The role of the director in mastering the new. The modern director - who is he? Which includes the role of a diplomat

The national educational initiative “Our New School” says that the role of the director in the new school will change: the degree of freedom and level of responsibility should increase. Why is this important and what needs to be improved in the system of continuing education of directors, Konstantin Ushakov, editor-in-chief of the school principal magazine, told RIA Novosti.

Konstantin Mikhailovich, today directors are increasingly perceived as managers and, to a lesser extent, as educators. What tasks should the headmaster solve?

The main task of the head of any organization, including the director of the school, is the integration and training of staff. A good director should hire the best, if possible, and train those who are already working.

Today they talk a lot about competences, over-subject skills of students, but they are not brought up within the same subject, this is the result of group efforts, and a group needs to be created. School groups are mostly divided, each teacher deals only with his subject. And if someone can solve the problems posed - this is the director.

- What prevents directors from engaging in their teams?

The director simply has no strength left for this. He is too busy with other work: meetings once or twice a week, countless letters that must be answered daily to higher authorities, checking.

The powers of the director under the law are enormous, but there are no opportunities for their implementation. The pendulum should swing in the other direction - increasing real powers and greater independence of the first person of the school. The director should work more with the team. But he needs more time for this.

- And should the director teach?

I’m not sure that in this regard the director should be a model. This is simply not possible if you have a small teaching load and replace half the hours from it - the directors now and then require different meetings. It is difficult to maintain a high level of professionalism in such conditions.

The ability to teach adults is a completely different technique, and this seems to me more important. This is the first skill and the first ability to select future directors.

“They do not teach“ directors ”anywhere, they can only improve their qualifications in courses. Is this system effective?

We, it seems to me, have a big gap between the continuing education system and the school. One can say arbitrarily beautiful things that students will like, but the result of the course teacher should not be a high level of satisfaction of the students, but what will happen to them when they return to school. Courses are “not responsible” for their final result.

- And how can you track the results - the director learned the knowledge or not?

There should be an interim school support service that would assist her, especially at the organizational level - advising.

We do not have technologies for diagnosing organizational problems. Organizations, like people, are sick, and diseases need to be diagnosed. But this is almost impossible to do from the inside, and only a specialist from the outside can say what is wrong with the school and what can be improved in its work.

For example, the disease of collective disintegration is when each teacher is locked in the walls of his office and is occupied only with his subject. This problem can be noticed only by an “external” person. But there are no tools for this kind of diagnosis, nor organizational consultants. They are few in business.

Methodologists of regional institutes of advanced training can provide assistance in a particular subject, but they do not solve organizational problems.

Of course, this work is expensive, requiring special qualifications. Without federal, regional, municipal support, these structures will not exist - schools are not able to pay specialists for this kind of consulting assistance.

The initiative “Our New School” states that directors should be able to study in neighboring regions. Are such internships useful?

Internships are a big step compared to what it was before, when it seemed that the more teachers and directors listen to lectures, the better. But the effect is not noticeable, and understanding comes that lectures are not the most effective way to work with teachers. Professionals learn best from professionals.

But to build a good internship is technologically not so easy - and this is the next stage of work. All over the world, where successes have been achieved in the field of education, it is believed that the most effective advanced training is on the spot, namely at school. And traveling somewhere is a holiday that is good only in rare cases.

- Is it worth it to invite an outside manager to the post?

Management techniques, regardless of their field, are basically the same. Yes, in the 90s, outsiders became directors, but there are few such examples. Still, it’s difficult to manage the organization without understanding its context, the features of construction. When a person goes through all the steps from below (from teacher to head teacher and director), he understands the essence of what is happening more precisely and deeper.

The material was prepared by Elena Kuznetsova (SU-HSE), specially for RIA Novosti

The principal is a key figure in the school. And success at school depends on who is leading it. Today, when school principals work in a market economy, they are required to make many important managerial decisions every day - from finding ways to make money to finding ways to improve the quality of education. The question arises - who is he, the effective leader of the modern school?

Modern education requirements are changing the position of the school principal as a manager. Now we need knowledge on financial management and school economics. For this it is necessary to have strategic thinking, but also to know the educational process well.

