Chapter 6
Managing and Communicating Existing and Future Work (Management Competency 2)
The second competency we are going to explore is called ‘Managing and communicating existing and future work’. This competency is about managers proactively managing their work and the work of their team members, dealing with problems at work and decision making, keeping team members involved and encouraging participation across their team.
The behaviours included in this competency fall into three different clusters:
1. Proactive work management
2. Problem solving
3. Participative/empowering.
As with the previous chapter, each of the clusters of behaviours are explored in turn, with examples of the types of contexts in which the behaviours may occur, and exercises and case studies to enable their use and exploration in your work as a practitioner.
Proactive Work Management
“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” (A.A. Milne)
This cluster is all about managers managing proactively. In the academic literature, proactive behaviours are referred to as anticipatory, change orientated and self-initiated; essentially meaning that managers will act in advance of a future situation to allow themselves to plan and organize their work and the work of others, rather than working reactively, or ‘fire fighting’.
A vast body of research in the academic literature points to proactive behaviour being an important determinant of organizational success ...
