Table of Contents |
Managers must have a variety of skills. They need to balance a lot of different things, and in order to do that, they need a lot of different skills.
| Management Skill | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Technical Skills | The ability to do a particular job. In the modern world, this is going to be more and more important as the world gets more technical and technologically advanced. | A marketing manager who is fluent in social media as a technical skill will excel in his role, where a marketing manager who doesn't know how to use email will probably fail due to his lack of skills. |
| Human Relations Skills | The ability to interact with other people. As a manager, part of your job is managing other people. | A manager who has developed the ability to have calm conversations with employees when they are angry is an asset. A manager who has never developed the ability to be empathic will most likely not succeed in most organizations. |
| Conceptual Skills | The ability to conceptualize complex issues. You need to be able to explain issues effectively to an employee that are much more complex than their position within the company. | If a PR manager knows how to translate features of a new tablet computer into language that is both understandable and exciting to media groups, they will be more effective. An operations manager who is unable to understand the workings of their production line in order to manage improvements will fail. |
| Decision-Making Skills | The ability to make sound decisions and do it quickly. | A financial manager must make decisions every day about the allocations of budgets, while any manager who takes too long to make a decision will constantly be over-budget and over-schedule. |
| Time Management Skills | The ability to plan out a schedule and use that time effectively, as well as execute the plans that they're given. | Operations managers must understand how to manage the time of each person on their team so work will continue in an optimized manner, while an information manager who doesn't have this skill and attempts any software or hardware update may find themselves managing projects that never seem to end. |
For small businesses, managers are ideally going to have several of these skills. However, they may not have them all. Primarily this is because there are fewer resources to pull from, a smaller pool of employees to make those managers from.
In addition, small businesses generally have fewer managers to begin with. Therefore, it is imperative to have ones with all the skills you need, as this will have a big impact on the success of your business.
For small businesses with only a few managers--some of whom perhaps lack critical skills like technical or human resources skills--it's going to be quite hard for them to make up those shortcomings with their managers.
Source: adapted from sophia instructor james howard