A good director will certainly achieve independent accounting and full regulatory funding for his educational institution. He will certainly develop a wage system, but with his individual school characteristics. He will certainly create or initiate the emergence of a certain public governing body (for example, a good parent committee), find sponsors.

For the development of innovative activity in the school, a competent, skillful mastery of the director with new technologies is necessary. Only when the director understands from his own experience how important and convenient it is to use modern technologies in his work, then this will become an indispensable condition for a change in attitude in the development of these technologies by the team.

An effective leader in a modern school must keep up with the times: set goals that are important today and that will become even more important tomorrow, and, most importantly, be able to find ways to solve them.

The modern director knows how to work with both the child and parents and the teaching staff. To do this, he must be a teacher and organizer, possess legal and economic knowledge. He must take care of the role of the teacher in his team, contribute to the development of teachers, create the conditions for the disclosure of their creative abilities. To create a comfortable learning environment at school, he needs knowledge of pedagogy, psychology, and various techniques. Teaching work, despite the large workload, is necessary, because It helps strengthen relationships with educators and students.

The school principal must have certain personal qualities that ensure the success of managerial activities. This is tolerance, tact, good breeding, inner harmony, optimism.

One of the mandatory personality traits of a leader is self-confidence. The head knows everything, knows how, maybe! And, if he doesn’t know, he will find out, find a way out, and he can. Such a director will certainly become an authority for his subordinates.

Mandatory for the leader is his emotional

balance and stress resistance. The leader must control his emotions regardless of mood and always be positive.

The modern director must take care of the prestige of the school. These are various district, regional competitions, conferences, seminars, master classes, and relations with society. If possible, enable the school to be an experimental site in certain areas, arrange international student exchanges. On how far the school depends on its future.

An important role is played by the psychological climate in the school. The principal monitors teacher-student interpersonal relationships. Students should consider the school a “second home," and teachers should be their mentor friends. The supervisor should arrange a special relaxation room for teachers and for children.

Of course, being a modern director is not easy. Only a strong, integral, creative, talented, honest, intelligent person can occupy such a position.

The school principal is a key figure in the field of education, which determines the success of the ongoing changes in Russian education. So what should be the director of a modern Russian school: an experienced teacher or an effective manager?

As many experts in the field of pedagogical management believe, the director of a modern school is an effective leader with such qualities as:

competence;
sociability;
attentive attitude to subordinates;
courage in decision making;
ability to creatively solve problems.

An effective school principal is:

a creative person who is able to overcome stereotypes and find unconventional ways to solve the problems facing the school, create and use innovative management technologies;
a person who constantly works on himself, on his professional and personal qualities;
a strategist who sees the prospect of developing his school for several years to come;
a personality inspiring by its example the teaching staff.

Professor Alma Harris, director of the Leadership Research Center at the University of London's Institute of Education, believes that the skills and competencies that a modern school principal should have are many, but most importantly, the ability to form a team of educators. It is the teacher who works with the student directly, and therefore the director must believe in the teacher, trust his opinion and assume that he can better understand some issues.

In recent years, significant changes have taken place in the Russian school. Thus, the law “On Education in the Russian Federation” granted educational organizations autonomy, which means independence in the implementation of educational, scientific, administrative, financial and economic activities, the development and adoption of local regulations, as well as in determining the content of education, choosing a teaching and methodological support, educational technologies for educational programs implemented by them.

The principle of financial support for the school has changed - now money follows the student (per capita financing) in accordance with the state (municipal) task. Everything that is implemented beyond this task is paid, and income from paid educational services of the school is spent at its discretion.

As a result of the restructuring and optimization, schools emerged with a contingent of more than 1000 students, schools - complexes, which are much more difficult to manage.

The educational process is saturated with modern educational, technological equipment, teaching aids and educational complexes.

Innovative educational technologies are being introduced into the educational process, not at the level of replacing individual parts, but at the level of conceptual changes that require the training of qualified teachers of a new formation.

Schoolchildren of the XXI century are significantly different in development from schoolchildren of the twentieth century.

