Perspective Personal development to improve management performance: a plain managers guide

Tom Bourner

There are several ways in which the development of self-knowledge can contribute both to the improvement of management performance and to the success of the organization. Tom Bourner reports on a session he led at an open space conference. This article looks at how personal development contributes to management performance. The dimension of personal development on which it concentrates is the development of self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-understanding. The term selfknowledge is used throughout as shorthand for self-awareness, self-knowledge and selfunderstanding. The dimension of management performance on which it concentrates is the managers contribution to organizational success. Most management developers I know are convinced that self-knowledge is a quality which does contribute in a way that is both positive and signicant. Most management developers, however, also seem to believe that it is a good thing irrespective of its contribution to effective management. Many managers, however, are sceptical of management development activities aimed at increasing self-knowledge; they regard it as a form of navel-gazing and at best a selfindulgence. In order to be able to convince them of the inclusion of the development of self-knowledge within courses of management education and development we need to be able to justify it in ways that make sense to them. In this article I attempt to do exactly that.

The author Tom Bourner is a Principal Lecturer at the Centre for Management Development, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK. Abstract Presents answers to the question: how does the development of self-knowledge of managers contribute to organizational success in commercial terms? The question originated from a discussion by a group of management developers about the relationships between personal development and effective management. Looks at the contribution of self-knowledge in terms of motives, values, personal resources, self-esteem and internal constraints (including compulsive or driven behaviour). Concludes that an increasing rate of change within organizations increases the need for the development of self-knowledge by managers.

The beginning of wisdom

It is not difcult to nd a chain of causation from self-knowledge through self-acceptance to self-development and personal growth. For many people, the injunction from ancient Greece to Know thyself resonates with their values and they are sympathetic to the view of the philosopher Immanuel Kant that selfknowledge is the beginning of all wisdom.
This is a revised version of the article Effective management and the development of self-awareness: a plain managers guide, which originally appeared in Career Development International, Vol. 1 No. 4, pp. 14-18.

Management Development Review Volume 9 Number 6 1996 pp. 49 MCB University Press ISSN 0962-2519

Personal development to improve management performance

Management Development Review Volume 9 Number 6 1996 49

Tom Bourner

That is all ne and dandy (and I would certainly count myself among the management developers who subscribe to that view) but pursuing that line of thought is not the purpose of this article. Its aim is to explore how the development of self-knowledge of managers contributes to more successful organizations in commercial terms and to report the conclusions as explicitly as possible.

Personal development and self-awareness

This article originated in an open space conference. Specically, it originated at a session that I offered under the title: What are the relationships between personal development and management effectiveness? The session was well attended, suggesting that the issue is a signicant one for other management developers (although the fact that it was held outdoors, on a warm day, in bright sunshine in a spot with ne views over the rolling Sussex countryside may have also contributed to the attendance!). What happened at the session was that we brainstormed what we understood by the term personal development and this was followed by discussion on what we understood by the term effective management and the possible relationships between the items that emerged from the brainstorm and effective management. Personal development is the key to an effective organization. In fact, no one seemed to challenge the belief that management effectiveness and personal development are related There seemed to be a widely-held belief among those who attended the session that there is a close link between personal development and effective management. This was evident in such statements as: Personal development is the key to an effective organization. In fact, no one seemed to challenge the belief that management effectiveness and personal development are related. The nearest thing to an expression of dissent was:
Managing involves managing people, tasks, outputs, boundaries, resources so where does personal development t in?

But even that statement seemed to be made in the spirit of summarizing the issue, rather than challenging the precept. After the session I worked on the outcomes of the brainstorm to try to group the results into more general categories. The Appendix shows how the outcomes of that process are related to the raw items that appeared in the brainstorm. The general themes that emerged from the brainstorm are: clarifying values and personal aims (e.g. Knowing how you prefer to behave and how you prefer to be); expanding comfort zone (e.g. Expanding your boundaries); recognizing profound knowledge (e.g. Seeking wisdom); reecting, articulating and acting (e.g. Telling and retelling your story); behaving with integrity (e.g. Maintaining integrity); learning to be (e.g. Acceptance); accepting responsibility (e.g. Taking responsibility for the world you are creating); seeking wholeness: mind, body and spirit (e.g. Finding wholeness and balance); expanding from the inside outwards (e.g. Bringing out whats in you). What stood out for me when I was looking for themes was that self-knowledge seemed to underpin so many of them. This is obviously so in the case of themes such as clarifying awareness of values and personal aims. However, the issue of developing self-knowledge is present even in themes like expanding comfort zone, since in developing selfknowledge the boundaries of the comfort zone will be identied.

What is effective management?

What constitutes effective management is a hotly debated issue. Many management gurus make good livings from offering advice to managers about how to manage more effectively. Most of them, however, seem to agree that effective management can be measured in terms of contribution to organizational success. And that is a view which is likely to be shared by most managers. Differences only emerge in terms of what exactly will make the largest contribution. In this article we shall not go below the level of broad agreement: we 5

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dene effective management in terms of value added by managers to the organization. On examination, we nd that the development of self-knowledge of managers contributes to the success of the organization in a variety of ways and we will look at each of these in turn.

