Personal Strategic Leadership Plan Background of the

Personal Strategic Leadership Plan Background of the Situation Requiring Change In my current organization, there is a need to improve the communication efficiency of many employees. We have encountered problems because of poor communication, especially in written form. Some of our personnel perform their other job functions well but when it comes to written communication, they lack professionalism and precision. On several occasions, clients have expressed frustration because they were unable to understand the meaning of emails sent to them in the ordinary course of business.

For example, one client complained and asked to be re-assigned to different account managers because he believed that the export manager who had been handling his account was inexperienced. Meanwhile, she has more than a decade of experience doing her job and she is one of our new employee trainers. Our internal audit of her communications with clients revealed that the problem is strictly one of poor communication. She routinely uses unprofessional language that gives the impression that she is incompetent or inexperienced.

Another similar situation occurred with other employees in connection with their use of inappropriate slang, colloquialisms, abbreviations, and even emoticons in professional emails. Therefore, this leadership plan is intended to address the communication skills and styles of our employees so that their communications do not undermine their professionalism in other aspects of their positional responsibilities. The plan will consist of specific goals, methods for achieving those goals, steps for their effective implementation, and a metric for evaluation and determination of their success.

Strategic Objectives The principal objectives of this strategic plan are to evaluate the current communication skills of all employees who deal with external clients. That evaluation will include telephone skills and written communication skills, such as in emails. After that initial assessment phase, each employee will be assigned to a supervisor or manager who will be responsible for providing the necessary assistance on an ongoing basis.

That assistance will take the form of a Communications Improvement Plan (CIP) designed by the supervisor or manager in conjunction with input from the Human Resources Department. The plans will be tailored to the specific needs of each employee but it is anticipated that the main emphasis will be on written communications skills in connection with emails.

The goal of this plan is to help every employee with an identified communications skills deficiency make the necessary improvements to bring his or her communications skills up to the same level as operational skills. Currently, all of our employees in the organization are performing satisfactorily in that regard. However, as in the case of the individual whose situation was previously detailed, the quality of their work and their value to the organization are being compromised by their relative inability to communicate efficiently and professionally with external clients.

Methodology Each supervisor or manager in charge of the CIP for employees will develop a unique plan together with input from HR to enable every employee to make the necessary improvements identified by the initial communications skills audit. The CIP will contain specific goals for each employee, such as vocabulary changes, improved grammar, sentence structure, and syntax. Other foreseeable element of the CIPs will include the elimination of inappropriate language, vocabulary, abbreviations, and other computer communications habits (such as the use of emoticons) in professional communications.

More particularly, supervisors and managers assigned to deliver the CIP training will review the previous communications of their assignees. They will then identify the various elements where improvement is necessary. Together with input from HR, the supervisors and managers will then develop specific tasks and targeted lessons on a case-by-case basis. That process will also include instruction delivered from HR personnel to the supervisors and managers who will be responsible for this training.

Specifically, they will be advised of the need for confidentiality and of the need to communicate criticisms in a manner that is sensitive to the needs and the emotions of their assignees. The training will emphasize positive encouragement such as in connection with the high quality of employees' work in other respects. The plan calls for supervisors and managers to review the previous communications efforts of their assignees and then to go over problem areas identified with the help of HR personnel.

It is anticipated that the employees will be advised of the specific problems encountered in their communications and trained to recognize how to better use language in the professional environment. Exercises will be conducted in which the supervisors and managers play the role of external clients communicating with the employees. The employees will respond to their supervisors and managers as though they were external clients. Each series of exchanges will be reviewed by the supervisors and managers and a report will be issued to HR on a monthly basis.

It is anticipated that the training program will last six months because it will be conducted primarily during down time. Organizational Integration and Accountability During that time, employees directed to participate in a CIP will not be communicating directly with external clients. They will be instructed to draft their proposed communications but to direct them to their supervisors and managers. The communications will first be approved and authorized for transmission and any continuing mistakes will be used for training purposes. Each CIP will outline precise goals tailored to each employee.

Those goals will be checked off by the supervisor or manager as they are reached. It is expected that every goal will be achieved within the six-month time period envisioned for this plan if not much earlier. Should any area of concern arise such as the apparent difficulty in achieving any CIP goals,.