Under these conditions, the functions and role of the school principal change significantly. On the one hand, the school director is an effective manager, because today the school director has to perform a lot of managerial functions - managing the budget, interacting with the public, interacting with superiors, etc. Organization management skills are becoming more and more important every day, and there is no time for the director to engage in pedagogy.

Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management, based on many years of observation, came to the paradoxical conclusion: “strong professionals”, excellent specialists in their field, rarely become good leaders. This is due to the fact that management is a completely special type of professional activity, the result of which is directly related to the personal effectiveness of a person.

On the other hand, in the framework of great freedom - financial and substantive - the director of a modern school, in addition to management theory, must also understand modern educational paradigms, priorities, and promising educational technologies.

So, the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Education Viktor Bolotov believes that it does not matter what kind of education the director of the school has, but he should have pedagogical experience: “Any director of the school should“ stand by the machine ”, have a teaching experience at the blackboard in the classroom. Otherwise, he will not be able to be an effective school principal. Maybe he can manage the school’s budget well, but he won’t be the headmaster, in the real sense of the word. ”

Professor Alma Harris, director of the Leadership Research Center of the Institute of Education at the University of London, has a similar view: “Modern directors need to be able to manage the school efficiently, rationally and wisely. But a school that is experiencing serious difficulties, just a good manager is not enough. She needs a director who, by her own example, can show what a good lesson is, because problem schools, as a rule, have few good teachers, and teachers simply have nowhere to get examples of good teaching practice. The director must be able to do everything himself in this situation. ”

In practice, when the director has a lot of managerial and other tasks, it is difficult to require that he be an effective manager and an effective innovator in terms of pedotechnology. According to some researchers, today in Russia there are four main types of school principals:

"Authoritarian business executive";
“Democratic business executive”;
"Authoritarian leader";
"Democratic leader."

At the same time, two of them are most often encountered: the "authoritarian business executive" and the "authoritarian leader", the most popular of which is the "authoritarian business executive".

Unfortunately, such a combination, when the director is both a talented teacher and an effective manager, is possible only ideally. The author’s schools are close to him, where the director is the generator of innovations. According to the rector of HSE Ya.I. Kuzminova “the personal example and personal relationships that the director builds are key. A great manager who does not love people, a great manager who was not a teacher, cannot lead a school. ”

For the most part, effective leaders are not born, but become. You can gain knowledge and skills of effective management through special training. However, this can be achieved through self-education. In all cases, the appropriate motivation is needed: personal ambitions (I am no worse than others), the desire to make a career (the soldier who doesn’t want to become a general is bad), school patriotism (my school is better), the desire to earn (the better you work, the more you get).

There are plenty of methods and trainings on how to become an effective school principal - choose to your taste. For example, the methods of Peter Drucker, who believes that in order to become a successful leader, first of all, you need to learn how to manage yourself, because "the ability to manage is different for all people, but those who can manage themselves, their actions and decisions successfully manage others." Here are some of his tips:

- Personal effectiveness is not an innate quality. But you can learn it by developing and correctly using your strengths.

- All effective managers constantly monitor their activities in the field of time management.

- A leader who does not ask himself a question about his personal contribution to the result does not have the right to demand the same from his subordinates.

- Focusing mainly on weaknesses and shortcomings gives rise to some problems, while focusing on the strengths of subordinates, partners, senior management and their own makes the team work as productive as possible.

- If there is any main secret of efficiency, then this is concentration. The stronger and more successfully a person concentrates his time, efforts and resources, the more various tasks he will be able to solve.

An effective leader is a leader who makes effective decisions.

- The team is subject to the decision the more willingly, the better it will be explained to each individual employee.

An effective leader solves a problem only once. But it decides in such a way that in the end there appears a clear scenario that any person can follow, or a rule that everyone understands.
- Efficiency in work is not only the habit of doing the right and appropriate, but also a set of certain practical techniques. Following these techniques is another good habit that a manager must necessarily learn.

