A Manager’s Guide to Self-Development

This book is an indispensable guide to building your management and leadership skills and abilities. It includes activities which can be undertaken alone, in a group or as part of a programme.

In its seventh edition, the book is a carefully designed self-development programme aimed at helping leaders improve their performance, advance their careers and achieve their full potential. You are invited to complete a diagnostic career and life-planning activity first, before making a self-diagnosis of learning goals and priorities. Choose from 56 self-development activities covering a range of skills and competencies, including change management, coaching, collaborative working and emotional resilience. New activities include environmental scanning, using artificial intelligence, mindfulness and working effectively with groups. This new, updated edition reflects key changes in management and leadership practices over the last decade and is aligned to relevant professional frameworks.

This book encourages people to believe in themselves and their abilities. It aims to empower you to reflect on your experiences of tackling challenges in the workplace and shows you how to move to the next level in your career, to become the best leader and manager that you can be.

Mike Pedler is Emeritus Professor at Henley Business School, University of Reading. He is the founding editor of the Journal: Action Learning: Research and Practice and has written and co-authored many papers and books on management and leadership development and organisational learning.

Tom Boydell was Principal Lecturer for 20 years at Sheffield City Polytechnic/Hallam University, where he specialised in action learning and self-development. Since then he has run two consultancy organisations, was for some years Academic Dean at the Euro-Arab Management School, Granada and Cairo and is now a Senior Associate with the Centre for Action Learning. He has authored/co-authored some 30 books on learning and development of and within organisations.

John Burgoyne was a co-author of the original and earlier editions of A Manager’s Guide to Self Development, and is now sadly deceased. He was a leading thinker and researcher in the field of management learning and Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University Management School.

Joan Keevil is Director of Designs on Learning Ltd and has previously been a Learning Consultant with BBC Education and Training. Joan has a wide experience in learning design in general and in e-learning consulting in particular. This includes developing a range of compliance eLearning for global clients including CHANEL, Air Liquide, Shell, Coca Cola, Glencore on issues such as Codes of Conduct, Anti-bribery, Competition Law, GDPR, Information Security and Fraud.

Kevin Roe is Associate Professor at the Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University. His research is focussed on understanding how successful teams coordinate their activities. He teaches, coaches and assesses senior leaders across a range of different qualifications.

Jean-Anne Stewart has over 20 years’ experience of research and teaching at Henley Business School where she is Programme Director for the innovative MA Leadership programme and previously Programme Director for corporate global MBA programmes for international clients, such as Deloitte and IBM. Since 2021, Jean-Anne has led the design and development of the SLA Leadership apprenticeship programme, as well as designing and delivering undergraduate leadership modules and international study yours for MBA and Masters students.