Hidden resources
There are times when we could kick ourselves because we have not handled a situation as well as we know we can; when we apparently did not have access to the personal resources that we know that we possess. This, incidentally, often happens when we are stressed or tired or hurting when we feel less resourceful. Part of the agenda of developing self-knowledge is to discover additional personal resources within ourselves and another part of that agenda is to develop easier access to them. We each have a wealth of knowledge about ourselves that is not in conscious awareness. If I ask you What sort of house did you live in when you were eleven years old? you will probably be able to conjure up an image. Where was that picture before I asked the question? It was probably led away in storage in your memory. We each have lots of information about ourselves that is stored behind what we are currently thinking about. It is stacked away until brought to the surface by an appropriate stimulus such as a question. Some parts of that self-knowledge are more easily accessible than other parts. In the 1940s and 1950s Dr Wilder Peneld[1], a neurosurgeon, found that he could provoke recall of long forgotten experiences by using stimulating electrodes. These memories were unavailable to recall without such stimulation. There are times when a persons effectiveness can be much enhanced by easier access to personal resources that are normally outside of conscious awareness. An example of this is keeping a victory log of personal successes in management. When faced with a difcult or daunting new situation, the manager can consult it to recall how they have handled past situations resourcefully and successfully.

No shocks
How will you respond when placed under great pressure? How will you respond when the job involves a high level of routine and boredom? How will you cope if you are required in your job to make people redundant? How will you cope if some of those people are your close friends? How much of your family life will you sacrice to do a good job at work? How will you respond if the organization makes impossible demands of you? There is much that we do not know and cannot know about ourselves until we are tested. We can speculate about how we would feel and act in particular situations but we cannot be sure. Sometimes we surprise ourselves. Sometimes we are shocked by our responses. For some managers the idea of developing self-knowledge seems not only irrelevant to effective management but also unnecessary. Most managers, like most other people, probably think that they know themselves pretty well. We each know better than anyone what has happened to us, what we have to put up with and our own feelings and thoughts. The answer to the question: Do I know myself? seems to be a clear Of course, I know it in full and occasionally distressing detail. We all, however, have experiences when the belief that we know ourselves fully is tried and found wanting. For most of us it is not uncommon to encounter situations when we nd ourselves experiencing thoughts and feelings that surprise us and behaviour that we had not expected. In order to make choices and plan the future it is necessary to be able to anticipate our own actions. To understand oneself is not just an interesting pastime, it is crucial for the effective manager. Greater self-knowledge means fewer shocks when the chips are down. For this reason self-knowledge is not a self-indulgence but the most practical of knowledge. 6

Talking with the driver

I know I should take more exercise but somehow I dont. I know I should keep up to date with current thinking in management but somehow I dont. Why do I procrastinate so much? Why do I put off difcult jobs when I know that I will have to do them? Sometimes we are not clear why we believe the way we do.

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There are some parts of our past experience which may not be available at all to current conscious awareness, but which affect our current feelings and actions. We can describe these as our drivers. A further dimension of the development of self-knowledge is to bring into conscious awareness some of the drivers that control our behaviour. This might be the need to please the boss even when you feel that this is against the long-term interests of the organization or the people who report to you. It might mean the need to maintain close control when you know that delegation or letting go would be better. It might mean the need to be liked even when it involves doing things that are against your better judgement. Your need to avoid conict might cause you to employ yes-managers to report to you. In The Inner Game of Management, Flamholtz and Randle[2] give a good account of the common drivers of managers. Becoming aware of the drivers is the rst stage in freeing oneself from them. This means more choices about how to think, feel and act. Greater self-knowledge also manifests itself in being less controlled by drivers which are, at least partly, out of current conscious awareness.

well the manager manages the part of the organization for which he/she is responsible depends on how well the self is managed, which in turn depends on how well the self is known and understood.

Strengths and weaknesses

Self-awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses contributes to management effectiveness in a variety of ways. For example, managers who have a sound perception of their weaknesses are in a position to compensate by surrounding themselves with those having compensatory strengths. A manager blind to weaknesses is not in a position to do this and the weaknesses can remain as an Achilles heel within that part of the organization. Common management development exercises, such as an exploration of a managers personal learning styles or team working roles or blind and hidden areas, are designed to help managers to become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. A common denition of management is getting things done with other people. Greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of other people contributes significantly in this task. When a manager gains an understanding of his or her own strengths and weaknesses it helps to provide an understanding of others also. Gaining an insight into oneself is usually accompanied by greater insight into other people. More understanding of what makes oneself tick provides understanding of what makes other people tick too. This means more realistic expectation of work colleagues. It also enables a manager to listen more empathetically. It is interesting that the phrase an understanding manager implies greater compassion in addition to greater cognitive understanding. The more that you understand about yourself and other people, the more successful you are likely to be in getting things done with other people.