Director of the Russian school according to the results of the international study TALIS

Almost all the directors interviewed (198 directors from 14 regions took part in the survey) underwent management training, but only a third of them completed it before taking office. For comparison: in most other countries, they begin to prepare the personnel reserve in advance, Singapore and South Korea, which demonstrate high educational results of schoolchildren in international studies, almost three quarters of the directors undergo serious training before being appointed to the post.

Russian leaders, in comparison with foreign colleagues, are more focused on administrative work and spend less time working with teachers, parents and students - they simply do not have time for it.

Despite the fact that in comparison with other countries, Russia leads in the number of management teams and governing councils created in schools, directors are prone to authoritarian decision-making.

Reference.

“Effective manager” is a conditional concept denoting an ideal leader who knows the basic principles of management theory, knows how to effectively implement them in practice, and is characterized by high professional competence. An effective leader in modern society is one who knows how to set and solve problems correctly.

TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) is the first international study to analyze the learning environment, working conditions and assess the quality of the teaching staff. Russia has been participating in TALIS since 2013 in accordance with the State Program “Development of Education”. The research operator was the Institute of Education of the Higher School of Economics.

Who is he the director of a modern Russian school

Innovation manager - This is a leader who organizes innovative activities, timely development and development of innovations that ensure the stable development of the enterprise.

The main areas of responsibility of the innovation manager are: development of an enterprise development strategy; business organization (formation of an effective management structure and technology) and work with personnel.

Particular attention when working with personnel today is paid to stimulating their creative activity, developing abilities to solve complex and non-standard tasks, as well as to personnel motivation methods, which are understood as means of encouraging employees to innovate to achieve the goals of the enterprise. Motivation should cover all types of activities for the development and implementation of innovative ideas and projects.

Today, requirements are set for the innovative manager, which can be divided into two groups: I - common for all managers and II - special, due to the features of innovative activity as an object of management.

General requirements to the manager:

1) professional knowledge (on the profile of the enterprise, economics, management, marketing, finance, etc.);

2) the ability to lead people (the power of persuasion, the ability to achieve their own, willingness to cooperate, intuition, sociability);

3) the ability of strategic thinking (the ability to analyze and predict the situation, creative abilities);

4) the ability to achieve success (perseverance and endurance, independence of action, the ability to withstand stressful situations, ambition, initiative);

5) administrative skills (planning ability, decision-making ability, organizational skills).

THEORY AND PRACTICE

In one of the foreign magazines, the following list of qualities of a modern manager was proposed:

1. He is well informed about the situation related to the activities of the enterprise.

2. Strives to understand reality based on experience and talent.

3. Predicts undesirable developments, knows how to rally a team.

4. Makes decisions that will be right over the next five years.

5. Feels timely changes in the rules of the game and accordingly responds to them.

6. Finds a balance between the requirements of employees and the need for unpopular decisions.

7. Open to all new ideas one hundred percent.

8. Acknowledges his mistakes, does not prosecute for dissent.

At the same time, for the manager responsible for the innovation policy of the enterprise, a number of special qualities:

firstly, the ability to be creative in solving complex management problems, in particular, in developing an enterprise strategy;

secondly, intuition, flexibility and ability to respond quickly to changes in the external environment (market situation, political and economic situation). The highest manifestation of intuition is the ability not only to anticipate changes, but also to influence the situation to the benefit of your enterprise;

third, the ability to optimally organize the activities of subordinates, to create conditions for their work that practically do not require intervention from the manager;

fourthly, the ability to be a leader recognized by colleagues and subordinates (this property is especially necessary when an enterprise finds itself in a difficult situation).

The most important component of effective leadership is leadership. Translated from English, the word “leader” means: “head”, “commander”, “leader”, “leader”. Leadership - this is a special position in society (social system), which is characterized by the ability of the individual in a certain way to influence collective behavior, to direct and organize it.

THEORY AND PRACTICE

At Harvard Business School (USA), the following requirements for a leader are formulated:

Þ have a vision (people want to go after those who know where to go; they want to know why they are led there);

Þ trust your subordinates;

Þ be cool;

Þ do not be afraid to take risks;

Þ be an expert (everyone must be convinced: the leader knows at least as much as they themselves);

Þ stimulate the manifestation of different points of view;

Þ Find simple solutions to complex problems.

