INTRODUCTION

It is also known as ‘management development’ or ‘executive development’. It is one of the

fastest developing areas in personnel. It is realized that an effective management team may be
as important to the survival of an organization as any tangible item on the balance sheet.
Interest in management development is great partly due to the shortage of well-trained
managers. Executive development or management development is a systematic process of
learning and growth by which managerial personnel gain and apply knowledge, skills,
attitudes and insights to manage the work in their organization effectively and efficiently. The
program of executive development aims at achieving following purposes: To sustain good
performance of managers throughout their careers by exploiting their full potential. To
understand economic, technical, and institutional forces in order to solve business problems.
To acquire knowledge about problems of human resources. To think through problems this
may confront the organization now or in the future. To develop responsible leaders. To
inculcate knowledge of human motivation and human relationships. To increase proficiency
in management techniques such as work study, inventory control, operations research and
quality control.

NEED ANALYSIS PROCESS

Contemporary organizations have realized the importance of human capital and increasingly
finding its necessary to continuously train and develop human resources. The training and
development needs of the employees cannot be looked at in isolation; any proactive
organization has to view the individual training needs in the overall organizational context.
The training and development processes are no longer adjunct to other departments but have
become a part of organizational strategy and one of the key organizational objectives. The
process of arriving at the development needs of the executives can be comprehensively
viewed through the process given as seen below:

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 Competitive Environment

Annual Training
↕ Plan

Organizational Strategy
↕
Organizational Objectives

↕
Identify Competency Gaps

Training needs assessment

Conduct of Training

Review of Training Activities

The Process of Executive Development Stage I:

In the Stage I,

At the macro level, there are three key elements are considered as competitive advantage,
organizational strategy and organizational objectives. The analysis of competitive
environment helps the organization to decide its competitive positioning in the market place,
based on which the organizational strategy is drawn out in an attempt to transform or
reposition of the organization. The macro view is broken down into specific organizational
objectives for further dissemination to functional/ departmental, and individual level.

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Stage II:

This stage is most important and crucial phase of executive development process. This stage
deals analysis on the competency mapping, identification of competency gap and career
planning. In the competency stage which helps to capture the competencies of all the
employees of the organization which includes the capacities of the management also. In the
second stage, the organizational requirements and competency gap to be analysed. In the
third phase, this deals with identifying and verifying the organizational needs, individual
growth and along with career planning of the executives.

Stage III:

This stage is consisting of three levels. The first level of this stage deals with the activities
involving training need assessment of individuals and of all employees based on which
Annual Training Plan (ATP) is drawn. Based on the annual training plan the employees are
chosen to expose to either corporate training program, for internal training programs and
external organizations. While deciding the venue and types and nature of the training
program the personnel department and training facilitator should consider the various issues
like no of executives, cost, outsourcing and availability of technical expertise in the
organizations. In case of organizational development related exercises, the combination of
internal and external training programs should be arrange for the all employee of the
organization. Though the money, infrastructure and finally the manpower to be utilized in the
whole process keeping into this, the top management has to take decision in this regard. The
training department, management and HR Department should work in union. It is a collective
phenomenon, which is mostly initiatives, motives of the top management. If entire process of
executive development is mostly determined by its efficacy and its effectiveness. Apart from
this the process of executive development can be defined in several other ways with slight
difference. The process of executive development is as follows:

 Analysis of Development Needs: First of all the present and future development
needs of the organization are ascertained. It is necessary to determine how many and
what type of executives are required to meet the present and future needs of the
enterprise.
 Appraisal of the Present Managerial Talent: A qualitative assessment of the
existing executives is made to determine the type of executive talent available within
the organization. 3. Planning Individual Development Programmes: Each one of us

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 has a unique set of physical, intellectual and emotional characteristics. Therefore,
development plan should be tailor-made for each individual.
 Establishing Training and Development Programme: The HR department
prepares comprehensive and well-conceived programmes.
 Evaluating Developing Programs: Considerable money, time and efforts are spent
on executive development programmes. It is therefore natural to find out to what
extent the programme’s objective has been achieved. Evaluation of Executive
Development In the competition scenario, where the focus is on efficiency and
profitability and the return on investment (ROI) on all the activities of the
organization, executive development cannot be an exception to the phenomenon. The
evaluation of the process assumes importance from the following perspectives:
 Improving the quality of the training and development process.
 Improving the efficiency and competency of the trainers.
 Making improvements in the system to make it more responsive and realistic.
 Aligning the training activities to the organizational objectives.
 Building the cost implications of the training into the organizational budget.
 Evaluating the ROI on account of training and development to justify further
investments.
 Changing the perception of the management on training as expenditure to more as an
investment for the future growth of the organization. The levels of evaluation include
the reaction level, immediate level, intermediate level, and ultimate level. For the
purpose of evaluation, it is essential to collect the data for which there should be
appropriate measures for data collection, both during the course of the training
programme and after the training programme. Some of the methods being used by
experts are self-complete questionnaires, interviews, observations, and desk research.
The desk research involves low cost and less amount of time.

