The sixth core competency, the ability to manage orthobiosis, is associated with rest.
Orthobiosis
The term "orthobiosis" comes from the Greek words orthos - straight and bios - life and means a reasonable healthy lifestyle. The profession of a manager currently carries a high risk to health, since the professional workload is constantly growing, the number of tasks increases, constant stress, overwork and lack of sleep lead to overwork.
Orthobiosis
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At the end of the 20th century, the Japanese even came singapore business email list up with the term "Karoshi syndrome", which means death at work from overwork. And recently, the concept of "downshifting" has emerged, meaning a transition from a job with a good salary, but associated with burnout and stress, to a calmer place, but with a lower income. That is, it is a choice between a good salary and stress or peace of mind and less money. A downshifter is a person who has reached "the end of his rope". Life does not bring joy to him, chronic diseases that cannot be cured worsen, depression and nervous breakdowns begin.
It should be said that downshifting in an organization does not occur suddenly, but is a consequence of management settings. For example, at one training on overtime, it was said that constant overtime work by employees is ineffective, since people waste resources, do not have time to recover, and productivity falls.
It was suggested to organize working hours so that employees would go home on time and have a full rest. But one of the top managers suggested to optimize the work not by reducing the time of its completion, but by significantly increasing the wages with the same significant increase in working hours. It is clear that there is no talk of any managerial orthobiosis here.
Orthobiosis
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But it should be noted that many organizations are now making positive progress in this regard. The powers and competencies of managers allow them to adopt corporate standards that specify overtime hours: managers may stay late for no more than one hour, and ordinary workers for no more than 30 minutes.
Some companies even introduce breaks for gymnastics. In Soviet times, this was very common, but now it is more the exception than the rule.
As has already been said, everything at the enterprise depends on the top manager, so he must develop the ability not only to properly and fully rest himself, but also to introduce a system of competent rest into the corporate culture, so that the saying about exhausted horses that are shot does not become relevant in the company.
The seventh key competency of a project manager is his ability to find new, non-standard solutions. This trait may not always be innate, and it can be developed. Various technologies for finding non-trivial solutions have been developed.
For example, TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) or TRTL (theory of creative personality development). Few people in management circles know about these technologies, but they are well known in the community of technical specialists. The ability to find new solutions is closely related to learning ability and the ability to retrain. American specialists in the 90s of the twentieth century recognized the ability to retrain as the most important competence of every modern person.
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4 methods of assessing managerial competencies
It is necessary to determine why you need an assessment of your competencies. Maybe you want to increase the profitability of your business, or maybe you need to build interaction with the team so that it does not fall apart. It is impossible to get everything at once, so you need to focus on what is most important to you in order to create a plan for working on yourself and gradually achieve your goals without stopping halfway.
4 methods of assessing managerial competencies
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Once the goal has been defined, you can begin work. There are four main methods for assessing the level of a manager’s competence:
Soft skills testing
After taking the tests, you will be able to see yourself from different angles: how developed are your leadership qualities, what is your motivation, what are your strengths. Gallup Strengthsfinder and DISC tests have a high rating in international companies. In 2023, they cost $59.99 and from $81, respectively.
Testing will show you which skills need to be developed and which are well developed. After testing, you will receive brief recommendations on how to proceed and which competencies need to be improved.
The DISC test was created by psychologist William Marston. To test skills, he proposed a coordinate system containing four motivational factors: dominance, stability, influence, and adaptability.
Thus, the test results schematically look like this: D – dominance, I – influence, S – stability, C – compliance, adaptability, compliance with requirements.
Working with a career guidance specialist
Such a specialist usually helps to decide on a profession or change it. In our situation, a career counselor is needed to decipher the results of Gallup Strengthsfinder and DISC testing and formulate conclusions regarding the competencies of the head of a department or enterprise, which are difficult to come to independently.
Let's look at an example: a man opened a furniture assembly business. A year later, he realized that he was not developing as a manager and did not know how to solve this issue. As a result, interest in the business dropped. In this case, he needs to turn to a career guidance specialist so that he could analyze his strengths and weaknesses and advise how to develop and apply skills.
Working with a career guidance specialist
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You don't have to take the tests yourself, but rather use the services of a specialist who is certified in these tests, then you won't have to decipher the test results yourself. Usually, the cost of testing is already included in the cost of the career guidance speci