Distinguish between formal and informal leadership. Formal - connected with the appointment of a person to a leadership position, his position in society, organization. Informal leadership based on authority gained as a result of recognition by the collective of competence, high business, organizational and other qualities of the person that are important for the leader. A formal leader (for example, the director of a company) is far from always recognized in the team as informal. An innovative manager should be an informal leader.

During the competitive selection of innovative managers, many foreign companies use special tests for the correspondence of the qualities of an employee to their position. The candidate who combines leadership with high responsibility, a friendly attitude towards others, and efficiency and accuracy with the timeliness of decisions is given the highest rating. An exemplary test for compliance with the qualities required of an innovation manager is given in table. 1.

According to Western experts, the success or failure of an enterprise today almost 90% depends on the effectiveness of management. In connection with the transition of the Russian economy to the market, the role and importance of innovative management is becoming especially important for enterprises.

Recently I dug up old handouts in my papers for the management skills training that I taught in 1996 ... I don’t even know whether to admire or be horrified :) this anniversary. For 20 years I have been working with managers of various levels, but, as practice shows, the problems in their work remain the same. I’m not afraid of this word - “eternal” problems :).

One of these "eternal" management problems is adaptation of a manager to a new position. The nature of the personnel shift is not important: promotion or demotion, transfer to a new job site / to a new unit or organization / to a new large-scale project, etc. The important thing is that such movements are often not initiated by the employee (" I was offered, well, I agreed"), and do not always coincide with his career and labor expectations (" Actually, I would like to work in a position ... and it would be more interesting for me to study ..."). A career choice (" fork ") is proposed, where each alternative has its own pluses and minuses. This choice is not always simple (you have to sacrifice something), and from the point of view of psychology, it’s occupational stress, and sometimes even leads to a professional crisis.

The most severe stress occurs when the head “jumps” to another career level: he was an ordinary employee, but became the head of the lower level (team leader, department head, etc.); He was a specialist, and became a middle manager; He was the head of the division, and became a top manager, heading the whole enterprise or responsible for a separate line of business / company market. It is psychologically most difficult to “jump” from an ordinary employee (or specialist) into lower / middle level managers. Especially if you need to manage your colleagues with whom I spoke on an equal footing yesterday. And today you are no longer “your own”, but “superiors” :). It is necessary to change the entire previously established system of relations, to re-“put” oneself in the team already as a leader.

How to do it \u003d\u003d\u003d\u003e

Entry into a new leadership role can be called professional adaptation of the head. Recently I turned up a monograph A. Reana "Psychology of personality adaptation. Analysis. Theory. Practice" (M, Prime Euroznak, 2008; browse;)), in which there is a pretty good chapter specifically on managerial adaptation.

I will bring her brief summary(plus some of my comments, plus valuable utility at the end;)), I hope, useful to novice managers:

"...the term "adaptation"can be used in relation to a situation when an employee is appointed (either his own or accepted “from the outside”) to a managerial position. In this case, we can introduce the concept of “managerial adaptation” (“manager’s adaptation”), by which we mean the process and result of active balancing with a changing professional environment, which allows us to effectively achieve goals and based on a number of personality neoplasms. ”

I’ll translate it from a psychological language into a regular one :) If you want to be productive in a new position - study, develop, change yourself! "Personal neoplasms" are new knowledge, skills, habits, competencies, etc.

"The adaptation process is especially important for a specialist, first appointed to a managerial position. As our pilot studies showed, about 43% of the managers surveyed experienced difficulties at the very beginning of their managerial careers, another 18% described their situation at that time as very difficult. This was most often due to a lack of managerial skills and only secondarily due to a lack of specialized knowledge. "

I’ll add from myself ... I carried out a similar kind of questionnaire among senior executives. In fact, 100% of managers have difficulties at the beginning of their careers :). The only question is how they perceived these difficulties then, and how they recall it now. It depends on personal characteristics: there are optimists who "do not dramatize"; have a high self-esteem (and believe that "everything is normal, everything is under control"); and there is the property of human memory to selectively retain mostly good memories. As a rule, even if a person answers in the questionnaire that at the beginning of his career there were no difficulties at all, then during an in-depth interview with him, he recalls a lot of these very difficulties :)). He just relate and relate to them relatively easily.

