Managerial Skills and the Organizational Hierarchy
Types of Managerial Skills
Robert
L. Katz, a teacher and business executive, has popularized a concept developed early
in this century by Henri Fayol, a famous management theorist and father of modern
management. Fayol identified three basic skills - technical skills, human skills,
and conceptual skills. Diagnostic skills and analytical skills are prerequisites
to managerial success.
Technical
skill: Technical
skill is the ability to use the specialized knowledge, procedures, and techniques
of a field of activities. Accountants, engineers, and surgeons all have the technical
skills necessary for their respective professions. Most managers, especially at
the lower and middle levels, need technical skills for effective task performance.
Technical
skill is required to perform a particular job in prescribed ways.
Technical
skill enables a person to accomplish the mechanics of performing a particular job.
This may be knowing how to maintain accounts, how to conduct a financial audit,
how to construct a building, or how to perform in the operation theatre.
Technical
skills are important, especially for first-line managers, who spend much of their
time training subordinates and supervising their work-related problems. To be effective
as managers and also to command the respect of their subordinates, they must first
know how to perform tasks assigned to their subordinates.
Human
skill: Human
skill is the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people as individuals
or in groups. Managers spend much of their time interacting with people both inside
and outside their organizations. We may recall here Mintzberg's explanation of how
top (and middle) managers spend their time: 59 percent in meetings, 6 percent on
the phone, and 3 percent on tours. All of these managerial activities involve other
people. Human skill includes the ability to work with others and get cooperation
from people in the workgroup. This means, for example, knowing what to do being
able to communicate ideas and beliefs to others, and understanding what thoughts
others are trying to convey to the manager. Moreover, the manager with human knowledge
and skill understands and recognizes what views are brought to situations and in
turn what adjustments in these views might be made as a result of working with associates.
Human
skills are chiefly necessary for coordinating and maintaining relationships with
people inside and outside the organization for taking care of the human factors
that exist in the organizational structure.
The ability
to understand others and communicate with people both inside and outside the organization
is of special significance to one who is called on to handle disturbances, allocate
resources, and negotiate. The roles of leader, disseminator, negotiator, and resource
allocator require skill in motivating. This skill, for example, will help a manager
persuade a sales force to accept a raised sales presentation or win the cooperation
of a group of angry subordinates.
It is,
however, interesting to note that not all managers exhibit good human (interpersonal)
skills. Managers, who are harsh with their subordinates, would simply tend to increase
personal turnover; moreover, it becomes increasingly difficult to replace those
who leave. The other things being equal, the manager who has good human skills is
likely to be more successful than the one with poor human skills.
Conceptual
skill: Conceptual
skill is the ability to coordinate and integrate all of an organization’s interests
and activities. It requires having the ability to visualize the enterprise as a
whole, envision all the functions involved in a given situation or circumstance,
understand how its parts depend on one another, and anticipate how a change in any
of its parts will affect the whole. Conceptual skills depend on the manager’s ability
to think in the abstract and to view the organization holistically. Conceptualization
requires imagination, broad knowledge, and the mental capacity to conceive abstract
ideas. Applying this requirement may involve suggesting a new product line for a
company, introducing computer technology to the organization’s operations, or entering
the international market. One example of conceptual skill may be that the managing
director of a bank visualizes the importance of better service for its clients which
ultimately helps attract a vast number of clients and an unexpected increase in
its deposits and profits.
Conceptual
skill helps the manager conceive abstract ideas and foresee the organization’s future
shape.
Relative Skills Needed for Effective Performance at Different Levels of Management
Fayol
and Katz suggest that although all the skills i.e. technical, human, and conceptual,
are essential to a manager, their relative importance depends especially on the
manager's rank in the organizational hierarchy.
Technical
skills are especially
important for first-line managers who spend much of their time training workers
and answering questions about work-related problems.
Human
skills, although
important for managers at all levels, are especially needed by mid-level managers.
Their ability to tap this resource of their subordinates is more important than
their technical proficiency.
