there is no one right way to accomplish that.