Those who immediately recall the beginning of their managerial career as “very difficult” have either objective reasons (the company was in a deep crisis, and the beginning of their career happened as an anti-crisis manager), or their career began with some serious mistake, and this they remembered a life lesson for a long time.

"As recent studies by Australian scientists show, well-established engineers are not born leaders at all. This is primarily due to the fact that many engineers, being leaders of large organizations, mainly focused on achieving short-term benefits. As a result, the strategic objectives of survival and development turned out to be in the background, which inevitably led to difficulties with changes in the environment ".

Typical story :). It is very difficult for a person who is accustomed to be responsible for a specific limited area of \u200b\u200bwork to break away from micromanagement and switch himself to the mode of seeing the whole - strategic perception. That is why for new leaders (even if they are not top management) courses / trainings / coaching will be extremely useful on strategic management and systems thinking.

"According to Peter Fischer, a well-known management consultant, the newly appointed manager must successively decide the following seven tasks:

- actively meet the expectations of senior managers, colleagues and subordinates;

- establish and develop productive relationships with key figures in the organization;

- constructively analyze the current situation from the point of view of the structure of interactions and development prospects;

- develop a motivating range of immediate and long-term goals;

- establish a positive climate of transformations based on all the positive potential accumulated so far;

- effectively initiate these transformations with the involvement of all employees;

- Productively use symbols and rituals. "

Please note that there are not only tasks of managerial adaptation, but also tips on how to solve them;)

-communications, purposefully building relationships with all stakeholders;

-goal setting(moreover, a certain novelty of these goals is important, so that subordinates feel that "a new broom is sweeping in a new way" :));

OWN motivation system(it’s important to understand that any organization has certain motivational resources and mechanisms; but their effective application depends on the particular leader. It is extremely important for the novice leader to master the available motivational tools by demonstrating to his subordinates which carrots and carrots he can and will use: )))

"This is how I.P. Volkov describes the specifics of managerial adaptation in the most difficult, perhaps psychologically speaking, situation - the appointment for a lower leadership position for the first time:

Let's say you were appointed to the position of master for the first time. You do not have enough managerial experience in the production ...

First of all, you need to get to know the people with whom you have to work. Then it is necessary to study the state of production, the equipment of jobs, the organization of labor, the availability of technical documentation. You must also evaluate the level of labor and moral-political activity of workers, understand the relationship in the team. Begin acquaintance thoughtfully, slowly, talk individually, take your time with the meeting of workers. Meet the managers of all the services in the workshop.

Having orientated in general terms in the situation, it is necessary to outline an action plan for “entering” a new position. Such an “entry” is not a matter of one day or even one month. For some beginners, this process stretches for one and a half to two years. It is necessary to gain experience in order to feel confident in various situations. It is necessary to psychologically master the situation not only in one's own area, but also in the workshop, even in adjacent units. Then confidence will come in decisions and actions. "

* * *

“We conducted a survey of 231 subjects (managers at various levels of organizations and enterprises, managerial experience ranged from one to 16 years). They were asked the question in an open form:“ After my first appointment to a managerial position, I encountered such difficulties:. .. ". A detailed analysis of the answers showed that they can be divided into two fairly homogeneous groups.

The first group of answers of responding leaders is difficulties in target acquisition and goal formationwhen entering into new management activities. The most typical answers in this group were: “I didn’t know where to start work,” “I didn’t understand the tasks facing us”, “It was difficult, because there was complete unknown”, “It was difficult to orient ourselves and explain to people what we would do further ", etc.

The second group of answers is difficulties associated with interacting with subordinates. Here are the answers describing the difficulties in uniting, rallying everyone around a common cause, problems in relations with older subordinates, fear of being alone before starting a new business, etc. The most typical answers in this group: “It was difficult to establish business relations with some employees, since I myself used to be their subordinate ”,“ More experienced employees and those with a long work experience were critical of me ”,“ Faced with low production discipline, incompetence of a number of employees ”, etc."

