Reflections: Personal development for managers – getting the process right

The success of contemporary structures relies on the personal competence of managers. This can imply a significant change in the attitudes and behaviour of individual managers. Personal development, a process that aims to help individuals learn about and change their style and approach, has consequently become an important feature of management development for many organisations. But personal development does not always achieve lasting and significant change. Development with ambitious objectives demands a particular process incorporating four essential prerequisites: a focus on the development of meta‐abilities; a period of discomfort, where inappropriate behaviours can be examined and “unlearned”; a focused “transition” which moves the individual towards the most pertinent of objectives; an understanding of how these abilities are used in the context of an organisational agenda. A process used on programmes at a leading European business school based on these components is described.