Managerial Skills Introduction

Skills in Mgmt Need for many skills in management Functional, technical, professional skills Necessary but not sufficient Need for managerial skills More strongly associated with personal effectiveness of managers and organizational success Across all levels and beyond organization

Managerial Skills More than personal attributes, orientations and cognitive styles More than philosophical and organizational approaches Direct influence on the real time management behaviours and practices that determine managerial effectiveness

Managerial Skills Behavioural and process competencies that help manage people, relationships and issues that result in growth- producing changes Organized and systematic ways (principles and methods) of effectively interfacing with people, relationships and issues

Managerial Skills Personal, interpersonal and group levels Guided by humanistic, moral, developmental and analytical values

Critical Role Flux of change – technological, structural, cultural and systemic aspects of organizations and their environment Relative constancy – basic human skills Necessary for managing effective, satisfying and growth-producing relationships

Critical Role Catalyst for behavioral changes More important for individual and organizational performance than other skills More important under conditions of continuous change Also necessary for managing stability Universally applicable in varying intensity – people and relationships

Competent Managers Abundant empirical evidence of the importance of people-skilled managers as the key success determinant Decrease in turnover Increase in profit per employee Higher shareholder wealth per employee Predicting longevity and profitability Predictor of financial success (three times) Strong explanatory variable of bank failure

Competent Managers Anecdotal evidence Turnaround of GM’s automobile assembly plant in Fremont with new management team following Japanese management approaches (training, worker involvement) CEO’s and owners surveys: managerial skills more important than industry, environment, competition, and economic factors combined for business success

Competent Managers Paradox: practice divorced from evidence Common sense not being common practice Gap between knowing and doing Mechanism of effect: not alone – in combination but as a catalyst

What Skills are not? Attributes (e.g. inspirational), behaviors (e.g. mbwa), orientation (e.g. change- inclination) and strategies (e.g. cost effectiveness) Useful for performance but not skills per se Organizational strategies, personality orientation and philosophical approaches to management: implementation usually outside the explicit control of the individual manager

What Skills are not? Contd… Complex set of activities requiring involvement of many people Cognitive activities not behavioral in character Personality characteristics Implementation dependent on managers’ skills

Nature of Skills Behavioral Controllable Identifiable and observable actions individuals perform that lead to certain outcomes Controllable Under the control of the individual that can be consciously demonstrated, practiced, improved or restrained

Nature of Skills Developable Interrelated Contradictory Improvement in performance with practice and feedback Interrelated Complex responses involving the use of several skills simultaneously Contradictory Neither all humanistic nor all directive, neither exclusively oriented toward interpersonal relations nor individualistic

Nature of Skills Cameron and Tschirhart (1988): 25 skills in four clusters with opposite nature Participative and human relations skills (supportive communication and team building) Competitiveness and control (assertiveness, power and influence)

Nature of Skills Contd… Use of paradoxical skills Innovativeness and individual entrepreneurship (creative problem solving) Maintaining order and stability (managing time and rational decision making) Use of paradoxical skills Participative and hard-driving; nurturing and competitive Flexible and creative; controlled, stable and rational

Essential Skills Solving problems creatively Empowering and delegating Developing self-awareness Managing conflict Managing stress Managing employees Solving problems creatively Essential Managerial Skills Communicating supportively Empowering and delegating Gaining power and influence Leading change Building team

Skills and Performance Major determinant of performance Involves action and practices Outcome oriented Translates other factors into results Integration with other factors necessary

Improving Skills Empirical and observational evidence of improvements in both skills and performance across various groups and situations Need for a complex behavioral approach Linked to more complex knowledge base and inherently connected to interaction with other individuals Possession of some level of skills - practice

Skills Development Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977; Boyatzis et al, 1995; Davis and Luthans, 1980) Integration of rigorous conceptual knowledge with opportunities for practice and apply observable behaviors Integration of cognitive work as well as behavioral work

Skills Development Contd… Attentional process: presentation or demonstration of behavioral principles or action guidelines Retentional process: mental registration and coding of key points Reproductional process: opportunity to practice the pricniples Motivational process: feedback on performance

Skills Development Further addition to SLT in relation to complex managerial skills (Boyatzis et al, 1995; Vance, 1993) Grounding of behavioral principles in the social science theory and reliable research evicence Awareness of current level of skill competency and motivation to improve on that level Application of learning in real life setting

Skills Development Five steps learning process Skill assessment Skill learning Skill analysis Skill practice Skill application Empirical evidence of superior result of this approach

Skills Development Alternative approaches Experiential learning process Lecture-case-project methods On-the –job methods: coaching, mentoring, real projects