Effective Management: 5 Critical Skill Areas
Tanmay Vora
Managing effectively is not just one skill, but a mix of different skills. It is a combination of different kinds of intelligence we have as human beings, which makes it an art and a craft.
Have you seen a manager who is highly skilled in technical areas but lacks empathy for others? Or the one who is highly people oriented, but easily loses the sight of goals?
If you are a manager at any level in the organization (or an aspiring one), here are some of the most critical skills you should work on.
Technical Expertise: Broad understanding of the subject (meta-cognition), various components involved in getting work done, links between those components, technical awareness and problem solving skills.
Analytical Intelligence: Ability to gather facts, understand the goals in numbers, compile data into information, measure, see trends, predict the outcomes, go to the root cause and base decisions on facts.
People Intelligence: Understand people (and how they feel), practice empathy, motivate them, align them to the goals, coach and mentor, create a positive influence, understand inter-personal dynamics, communicate (and connect) and understand verbal/non-verbal communication.
Operational Intelligence: Ability to define work as series of interconnected actions, detailed planning, constant alignment of process, improving, seeing waste (and eliminating it), provide a process platform to teams, define rituals, review everything, provide clarity and manage expectations.
‘Big Picture’ Thinking: Ability to see the larger picture (the whole) and visualize its parts, visualize impacts of change, identify new possibilities, align ideas to the larger goal, identify/foresee required changes/trends, define the future, communicate the vision, experiment and be comfortable with ambiguity.
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Join in the Conversation: What skills areas would you like to add? Do you look at these skill areas while hiring? What are you doing today as a manager to gain better understanding of these areas? Feel free to share.
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Easily understandable article for leaders, covering lots of aspects of management.
Thanks Siddharth! Keep reading/commenting/learning!
I wouldn’t add anything per se. I would imagine, though, that the weight these different skills carry changes as one moves up the management ladder.
Agree absolutely David. The idea is that we need to know what contributes in effective management and focus on critical areas as we move up the ladder.
Good leadership is definitely a blend of more than one aspect.
Other than the 5 qualities that you’ve listed, I think that a good leader must also:
– Be a good communicator (when you’re a leader, how you say something is as important as what you say)
– Be a good listener (a good leader will always lend a ear to his employees)
Sindoora (http://www.beyondhorizons.in)
Hello sir, vry nice article….vry informative one…ur exactly telling us to behave as a coach and mentor and also to create a climate of increasing competence and opportunity.
expecting ur feedback….
Dhanya, thanks for the comment. As a manager, it is very important to be able to set right examples (through actions) and then be able to provide direction via coaching and mentoring.
Best,
Tanmay
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