Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization at the top, defined as:[1]
… the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people self-actualize — he estimated one percent[2] — his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while job security and good working conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees.
As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual. In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review:
We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren’t managing their employees’ careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.[3]
Management professors Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract.[4] On the one hand the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees".
On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes personal development and "... embrace the invigorating force of continuous learning and personal development".
The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in career development from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities. Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that women’s careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps[5]had a major impact on the way companies view careers. Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in her Working Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change,[6] indicating that priorities of work and lifestyle continually develop through life.
Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies.
Employee benefits have the purpose of improving satisfaction, motivation and loyalty. Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs. Typical programs in this category include:
Many such programs resemble programs that some employees might conceivably pay for themselves outside work: yoga, sports, martial arts, money-management, positive psychology, NLP, etc.
As an investment, personal development programs have the goal of increasing human capital or improving productivity, innovation or quality. Proponents actually see such programs not as a cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization’s strategic development goals. Employees gain access to these investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and future potential of the employee, usually defined in a talent management architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research staff and perceived future leaders.organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented) programs to many or even all employees. Typical programs[which?] focus on career-development, personal effectiveness, teamwork, and competency-development. Personal development also forms an element in management tools such as personal development planning, assessing one's level of ability using a competency grid, or getting feedback from a 360 questionnaire filled in by colleagues at different levels in the organization.
References
- ^ Abraham Maslow “A Theory of Human Motivation” originally published in the 1943 Psychological Review, number 50, page 838. Maslow, A. H. (1996). Higher
- ^ Maslow, A. H. (1996). Higher motivation and the new psychology. In E. Hoffman (Ed.), Future visions: The unpublished papers of Abraham Maslow. Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage, page 89
- ^ Peter F. Drucker, “Managing Oneself”, Best of HBR 1999.[page needed]
- ^ Ghoshal, Sumantra; Bartlett Christopher A. (1997) The Individualized Corporation: A Fundamentally New Approach to Management, HarperCollins, page 286
- ^ Hewlett, Sylvia Ann (2007), Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, Harvard Business School Press. This book shows how women have started to change the traditional career path and how companies adapt to career/lifestyle issues for men as well as for women.
- ^ Ibarra, Herminia (2003) "2" Working identity : unconventional strategies for reinventing your career Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press pp. 199 ISBN 1578517788 Ibarra discusses career-change based on a process moving from possible selves to "anchoring" a new professional identity.
1 comments:
These life skills are the basic building blocks that form all the success or failures that you have in life. Personal development skills become the foundation from which all your achievements in life flow from and it has a direct relationship with winning and life success.
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