Strategies for self promoting development

Abstract

All people working in organisations learn and develop to some extent over time. The outcome of this development varies as widely between individuals as people themselves vary from one another. Some people achieve top managerial positions in industry and commerce in their late twenties or early thirties while others have to wait to the final stages of their working careers to achieve such positions. Some struggle at stages throughout their careers and achieve only moderate success; others do not seem to try at all. Management training and development activities are aimed at providing better opportunities and facilities for such development to meet the need of organisations to improve management performance. In practice these activities are designed to meet overall organisational needs and to conform with general behavioural and learning theories. The crucial significance of individual differences in motivation and ability to learn and develop is seldom, if ever, consciously exploited as a route towards securing real improvements in management performance. It is the contention of this paper that self‐development is such an approach.