"Based on the literature data and the results of our own research, we can approach the description of the main personality neoplasms of the leader-adaptant.

Firstly, a new leader (especially one who has acquired a leading position for the first time) needs to move to a different level of goals, which are becoming broader and qualitatively more complex. If earlier the scale of the tasks was low and they were rather narrowly specialized, now now the leader faces goals that are closer to the global goals of the organization.

So, the first important personal quality that a manager should develop after his nomination is the ability to identify, operationalize the global goals of the organization, turning them into unit goals and tasks for subordinates.

Secondly, after being appointed as a leader, it is required to develop anew or expand the totality of techniques and methods of interaction between the manager and subordinates.

The second significant personal neoplasm for the manager in the process of his adaptation to the new managerial activity is the expansion of his role repertoire, the adequate development and performance of roles, taking into account the characteristics of the new professional activity. "

Knowledge of the strategic (global) goals of the organization;

The priority of systemic and global goals over the private and momentary goals of the unit;

The ability to formulate the goals of the unit, taking into account the global goals of the organization;

The ability to decompose goals to the level of personal tasks.

Everything seems to be true, but three important points are missed. Goal Setting - communication process, which is highly dependent on the corporate culture of the company. For example, in some companies a list of global goals hangs on each wall, while in others it’s a mystery with seven seals. In some companies, top management is open to discuss the consistency of the unit’s goals with organizational ones, while in others, the policy is “you yourself are there somehow” (but if you do it “wrong” yourself, they will punish you!). And many novice executives “don’t know what to do” precisely because they find it difficult to fit into “communication on goals.”

And the second point: goal setting is very closely related to planning and execution. It is not enough to "slice" tasks to subordinates. It is necessary to plan these tasks; bring plans to subordinates; initiate the implementation of the plan; coordinate and help (as necessary); monitor the implementation of tasks / plan. In my consulting experience, the words of new managers “I don’t know what to do” are not really a weakness in understanding goals and setting goals, but other links in the chain - planning, coordination, control, etc.

And the third: it’s impossible to organize other people unless you are organized! Novice leaders often do not understand that the higher their managerial level, the more their personal self-organization affects the organization as a whole. If the manager does not set any goals / tasks for himself, doesn’t plan his working day, does not even have the “basics” of time management, if he does not have his own self-organization system, then what kind of goal-setting and goal-achievement can be discussed ?!

And another opinion: unlike A. Rean, I would not reduce the second "neoplasm" to expand role potential. Of course, a good leader should be guided by the role structure of the group, as well as be able to recognize and model their own role (s) in the work collective. But in fact, most of the "problems of understanding" with employees do not require any special role flexibility or role changes. For this enough individual communication skills or abilities. For example, such a skill may be the ability of a leader to communicate with difficult people, discharge conflict situations, reduce stress levels, etc. Separate psychological trainings are devoted to the “pumping” of such separate communicative skills, an overview of which I gave in this post: Psychological trainings for the leader - what to choose?).

Can describe four stages of manager adaptation process(they are presented as pairs of opposites: on the left is the result of a successful completion of the adaptation stage, on the right is the result in the case of unsuccessful adaptation).

1)Goal Identification - Lack of Vision. The first thing the manager’s adaptation process begins with is a clear understanding of the organization’s global goals, mission and philosophy. These long-term benchmarks should combine efforts and underlie the work of all departments of the organization. Based on this, the manager should clearly understand the goals facing the unit that he was assigned to lead, as well as the goals of other main units of the organization, and especially those with which he has to interact directly. This stage of manager’s adaptation is mainly based on the operationalization of global goals.

2)Distribution and Organization - Remote Management. At the second stage of the adaptation process, the problematic task is to define tasks for subordinates (based on global goals), as well as to organize their joint work. Along with the presence of special knowledge, this requires the implementation of the basic management functions, establishing a network of interpersonal contacts, organizing information flows and making decisions.

In the implementation of these tasks, planning of both joint work and the activities of other departments (employees) is of great importance.