The skilful use of the self

When do you work best? Morning or nighttime? Are you an owl or a lark? Where do you work best? Alone or as part of a team? What sort of work do you do best in the ofce? If you are grappling with a problem that requires a creative response, when and where is it best for you to address it? What are the circumstances that give you access to the right hemisphere of your brain? How do you recharge your batteries? For your own unique body, mind and feelings what do you need to do when it is important that you achieve peak performance? It is not fanciful to think of the manager as being a person in charge of a self that includes a body, a set of feelings and emotional responses, and a set of beliefs. It then makes sense to talk of the managers use of self to do his or her job and hence it also makes sense to talk of self-management. Self-knowledge involves gaining knowledge of the self that is both being managed and is managing. How 7

Self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-condence

A person with a high degree of self-knowledge has a sense of this is the person I am, I know that these are my values, these are my capabilities and this is my purpose in life. With that sort of self-knowledge a manager can bend

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without fear of breaking. That combination of exibility and resilience comes from selfknowedge of what shape the manager really is. By contrast, an important cause of low selfesteem is lack of self-knowledge. A person with relatively little self-knowledge is more likely to be easily swayed by external pressures and suffer role confusion. According to Thoreau[3]: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Current high stress levels among managers suggest that beneath the bravado of many managers there is a lot of quiet desperation. Role confusion is most likely to occur when an individual is not sure about what kind of person they really are underneath the image they present to the world. In that case it is difcult to trust their self. And if you cannot trust yourself then your self-belief and self-condence is likely to be low.

principle of insufcient awareness: those who do not know themselves are unable to change themselves. Action learning offers one the means of integrating self-knowledge with organizational change.

Summary and conclusions

I have sometimes asked managers to think back to the most effective manager that they have ever had and the least effective one and then to look for the differences. They have rarely offered differences in terms of knowledge of marketing, statistics or corporate strategy, etc. Instead they usually offered personal qualities such as exible, calm in a crisis, developer, inspirational, good at delegating, etc. I have concluded that there exists a close link between effective management and personal development but I was not clear about the precise nature of the link. In this article I have taken a particular element of personal development, namely, the development of self-knowledge, and have looked at various ways in which it contributes directly to effective management in general and to the success of the managers organization in particular. I recognize that this is a narrow and instrumental view. There are those who would argue for a much wider aim for management development. There are even those who would argue for a reversal of the rationale. In other words they would not ask how personal development contributes to the management of organizations, rather they would ask how does the managing organization contribute to personal development? Perhaps both questions are worth answering.

Managing change
According to Tom Reeves[4]:
Managers basically have to do two overlapping things. They have to keep the existing show on the road that is to say manage the routine or recurring activities for which they are responsible. They also have to innovate and make improvements that is to say change the way things are done or which things are done.

What constitutes effectiveness in terms of keeping the show on the road does not necessarily constitute effectiveness when it comes to innovating and making improvements. In situations when management is routine and repetitive, self-knowledge is less important. In such situations managers will less frequently nd themselves surprised or shocked by their own feelings, behaviour or reactions. As the pace of change accelerates such situations are increasingly rare and managers spend relatively more time doing things that are new to them, so the opportunity for surprises and shocks increases. Managing change puts a premium on forms of management development based on personal development and increasing self-knowledge. According to Reg Revans principle of insufcient mandate: Those unable to change themselves cannot change what goes on around them[5]. You cannot change what you are not aware of. I wish to complement Revans principle with another one: a 8

References
1 Peneld, W., Engrams in the human brain, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 61 No. 8, 1968, pp. 831-40. 2 Flamholtz, E. and Randle, Y., The Inner Game of Management, Business Books, London, 1969. 3 Thoreau. H.D., Walden, Wordsworth Editions Limited, Hertfordshire, 1995, p. 6. 4 Reeves, T., Managing Effectively: Developing Yourself through Experience, Butterworth-Heinemann, London, 1994, p. 3. 5 Revans, R., The ABC of Action Learning, ChartwellBratt, Bromley, 1983, p. 55.

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Tom Bourner

Appendix. Brainstormed responses to the question what is personal development?

Themes Clarifying values and personal aims Brainstormed items Knowing how you prefer to behave and how you prefer to be Finding values Identifying objectives Living on purpose Knowing what youve found Expanding your boundaries Moving beyond limits Going to the edge and coming back White-knuckle rides the pain barrier. Seeking wisdom Spiritual growth Reecting Telling and retelling your story Acting your story Maintaining integrity Pursuit of quality Acceptance Learning to do nothing Becoming what you are Living with paradox Taking responsibility for the world you are creating Responsibility Creating and recreating Finding wholeness and balance Maintaining health Being hungry and getting nourished Bringing out whats in you Internal Opening the window Learning and growing Expanded choice Conict and reconciliation Having fun

Expanding the comfort zone

Recognizing profound knowledge Reecting, articulating and acting

Behaving with integrity Learning to be

Accepting responsibility

Seeking wholeness: mind, body and spirit Expanding from the inside

Other