Managerial skill
| Managerial skill |
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| See also |
Managerial (management) skill - knowledge and ability to successful execute some specific activities or tasks of managerial job. Managerial skills determine manager's efficiency and quality of work as a result of their employees and technology management to ensure realization of their working duties. This can be both innate and learned. While innate managerial skills should be perceived as a talent, related to a natural gift of person, they can be also acquired through practice required activities and tasks, thanks to that there is always possibility to develop managerial skills through learning and experience as a manager.
Types of managerial skills
According to model proposed by Robert Katz in his work from 1955 “Skills of an effective administrator”, there are three dimensions of managerial skills. These are:
- Technical skills - the ability to use tools, methods and technology in a particular specialty,for example knowledge and using computer software packages (such a Microsoft Office package: Excel, Access, Power Point),
- Conceptual skills - mental ability to coordinate and integrate the interests and activities of the organization. It's an ability of abstract thinking, which enable to understand the process in a particular field of work to make better decisions and actions,
- Human skills - the ability to cooperate and make contacts with other people, understand and motivate them what enable to use human potential in the company for better results.
Based on Katz's observations level of importance of each of skills (technical, conceptual, human) is directly correlated with the manager level. According to Katz's theory, these are skills that every manager must have, but the degree of them determine the level of management. In that hierarchy human skills have always same significance while technical skills are most important for first-level managers and from the bottom to higher levels they lose their importance, conceptual skills are most important for top managers, less important for mid-level managers and the least for fist-level managers, so importance of these skills rise going from the bottom to the top of managerial hierarchy.
These three skills are required for successful management as a process. Some authors also mention other skills related to management skills, which are simply part of these primary skills. The most frequently mentioned in publications related to this issue are also:
- interpersonal and communication skills- effective flow of informations thanks to clearly passing ideas and information, but also to receive them.
- decision-making skill- manager's ability to correctly recognize and define problems or possibilities to choose the appropriate mode of action in order to achieve the most favorable results,
- conflict resolution- ability to handle and solve the problems that can appear in a typical workday.
References
- Aini, Q.(2018), Management Skill and Leadership: A Case Study from Hospital Managers of Charity Business in Health, p. 478-482
- Katz R. L.(1974), Skills of an effective administrator., Harvard Business Review. September-October, p.60-70
- Peterson T.O., Van Fleet D.D.(2004),The ongoing legacy of R.L. Katz
- Pavett C.M., Lau A. W.(1982), Management Roles, Skills, and Effective Performance, p.95-989
- Shamsi, A. (2017), Relationship between Knowledge Management and Managerial Skills: The Role of Creative Thinking., p. 44-51
- Virkus S.(2009), Skills Approach: Robert Katz
Author: Anna Stankowska
