ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the competencies of high-performing managers and understand why managers need to manage their own learning and the learning of others. It identifies theoretical flaws and the practical defects of group-based learning and of experiential learning. The chapter helps to understand how learning conversations can be used to remedy the deficiencies in experiential learning based on Kolb's model. It explores the importance of Knowledge Management and how to use it to improve performance in the public sector and evaluates practical ways in which work-based learning can be implemented. The economic pressure on governments to produce a 'learning society' turns up in public services as a pressure on managers to play their part by ensuring that they and their employees engage in 'lifelong learning'. The conversational skills of a good coach include listening, sensing and monitoring. Competency-based approaches to Training Needs Analysis(TNA) reduce uncertainty about the identification of training needs because actual performance can be compared with agreed standards.