3)The solution to the new problem - translation of directions. At the third stage, the manager, who understood the goals of the organization and the unit, who managed to organize subordinates to fulfill the already outlined plans, now needs to direct joint efforts to solve a relatively new problem - for example, the introduction of a new method of organizing production.

The successful solution of such a task will allow the manager, on the one hand, to recognize his subordinates in somewhat unusual conditions, and on the other hand, to show others and himself that he is the real organizer. This gives the necessary confidence in themselves, in their subordinates and in the common cause. Successful completion of the third stage implies that the manager will delve deeply enough into all the subtleties of the new task, "accompanying" the course of its solution from beginning to end. At the same time, he will be required to update the whole complex of his managerial roles, but references to the organization’s global goals and their “decomposition” for subordinates are gradually fading into the background.

When a manager cannot offer something relatively new, representing only a transfer and distribution element in the hierarchy of management, great difficulties arise for authority among subordinates. The whole picture of interpersonal interaction is being violated and significantly impoverished, autonomously functional subgroups are being formed, even the emergence of personally significant problems does not contribute to the convergence of the points of view of the minority and majority.

4)Initial Delegation Online. The main problem of the final - fourth - stage of the manager’s adaptation process is the formation of the skill of task distribution and delegation of authority. For this, it is necessary to determine from the results of the joint work of several (or at least one) subordinates, on whom it would be possible to entrust the independent implementation of the integral part of the work. Having gained the first experience of assigning part of his duties to competent and executive subordinates, the manager gets the opportunity to better coordinate the work of the unit and pay more attention to promising goals. Self-analysis of the achieved, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of your management style with the aim of improving it can be of great benefit. In these conditions, the use of roles and the specification of global tasks for each subordinate are somewhat reduced in volume.

When a manager cannot determine the circle of subordinates capable of working quite autonomously, this leads to the need for constant total control, which, in turn, causes inevitable nervousness, rush, and the impossibility of long-term planning.

Successful completion of all four stages leads, in our opinion, to a fairly complete adaptation, that is, to the development of skills for interacting with management and subordinates to achieve the goals of the unit and organization.

I’ll add on my own that I generally agree with the highlighted stages of adaptation. But the problem is that, for example, a situation can easily arise when a new leader is appointed to a newly created division / to a completely new line of work or project. That is, he immediately gets to the third (in A. Rean's model) stage of adaptation, and he has to “give birth” to new tasks at his own risk and peril. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to tie them to a strategy (stage 1) and established business processes (stage 2).

But I agree that even if a completely new task arises for a novice leader, it still makes sense to take two steps back, and first decide on strategic priorities; then build a certain system of work / communications; and only then do innovations.

Further A. Rean offers a holistic two-dimensional model of managerial adaptation. At the initial (1 and 2) stage of adaptation, it is important to determine the operationalization of global goals, and at subsequent stages (3 and 4), communication skills and skills become more priority (Rean calls this “role expression”). The two-dimensional model looks like this:

"As follows from the scheme, at the first stage of adaptation, the leading role is played by the skills of operationalizing global goals, at the second stage both personality neoplasms are already involved (role behavior is added), then the fulfillment of roles for solving a new problem comes to the forefront and, finally, at the last stage these two qualities are less involved, which means the completion of adaptation. "

Durationpassing the four stages of adaptation may be different. If everything works out well, then you can turn from a novice leader into a seasoned manager :)) in about one year. If at some stages of adaptation difficulties arise, then the process can stretch for 2-3 years.

According to A. Rean adaptation to a leadership position may be unsuccessful. But this does not mean that the leader is unsuitable, or that the career has finally stalled. The best solution is to reduce the job level or return to the previous (or similar) position, but at a higher professional level (i.e. with more functionality, responsibility, authority, remuneration, etc.).

And in conclusion, as I promised, the most interesting! ;) Rean believes that success or failure of the manager’s adaptation to a new position can be predicted. And for this purpose, he developed the POMA test questionnaire - the Predictive Questionnaire for Managerial Adaptation ( ) There are only 32 questions, you can answer in 5-10 minutes.

If you get 23 points or less - welcome to my coaching! - write to [email protected] , we will agree;)

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