Administrative skills

Administrative skills are essentially skills that are required in any specific administration for success such as:

• organizing;
• planning;
• staffing,
• communicating,
• scheduling.

Good leader

The skills laid out are well known and there are even programs designed to make sure individuals succeed in attaining them. Unfortunately, not many people can agree on how a good leader actually uses and acquires this skillset. There is a lot of industry that struggles with finding and training administrators and there is much debate on what really makes a good administrator. Many companies have leadership programs but shockingly they vary in objective and the main things that they want to emphasize to the potential leaders. There are many different perspectives regarding what truly makes a good leader, the kinds of leaders and how leaders can emerge in different industries.

A Harvard Business Review article focuses on the different things a leader has to have in order to be successful. They boil it down to three personal traits, technical, human and conceptual, that are needed for a leader to be potentially effective in the future:

• technical skills are necessary because the functions of a leadership role involve eventually having to complete tasks that require specific skills,
• human skills are also very important because they are essential in a workplace in order to build relationships and to work with others around you especially if the person is a leader;
• conceptual skills are also important in a leader because an organization is a complicated beast in an ever-changing environment so a leader needs to be able to traverse such an environment.

An organization will have multiple situations where decisions need to be made and a good leader needs to be able to analyze the environment to decide on a strategy that in beneficial to the entire organization.

Leadership qualities in education

The African Research Review wrote a study discussing the leadership qualities necessary in the development of Basic Education Delivery in Nigeria. They discovered that head teachers in the schools had to have key leadership and administrative skills to succeed in their roles. These traits provided key elements that proved to enhance performance in their jobs. Through the analysis of what it means to be a leader and the different traits needed the study concluded that even teachers should possess these elements to have successful education system for the country. Training for these teachers has been initiated so they can learn some of these traits and even develop them further. It is interesting to see that administrative skills don't only apply to the capitalist world where profit is the main motive. In small countries for the purposes of education the skills possessed by traditional leaders can be used for other goals.

Leadership qualities in surgeons

The journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery also ran a study centered around the leadership qualities in surgeons. They discussed several of the traits that are in typical leaders and how modern medical schools are focusing on training doctors with these traits. Doctors are given a wealth of knowledge regarding these skills and as they are typically adept they pick them up quickly. They are then applied to multiple scenarios and the journal finds that throughout the doctors careers these skills come in handy for major moments. Particular emphasis is made around the idea of decision making and how administrative skills provide a good basis for effective decision making later in a doctor's career. Even though it may seem like this would not be necessary for a medical practitioner, it is useful for multiple scenarios.

Conclusions

Through these three sources it is interesting to find that although administrative skills are very hard to find and develop that are in demand for several different fields. There is debate on how to effectively develop them and even which parts of these skills are important but it is certain that these skills are in demand for many different sectors. They can be useful in many different scenarios and can be helpful in almost any economic situation.

Administrative skills — recommended articles

Career orientation — Employability skills — Area manager — Belbin team role inventory — Skills and competencies — Qualifications of directors — Core values — Career development — Belbin team roles — Main Page

References

• Katz, R. L. (2009). Skills of an effective administrator', "Harvard Business Review".
• African Research Review (2018). Leadership and Administrative Skills for Optimal Universal Basic Education Delivery in Nigeria, "An International Multidisciplinary Journal", Vol. 9(3), Serial No. 38.
• Crawford, F. A. (2000). Developing administrative skills, "The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery", 119(4), s33-s37.

Author: Oleksandra Zaika