Setting the Path

Selecting your first career is the most critical. This is because it will set the direction or path to your career.

I give my own example. When I join the national carrier as aircraft engineer, unknowingly, I had set the path for my future career. I consider it as unknowingly, as I was too you to think for my own future. I cut off most of the other options, I cannot be a doctor or teacher.

Once your are in your career, these are the tips to move forward in your role:

a. Take stock of your strength. This the most important, as you have to leverage on your strength. This include your natural preference. If you are the type who prefer to study or work alone, you will not excel in jobs that require mass involvement of other people, like marketing or PR. You may be suited to job like doctor or researcher.

b. Evaluate your goal. Ask yourself... what do you want to achieve in your life. The good thing is, if you really want it, your can change your personality. I know a person who was timid and quiet in his early school life, turned to be a powerful politician liked by many.

c. Know the trade. Have the knowledge and skill is important. It will determine your ability to do the job as well as the perception of the people. It is unlikely that people trust you if you lack the knowledge.

d. Attend the trade events. This has multiple benefits. It can help you to upgrade your skills and at the same time increase your contacts.

Identifying Difficult People

The skills at the work place can be broadly divided into 3 groups:

1. Technical Skill - mainly in relation to the production of products, either physical or services.

2. Human skill - or social skill, it is about maintaining harmonious relationship with other co-workers. The skill helps to bind the people as a team and works to achieve a common goal.

3. Conceptual skills - about abstract constructs or ideas.

One of the skills within the human skill is on how to deal with difficult person. Unfortunately we will meet a person who appears to enjoy making things difficult for us. A difficult person can fall into the following categories.

a. Hostile person - he or she is the kind of person who look at you as an enemy. Always looking for an opportunity to hit at you and constantly looking for your faults. He may have some of the sought after qualities, such as confidence or fluency in his speech, and he tend to look down and even bully those who are not within that category.

b. The constant moaner - this is the person sitting next to you who constantly moans and complaints. He complaints about the bosses, his colleagues or even his own workers. He may have the wrong perception that he is the better of the lots. The the constant complaints, he seem to be powerless to incur changes.

c. Unresponsive individual - this is a person who live in his own small enclosed world. He tend to do as little as possible . Possibly he is so afraid of making mistake and blamed for his action and put a facade to hide his lack of knowledge.

d. Know-all - He is looking for recognition and refuse to accept that he may not be knowledgeable.

e. Indecisive - he does not seem to be able to make decision. Or worst still, he changes his mind every few hours. He may be trying to analyse and get the best answer. As data may not be readily available, he cannot decide as yet.

These are some of the quoted examples of difficult people. May be we can help to avoid the pitfall.

competency framework

Organization normally builds its own competency framework to support it business. The components of the framework will be:

- competencies definition

- competencies level

- the clustering

The framework can be arranged in the following way:

- the core competencies that cut across the organisation

- the functional competencies

- the role competencies

1.0 DEFINITION

a.The underlying characteristics of a person which result in effective and superior performance in a job (Kemp 1980)

b. an underlying characteristics of a person that contributes towards job performance.( Boyatzis(1982)

c. Competency is a set of behaviour patterns that the incumbents needs to bring to a position in order to perform its tasks and functions with competence. ( Woodruffer ( Rosemary boam)

- it concerns with behaviour, it is overt,

1.2 Importance of definition

- to guide the search for the specific competencies( rosemary brown mcgrawhill(92).

- enable theoritical contributions

1.3 Competencies and technical skills

Boam suggested that technical skill to not mixed up with competencies.

1.4 Generic Competencies

Universal competencies for ‘ top management’ ( Thornton and Byham 1982)

oral presentation

written presentation

organisation sensitivity

Organisation awareness and adaptibility

delegation

risk taking

negotiation

creativity

1.5 Supra competencies ( Dulewics 1989)

The competencies are clustered

- Intellectual strategic perspective

- analysis and judgement

- planning and organising

2. Interpersonnal persuasiveness

- asseriveness

- oral communication

3. adaptibility

4. Result orientation - energy and iniatives

- business sense

- achievement motivated

1.6 Competencies clusters

By domains

- cognitive

- human

- technical professional

by roles -

- leadership

1.7 Determinants of competencies

1.8 Future Orientation

2.0 EFFECTIVE JOB PERFORMANCE

The effective job performance is the interactive result of three factors:

- Individual competencies

- Job Demands

- Orgnisational Environment

Effective job performance is the attainment of the specific results required by the job through specific action whilst maintaining consistency with policy and procedure.

Boyatzis (1982)

2.0 IDENTIFYING COMPETENCIES

The purpose is to identify the required competencies for the job.

It involves job analysis method.

Technique:

-structured- position analysisi questiomaires

- semi structured- Critical incidents

3.1 ANALYSIS METHODS

a. observation

If unsufficient time, observation to be limited to good employee.

b. Diaries

The actual task per they day are recorded on hourly basis.

c. interview.

structured or unstructured.

d. Critical incident technique

longest established method, 50 years

Describe the occasion you did extremely well.

ASSESSING COMPETENCIES

To measure the extends to which the competencies are held by the individuals

a. analogous method

use of activities directly related to the job- eg groupexercise/ role play,psychomotor

b. analytical method

c. reputational approach

Use othe rpeople to access competencies, reference , supv

d. miscellaneous approach.

COMPETENCY ENGAGEMENT

Objective.

To develop the staff competencies to meet the future needs of the company.

Conceptual Approach

1. Identify the critical future job family

- Strategic

- Tactical

- Operational

2. Identify the competency profile for the job family

3. Assess the staff competency

-it is further divided according to the function.