1. Managerial Skills Introduction

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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)

16. 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

17. 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

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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

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

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