Strategy To Achieving Effective Self-Management

From the preceding pages, it is clear that an increased awareness of self, organization and the relationship built around it can help an individual manage himself/herself better. We must bear in mind that effective self management is a life-long learning process. It involves self-assessment, within and outside our circle of influences or organization.

In today's fast changing work environment and culture, possession of some basic managerial skills is a contributory factor in determining success. More than ever before, fast emerging work culture requires an individual to be self-motivated and self-reliance. Simply put, the onus is on you to steer your own destiny. This means the ability to control matters that demand so much of your precious time and rightful attention. Some of the strategies that you can start working on immediately are listed below:


Delegation

We should learn to delegate and get out of "do it myself syndrome". When we delegate, we are in fact releasing ourselves to attend to other pressing work. Not only that, delegating means we are doing justice to our subordinates. We give them the opportunity to polish their skills, increase their knowledge and test their competence level.

In our daily lives, there are so much that we can get others to help us to get it done. According to Dr. Carter McNamara, "effective delegation develops people who are ultimately more fulfilled and productive. Managers become more fulfilled and productive themselves as they learn to count on their staff and are freed up to attend to more strategic issues".


Empowerment

Michael Macoby provides us with two traditional meaning of empowerment in his article, "Re-thinking Empowerment".

The first, as being used in the US Constitution in 1788 means investing authority in a role or a person. This kind of empowerment implies acceptance of personal responsibility, in the sense of accountability. The other meaning of empowerment is enablement.

Author of top selling book, Steven Covey in "First Things First" dwells at length on this subject. Amongst others, he mentions that it is in our circle of influence to create conducive environment for empowerment. Foremost, he strongly recommended we should cultivate the right condition for empowerment, which involves some basic elements as shown below.

• Trustworthiness (Personal and Organizational)

• Trust

• Win - Win Agreement

• Desired Results
- Guidelines
- Resources
- Accountability
- Consequences

• Self-Directing, Individuals/ Teams

• Aligned Structure and Systems

• Accountability
- Self-Evaluation using 360o Review

• Character
- Integrity, Maturity, Abundance Mentality

• Competence
- Technical, Conceptual, Inter-dependency

(Source : Steven Covey, "First Things First")

Various elements to be nurtured so as to create conducive environment for empowerment can be seen from the above. It incorporates six elements, i.e:

• Trustworthiness
• Trust
• Win-win agreements
• Self-directing individuals/teams
• Aligned structure and systems
  
• Accountability

Conclusion

Managing yourself simply means improving the way we manage ourselves on a day-to-day basis and thereby increasing our own effectiveness. This is made not only more important but also more urgent due to changes that are taking place around us. Failure on our part to grasp this new realities and adapting ourselves to it will render us useless and less relevant in a dynamic organization or societies.

References

1. Elinor Levy & Tom Monte : The 10 Best Ways to Boost Your Immune System, Bantam Books, London, 1997

2. Debra Allcock : Time And Workload Management, SAM Publishing Sdn Bhd. Kuala Lumpur 2000

3. Dawn E. Reno : The Unofficial Guide to Managing Time, IDG Books Worldwide Inc. California, 2000

4. Michael Macoby : Re-thinking Empowerment. WWW : macoby.com/Articles/Re thinking Empowerment.html, 20 Nov. 2001.

5. Ms Helen William : Public Service Perspective on the Human Capital (Paper presented at the AHRI National Convention in Canberra, Australia, 1998)

6. Steven R. Covey : First Things First, London, Simon & Schuster.

7. Dr. Carter McNamara : Free Basic Guide to Management and Supervision.