Conceptual
skill is mostly
needed at the top level. The importance of conceptual skill increases as one rises
through the ranks of management. At higher and higher levels of organization, the
full range of relationships, and the organization’s place in time are important
to understand. This is where a manager must have a clear grasp of the total picture
of what his/ her enterprise would look like in the remote future.
Other
Skills of Managers
Besides
the skills discussed so far, there are two other skills that a manager should possess,
namely diagnostic skills and analytical skills.
Diagnostic
skills: Successful
managers are found to possess diagnostic skills. A manager can diagnose a problem
in the organization by studying its symptoms. For example, a particular division
may be suffering from low productivity. With the help of diagnostic skills, the
manager may find out that the division’s supervisor has poor human skills. This
problem might then be solved by transferring or training the supervisor.
Diagnostic
skill helps locate trouble spots in an enterprise while analytical skill helps ascertain
appropriate measures to solve problems. But neither of these two skills is the same
as decision-making skills.
Analytical
skill: By analytical
skill, we mean the manager’s ability to identify the key variables in a situation,
see how they are interrelated, and decide which ones should receive the most attention.
This skill enables the manager to determine possible strategies and select the most
appropriate one for the situation. Analytical skills are similar to decision-making
skills, but analysis may not involve making an actual decision. For example, when
selecting a site for a new plant, a manager may analyze the advantages and disadvantages
of several sites and make a recommendation to the board of directors, which makes
the ultimate decision.
In short,
diagnostic skill enables managers to understand a situation, whereas analytical
skill helps determine what to do in a given situation.
Sources of Management Skills
There
are primarily two sources of management skills viz. (i) education and (ii) experience.
Some managers draw largely from one source or the other, whereas others rely on
a combination of the two.
Education
as a source of management skills: The principal advantage of education as a source of management skills
is that a student can follow a well-developed program of study, thereby becoming
familiar with current research and thinking on management. Moreover, most college
and university students can fully devote their time, energy, and attention to learning.
They can acquire management skills in an academic setting.
In developed
as well as developing countries, the number of enrolments in business schools and
colleges has tremendously risen in recent years. More and more bright students are
seeking degrees in management and administration. B.B.A. and M.B.A. programs at
universities, colleges, and institutes have also been experiencing rapid growth,
and they often attract students from diverse fields.
With
the advancement of modern technology, management requires highly qualified managers.
Hence, the number of management students is increasing fast, and a great many of
them are currently employed as executives.
Moreover,
the current trend is clearly toward formal education as a prerequisite to business
success. Non-business graduates, like engineers, architects, and so on have recently
begun to take more and more business courses to enhance their job opportunities.
Even though they have degrees in management, most of them have not stopped their
academic education in management. Many of them periodically return to the campus
to participate in management development programs. Lower- and mid-level managers
also take advantage of programmers offered by open universities under the distance
mode.
The most
recent innovation in extended management education is the Executive MBA program
offered by business schools and institutes of business administration. Under this
system, middle and top managers enroll in accelerated programs of study on weekends.
In Bangladesh,
as in most developing countries, most managers in the 70s or even in the 80s were
without any degree, let alone a management degree. The most modern developments
in information and computer technology, communication, etc. have made them redundant
as managers. Thus, today’s employers are very careful in employing only properly
educated people in managerial positions.
Experience
as a source of management skills: Management education may be too general to make a manager successful
in a specific field and herein comes the importance of experience as a source of
management skill. In fact, for a variety of reasons, experience has no alternative
to success in many managerial positions. Thus, many managers get to the top because
of their rich resources of experience in other jobs. By experiencing the day-to-day
pressures and by meeting a variety of managerial challenges, a manager develops
insights that cannot be learned from a book. His hands-on experience is an invaluable
treasure that no one can acquire merely by reading books.
Practical
experience makes academic education in management tested and foolproof.
Young
and prospective managers can gather experience in several ways. Organizationally,
they can be systematically assigned to a variety of different jobs. Over time they
are exposed to most, if not all, of the major aspects of their organizations. In
this way, managers can perfect their required skills through experience. Both formal
and informal training programs also help managers sharpen their job experience.
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2024-07-11 14:37:56