714 Personal and Professional Development for Strategic Leaders

Unit Overview

714 Personal and Professional Development for Strategic Leaders is an important unit in the CMI Level 7 leaders for ensuring there is continuous improvement in strategic leaders. Leaders must be able to conduct self-assessment and identify the needs for learning that they have from a personal level. This involves being able to examine the needs of the organisation against its performance in meeting these needs. By conducting such an assessment, the leaders are able to identify key areas of learning that they should seek to address through continuous improvement and professional development.

This requires the leaders to build effective capabilities for identifying the learning needs/ gaps. They should be able to use reflective practice, self-assessment, and feedback from key stakeholders to ensure that they assess the need for personal and professional development. This requires skills and capabilities. They also need the knowledge to understand the different approaches that they can use to improve their ability to set up effective development strategies. Professional and personal development is also important in ensuring that leaders are able to adapt to changes within the organisational setting, such as technological and cultural changes.

714 Personal and Professional Development for Strategic Leaders is a critical unit in helping both new and aspiring leaders to develop the skills of development. They are guided to appreciate personal and professional development as a practice to optimise performance in leadership practices as well as understand the main tools that are applicable in this process of improving personal abilities and capabilities. The leaders are also taught to understand tools for receiving feedback on personal performance, which acts as a critical source of information to support the development approaches and practices. The unit is taught in 24 hours of guided learning and contributes 9 credit values towards the completion of the module.

Suitability of the Unit

Professional and personal development is critical for any leader. It is important to ensure that they regularly improve their performance, knowledge, and skills, which aligns them with the present needs of their leadership practice. They are guided to ensure that they are effective in contributing towards the performance of the leaders. First, strategic leaders, these forms of development are also important in ensuring that the senior managers are able to build relevant skills and capabilities. They are tasked with the duty of aligning organisational practices to long-term goals which improve their performance within the organisation in general. As such, 714 Personal and Professional Development for Strategic Leaders is a suitable unit for leaders that helps them to identify their learning needs and address them through professional and personal development.

The unit is designed with a focus on the learning needs of the senior managers and strategic leaders within the organisation. These individuals are on the top level of management and address their skills, knowledge, and capabilities to translate to effective organisational management and leadership. The unit is also applicable to other leaders tasked with steering activities and leading the towards accomplishing its long-term goals. It helps them to understand principles that they can use to develop themselves and the role of feedback in improving the performance of individuals. Other stakeholders who can benefit from the unit include development professionals and general employees.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand the relationship between skillset and mindset to ensure the individual is able to develop as a strategic leader

• examine individual capabilities in terms of personal values and behaviours required for strategic leadership practice

• Evaluate the impact of engagement with personal and professional development on the strategic leadership practice of the individuals

• Reflect on personal interpersonal and professional competencies that influence the process of leading effectively

• Develop a personal and professional development plan based on the learning needs of the individual to improve strategic leadership

Key Learning Areas

This unit focuses on improving the ability of the individual to conduct self-assessment and receive feedback from others which helps identify learning needs. They are then able to develop learning areas using the learning needs analysis. The unit covers critical areas of learning, including:

Approaches of Personal and Professional Development

This area of learning is important in understanding the concept of professional and personal development within the workplace. The learners are guided to understand the need to develop from a strategic perspective. It involves being able to effectively develop strategies and measures that are designed to address the learning needs of the strategic leers to improve their performance in leadership practices. The leaders are guided to further understand the organisational context and the role that professional and personal development can play in addressing these needs within the workplace. They are guided to understand the relationship between personal and professional development and the strategic leadership practice.

Developing as a Strategic Leader

This area of learning helps the learners to effectively evaluate their performance and identify learning needs. The unit focuses on the process of reflective practice and approaches to receiving feedback from others, which is important to improve the understanding of strengths and weaknesses and identify relevant development activities and opportunities. The learners are guided to effectively develop a development plan. This includes setting SMART strategic goals for the process of learning. It also involves being able to implement and evaluate these goals against the expected standards of performance in the specific areas of learning. The learners are lastly guided to evaluate the performance of learning within the workplace against the expected standards.

Evaluation

On completion of the unit, the learners are required to be able to complete an assessment .t. Eh assessment includes a written document where they respond to the template on the unit, which is essential to ensure that they contribute towards meeting the needs of the organisation. The learners are also required to complete a supervised practice and engage in simulated exercises which measure alignment of content in practical settings.