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17/09/2018 09:13:47 AM

Relationship between skills and levels of manager

Nowadays, there are three necessary skills for managers to manage efficient and effective organization: conceptual, human, and technical. Conceptual skill is demonstrated in the general ability to analyze and diagnose a situation and to distinguish between cause and effect. Top managers require the best conceptual skills because their primary responsibilities are planning and organizing. By all accounts, Steve Jobs was chosen as CEO to transform Apple, and he then picked Tim Cook to succeed him, because of his ability to identify new opportunities and mobilize managers and other resources to take advantage of those opportunities. Formal education and training are important in helping managers develop conceptual skills. Business training at the undergraduate and graduate (MBA) levels provides many of the conceptual tools (theories and techniques in marketing, finance, and other areas) that managers need to perform their roles effectively. The study of management helps develop the skills that allow managers to understand the big picture confronting an organization. The ability to focus on the big picture lets managers see beyond the situation immediately at hand and consider choices while keeping in mind the organization’s long-term goals. Today continuing management education and training, including training in advanced IT, are an integral step in building managerial skills because theories and techniques are constantly being developed to improve organizational effectiveness, such as total quality management, benchmarking, and web-based organization and business-to-business (B2B) networks. A quick scan through a magazine such as Forbes or Fortune reveals a host of seminars on topics such as advanced marketing, finance, leadership, and human resource management that are offered to managers at many levels in the organization, from the most senior corporate executives to middle managers. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and many other organizations designate a portion of each manager’s personal budget to be used at the manager’s discretion to attend management development programs. In addition, organizations may wish to develop a particular manager’s abilities in a specific skill area—perhaps to learn an advanced component of departmental skills, such as international bond trading, or to learn the skills necessary to implement total quality management. The organization thus pays for managers to attend specialized programs to develop these skills. Indeed, one signal that a manager is performing well is an organization’s willingness to invest in that manager’s skill development. Similarly, many nonmanagerial employees who are performing at a high level (because they have studied management) are often sent to intensive management training programs to develop their management skills and to prepare them for promotion to first-level management positions.

Human skills include the general ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behavior of other individuals and groups. The ability to communicate, to coordinate, and to motivate people, and to mold individuals into a cohesive team distinguishes effective from ineffective managers. By all accounts, Tim Cook and Michael Dell possess a high level of these human skills. Like conceptual skill, human skill can be learned through education and training, as well as be developed through experience. Organizations increasingly utilize advanced programs in leadership skills and team leadership as they seek to capitalize on the advantages of self-managed teams. To manage personal interactions effectively, each person in an organization needs to learn how to empathize with other people—to understand their viewpoints and the problems they face. One way to help managers understand their personal strengths and weaknesses is to have their superiors, peers, and subordinates provide feedback about their job performance. Thorough and direct feedback allows managers to develop their human skills. Technical skills are the job-specific skills required to perform a particular type of work or occupation at a high level. Examples include a manager’s specific manufacturing, accounting, marketing, and increasingly, IT skills. Managers need a range of technical skills to be effective. The array of technical skills managers need depends on their position in their organization. The manager of a restaurant, for example, may need cooking skills to fill in for an absent cook, accounting and bookkeeping skills to keep track of receipts and costs and to administer the payroll, and aesthetic skills to keep the restaurant looking attractive for customers. As noted earlier, managers and employees who possess the same kinds of technical skills typically become members of a specific department and are known as, for example, marketing managers or manufacturing managers. Managers are grouped into different departments because a major part of a manager’s responsibility is to monitor, train, and supervise employees so their job-specific skills and expertise increase. Obviously this is easier to do when employees with similar skills are grouped into the same department because they can learn from one another and become more skilled and productive at their particular job. At Dell, for example, Michael Dell hired experienced top managers to take charge of the marketing, sales, and manufacturing departments and to develop work procedures to help middle and first-line managers control the company’s explosive sales growth. When the head of manufacturing found he had no time to supervisecomputer assembly, he recruited experienced manufacturing middle managers from other companies to assume this responsibility.

Th.S. Nguyễn Thị My My