METHODS OF EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

Development programs help in acquiring and developing managerial skill and knowledge. A
Varity of methods of management development have come into prominence these days.
Different types of techniques are used to acquire and develop various types of managerial
skill and knowledge as given in the table below:

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Managerial Training / Management development: The following diagram shows the stages
involved in the managerial training.

COMPETENCY METHOD
DEVELOPMENT AREA
 Decision-making skill Business Case study In basket
games
 Interpersonal skill Sensitivity Role plying
Training
 Job Knowledge Coaching Understudy On-the-Job
experiences
 Organizational Multiple Job Rotation
Knowledge Manageme
nt
 General Knowledge Special Specific Reading Special
Meeting course
 Specific Individual Committee Special Projects
Needs Assignment
s
Stages of Managerial Training In all above stages, we should satisfy the following essential
aspects in order to make the programmes a success:

1. Policy decisions 2. Acceptance 3. Appreciation 4. Support 5. Conductive atmosphere 6.

Strong urge for learning 7. Participation 8. Identification of strength and weakness 9.
Involvement 10. Self-development a number of executive development methods are
available. Generally these methods are used in combination of two or more. The various
techniques of executive development may be classified into two broad categories:

 Organizational Planning
 Program Targeting
 Discovering the key position
 Appraisal
 Replacement skill abilities
 Individual development
 Evaluation
1. ON THE JOB TECHNIQUES: It is delivered to employees while they perform their
regular jobs. In this way, they do not lose time while they are learning. After a plan is
developed for what should be taught, employees should be informed of the details. A
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 time-table should be established with periodic evaluations to inform employees about
their progress. On-the-job techniques include orientations, job instruction training,
apprenticeships, internships and assistantships, job rotation and coaching. It consists
of:
Coaching- Coaching is a one-to-one relationship between trainees and supervisors
which offers workers continued guidance and feedback on how well they are handling
their tasks. The coach assigns the task, monitors the trainee behaviour, and provides
reinforcement and feedback. Coaching is commonly used for all kinds of trainees,
from unskilled to managerial position. This method is critically depends on the quality
of the coach.
Under Study- An understudy may be assistant to someone or special assistant to
some supervisory or executive positions. He learns by experience, observation,
guidance and coaching.
Position Rotation-This involves the movement of the trainee from one job to another.
This helps him to have a general understanding of how the organization functions.
Apart from releasing boredom, Job rotation allows workers to build rapport with a
wide range of individuals within the organization, facilitating future cooperation
among various departments. Such cross-trained personnel offer a great deal of
flexibility for organizations when transfers, promotions or replacement become
inevitable.
Multiple Management- It provides knowledge about the organization to the junior
and middle managerial personnel. Here the members are exposed to all types of the
decision taken at higher level.

2. OFF-THE-JOB TECHNIQUE:

 Lectures- It is a traditional and direct method of instruction. The instructor organizes

the material and gives it to a group of trainees in the form of a talk. To be effective,
the lecture must motivate and create interest among the trainees. An advantage of this
method is that it is direct and can be used for a large group of trainees. The major
limitation of this method is that it does not provide for the transfer of training
effectively.
 Case Studies- It presents the trainees with a written description of a business or
organizational problem. The object of the case method is to teach the trainees how to
analyse information, generate alternative decisions, and evaluate the alternatives.

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 Cases can be analysed by individuals or small groups. Feedback and reinforcement
are provided through oral discussion or written comments from the instructor.

 Group Discussions- This method is a direct discussion on a specific topic conducted

with a relatively small group of trainees. This method is useful for teaching and
exploring difficult conceptual materials, and for changing attitudes and opinions. It
provides opportunity for feedback, reinforcement practice, motivation, and transfer,
largely due to the active interchange of ideas between the participants.
 Role Playing- In most of role-playing assignments, each of the student takes the role
of a person affected by an issues on human life and effect the human activities all
around us from the perspective of that person.
 Management Games- Verities of business and management games have been
devised and are being used with the varying degree of success in the developing
programmes. A management game is classroom exercise in which a number of team
of trainees competes against each other to achieve certain objectives.

SENSITIVITY TRAINING

It has been successfully employed by behavioural scientists over the past thirty years.
Sensitivity to the circumstances and feeling of others is the cornerstone of human
relationships. It is important to note that sensitivity is not just an emotion; it must express
itself in actions as well, especially when people we know are experiencing pain and
difficulties.