Personal Action Plan

Application Assignment # 2 – September 14, 2018

Personal Action Plan

As part of our orientation into the Devos Executive MBA program we were asked to submit to an analysis of our leadership skills as well as how we interact with others and make decisions. Each member of the Cohort was tasked with taking the assessment before the beginning of our first class Human Behavior in Organizations and we are also tasked with taking the assessment immediately before graduation to determine any measureable results. In short each of us was asked to make a personal assessment of our leadership skills before the class ( how we saw ourselves – self assessment ) and how we “turned” out after studying for our MBA degree.  We should show some growth through our class work and the application of these principles in our daily business lives.  Hopefully we will show growth in areas where we showed some deficiency or did not assess ourselves properly. We participated in a CapsimInBox which was a simple and experimental way to gain objective, personalized and actionable feedback to develop the behavioral skills critical to career success.  This definition was sourced from the CapsimInBox website and it concisely defines the process of the assessment and what we are trying to achieve through the exercise. After the first part of the exercise we are now asked to formulate an action plan based on the feedback we received.  Once again I like to look at the definition of what’s in front of me to understand the task at hand.  An action plan is a sequence of steps that must be taken or activities that must be performed well, for a strategy to succeed.  An action plan be represented in many forms but simply can have as few as three major elements 1) specific tasks – what will be done and by whom, 2) time horizon – when it will be done and 3) Resource allocation – what specific allocations are available to facilitate the specific activities.  This definition is courtesy of businessdictionary.com.

CapsimInBox initially asked us to rate ourselves as leaders in the following skills sets: Organization, Leading, Problem Solving, Communication and Initiating. Thru a role play of being a manager of a company we were asked to reply to an inbox of emails and sort out the messages and respond to the individual who had sent the email.  In my opinion there was really no correct answer in the replies in the exercise but it was a measure of how well we did in the five leadership skill categories.  I would say that I overestimated my skill level. Having been in business for 30 years I viewed my skills slightly better than the assessment came back.  The Delta between my assessment numbers and the actual assessment numbers were quite shocking in certain categories and leads me to believe that the exercise has identified some substantial strengths I have as well as some substantial weaknesses that will need some development.  I do realize that this is not a clinical assessment of my managerial skills and there may be some deviation from actual clinical results but I do agree that I can improve my leadership skills in certain areas based on the exercise and that is what I will focus upon.

Strengths – Initially going into this exercise I thought that I would “test” strong in all areas.  However the CapsimInBox showed my strengths to be in organization, leading and problem solving. My developmental Index showed that my level of skill proficiency is at the intermediate level – that across the five skills sets I showed an intermediate level of proficiency.  CapsimInBox states that my ultimate goal for professional development should be to demonstrate an advanced level across all five skills. Since I did not score high in all categories – those that were low are where my areas of improvement will be centered.

Weakness – I was quite shocked between the difference in my assessment and the results in the communication and initiating category.  There was a huge discrepancy in communicating and that was quite shocking to me.  I had always thought that I communicated well in written and verbal form to my associates and employees.  Maybe the way I am presenting information to others is not the best.  Maybe I am not identifying the core ideas and developing supportive arguments as CapsimInBox states. Maybe I am assuming that the others are understanding what I am asking of them. I will need to set this as a specific goal now that I know this is a short coming.  I will have to practice some more trust methods within my work circle and hope to develop a better way of two way communication.  Additionally I rated a little lower in initiating than my self-assessment.  I will also have to work on this – how to influence events to accomplish a goal or task or to make a decision. Truthfully not scoring as high in some categories was an eye opener and quite humbling but as the saying goes “its all good”  I understand that the basis of this exercise is just this – to have an eye opener or epiphany and to move forward and develop the deficient skill sets.  I fully acknowledge that I may have or in actually overrated myself and that understanding my baseline in the observed skillset areas is the first step in improving these skills. One must know where they are starting and where they want to be at the end of the plan.