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What makes a good manager?

There are many specific skills required to be a good manager in today’s environment.

What skills are required to be a ‘good’ manager in today’s environment? To get a basic grip, here are three categories or skill sets: technical, interpersonal, and conceptual.

Technical skills

Simply put, managers must understand their jobs. They must understand the business, industry, and enterprise in which they perform, and they must understand—to a degree at least—the specific technical competencies and trades employed within their groups and their organisations. They must understand the inputs, the processes, and the outputs of their immediate work group, and the entire business. They don’t have to know how to do everything; but they must know enough about how it is done to distinguish productive from unproductive actions—and to plan and make decisions accordingly.

As the management function evolves today, most managers must understand more about their business and external and competitive pressures that might evolve. Likewise, they must stay on top of change and technology, and be aware of the ‘latest thing’ that might change their business, the inputs, the processes, and the outputs of their teams. Managers of yesteryear needed mainly to understand the tasks done by their teams, and were often promoted out of their teams because they mastered the technical skills and evidenced emerging leadership skills. On the other hand, today’s managers are more likely to come from outside the organisation, and must understand a lot more about the business. They must understand the market position and customer acceptance of the product or service their team produces or supports, and the financial strength and success of the business built around it.

Interpersonal skills

The need for interpersonal skills has always been part of management. The ability to work with and motivate people, garner their respect, influence their actions and productivity, and so forth, are all integral parts of the job. Managers must have good people skills not only with their employees, but also with ‘peer’ managers and superiors, other employees, and sometimes even customers. The interpersonal role involves much of the popular notion of the manager—developing and working with people, leading them, motivating them, dealing with problems, enhancing morale, and much more. Today’s manage­ment requires a much more ‘holistic’ view of the individual—their attainment of goals, their development, their career path, and so forth. Today’s managers must understand their employees and be able to empathise with them both in and outside the workplace.

Today’s managers also take on a much larger and more critical responsibility for communication. As the pace of business changes, it is more important to keep employees informed of what’s going on in the business, both externally and internally. In performing the informational role, managers are essentially two-way information conduits. Managers must keep employees informed of all things that affect their work, and must provide information to their organisations (and often, outside their organisation) about what the work group is doing. They must keep their finger on the pulse, be the spokesperson, and disseminate information strategically in all directions. Keeping themselves, their employees, and their external environment informed of change is a big and growing job. The manager that does this well gets further.

Conceptual skills

Conceptual skills are hardest to grasp, and are the hardest to learn. Good managers, especially today, must be able to assess what’s going on both inside and outside their business, and be ready for action. They must be able to break down problems into solvable chunks, and be able to assimilate small bits of data to ‘connect the dots’ into meaningful issues, problems, and opportunities. They must connect the dots to make decisions. These decisions not only involve routine direction and course change, but also planning, performance assessment, problem resolution, and resource selection.

More and more, today’s managers must grasp what is going on in the external environment. They must be able to interpret those signals and make necessary changes in the work. The ‘internally focused’ production line managers of yesteryear still exist, but are becoming rarer. Today’s managers need to have an ‘external focus’ on what is going on with the business—how the product or service is performing, how the marketplace is changing, how the business is performing financially. The conceptual skill requires not only seeing the big picture but also being able to take action based upon it.

These skills overlap, and more than one of these skills will be used at a time to accomplish something. For instance, hiring an employee draws on all three skill sets—technical, interpersonal, and conceptual. Technical skills are used in determining whether the employee is minimally qualified for the job. Interper­sonal skills are used to assess the person’s character; how well the person will fit with the team; the person’s motivation, morale, needs, and people skills needed for the job. Finally, conceptual skills are used to visualise at a more abstract level whether that person will fit, and whether he is the best fit for the job.

You probably guessed—and guessed right—that all managers wear all of these hats, and if one hat is missing, it becomes a deficiency or weakness for the manager. Management jobs that don’t require doing all of these things all of the time are few and far between. This may sound a bit repetitive, but managing, more than almost anything else you’ll do, draws on many skills at once.

Management is about managing change

If there is one responsibility of today’s manager that’s different from those of an earlier era, it is the imperative to manage change—and manage change well. As mentioned earlier, the speed of business is faster than ever, and the forces of competition require up-to-the-minute, finger-on-the-pulse awareness of what is going on inside and outside the organisation. The successful manager today juggles many balls—and, if necessary, can change balls instantly without missing a beat. Managers who stay on top of change and anticipate it are more highly regarded than managers who seem to be consumed by change and are always playing catch-up. Many top executives regard change awareness and change management as a number-one skill of a manager.

Management as a career path

Go to the career section of any bookstore. Do you see any books specifically about management as a career? No, not really. There are books about different fields—business, law, medicine, government, and even small business. But there are no books on management as a career, per se. Why? This might seem like a minor point, but it really makes a major one: management occurs in every field and every profession—it isn’t a ‘field’ in and of itself. Whether you manage a McDonald’s, write software alone in a cubicle, or run an assembly line, some part of your job involves getting things done through others.

You’re a manager even if you’re not a manager

We maintain that every job has a ‘managing’ element. As you move up in your organisation and acquire more responsibility, your job will be more about managing—getting things done through others—and less about ‘doing.’ Can you see that if you’re good at getting things done through others in your entry-level position, you will be regarded as a good manager? Those who made that connection get an ‘A’ for this chapter. Indeed, whether you really want to be a manager or not, developing those skills will open doors, get you places, and make you a more valuable player in the organisation, even if you choose to stay in your cubicle and write software.

For the software designer, it may be a small part, but somewhere along the way, others will have to be involved in deciding what the software should do, testing it, and getting it out of the door. The software engineer will have to manage those people—regardless of whether they report directly to him or her—to get the important inputs to the job and to deliver a finished product. For the production line manager, getting things done through others is probably 80 to 90%, maybe 100% of the job. For the fast food manager, getting things done through others is a big part, but where have you seen these managers sitting in an office while the hourlies drop fries and sling burgers? They are usually on the first line with their employees (particularly when someone doesn’t show for work). So managing—getting things done through others—is a big part, but not the whole job. We will come back to this concept again and again.

 

Taken from the book, Knock ‘em Dead Management: The Ultimate Guide to Managing People, Setting Goals, and Achieving Success by Martin Yate and Peter Sander (ISBN 1-58062-935-0). Copyright © 2004 Martin Yate and Peter Sander. Used by permission of Adams Media. All rights reserved.

Martin Yate has been professionally involved in career management issues since the 1970s, working as an international headhunter in corporate Human Resources and in training and development. In the last 20 years, he has published 11 books - including the best-selling ‘Knock 'em Dead’ series - that address different aspects of negotiating the challenges of lifetime career management.

The Knock 'em Dead website embodies a comprehensive and cohesive approach to lifetime career management.