Management development planning (MDP) should be an ongoing program set up in any organisation. It involves experts training and mentoring people to transfer to them certain areas of knowledge or skills to improve their current work competences.

Development is a fairly broad and multi-faceted set of activities of which training could only be one aspect. It basically involves taking one or several individuals from one level of skill to acquaint them with the tasks and roles they need for a new role.

These are some of the typical reasons for employee training and development. A manager’s performance appraisal might indicate that improvement was necessary. A manager may be placed into a development program as part of an overall professional development strategy.

Management development planning could take place as part of succession planning to help an employee be eligible for a planned change in role in the organisation. The MDP could also be a pilot or the test of a new performance management system. Or there could be training and development around a specific topic.

One of the topics covered would invariably deal with communications. The increasing diversity of the workforce in the modern work environment would require a variety of language skills.

This is particularly essential in areas where a particular group of people have settled. In the south of the USA for instance Spanish has become a must speak language and would be important for a manager to have skills in.

A further specific training focus would be computer skills. This is not only of importance for managers to acquire such basic skills as using office applications and e-mail software. But many business functions have been computerised and managers might need to learn computer skills to work enterprise application software.

A particularly neglected field of management training seems to be customer service. Regrettably this function is often outsourced to stand alone call centers which creates a gap between the actual company and the customer service it delivers. With the global competition hotting up and the recession making business more difficult this might be an area of manager development which companies may need to look at more seriously.

Diversity training is another new area where managers need to participate in development. This usually includes explanation about how people have different perspectives and views, and includes techniques to value diversity.

A most neglected knowledge in managers seems to be in the field of ethics. It seems that people do not know what ethics are about and what ethical behaviour is. However, in mitigation one needs to remember that diverse cultures and peoples will approach the topic of ethics quite differently.

Conflict resolution and other human relations skills are constantly required by managers. The stress of the work environment plus the migratory nature of staff tends to contribute to misunderstandings and friction.

A further work place training and development programme is on the topic of sexual harassment. More and more the work place is a reflection of society and gender issues can rise to the top and become fairly ugly if not addressed.

The development of management is an ongoing process and many issues have to be addressed. The work place is a constant changing environment and managers’ skills need to be constantly developed to cope with the ever moving landscape.

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