Which of the following is a managerial role that is played when a manager motivates their team?

A list of attributes or abilities that an executive should possess in order to fulfill specific tasks in an organization

Table of Contents Show

Types of Management Skills
Examples of Management Skills
Bottom Line
Additional Resources

Management skills can be defined as certain attributes or abilities that an executive should possess in order to fulfill specific tasks in an organization. They include the capacity to perform executive duties in an organization while avoiding crisis situations and promptly solving problems when they occur. Management skills can be developed through learning and practical experience as a manager. The skills help the manager to relate with their fellow co-workers and know how to deal well with their subordinates, which allows for the easy flow of activities in the organization.

Good management skills are vital for any organization to succeed and achieve its goals and objectives. A manager who fosters good management skills is able to propel the company’s mission and vision or business goals forward with fewer hurdles and objections from internal and external sources.

Management and leadership skills are often used interchangeably as they both involve planning, decision-making, problem-solving, communication, delegation, and time management. Good managers are almost always good leaders as well.

In addition to leading, a critical role of a manager is to also ensure that all parts of the organization are functioning cohesively. Without such integration, several issues can arise and failure is bound to happen. Management skills are crucial for various positions and at different levels of a company, from top leadership to intermediate supervisors to first-level managers.

Types of Management Skills

According to American social and organizational psychologist Robert Katz, the three basic types of management skills include:

1. Technical Skills

Technical skills involve skills that give the managers the ability and the knowledge to use a variety of techniques to achieve their objectives. These skills not only involve operating machines and software, production tools, and pieces of equipment but also the skills needed to boost sales, design different types of products and services, and market the services and the products.

2. Conceptual Skills

These involve the skills managers present in terms of the knowledge and ability for abstract thinking and formulating ideas. The manager is able to see an entire concept, analyze and diagnose a problem, and find creative solutions. This helps the manager to effectively predict hurdles their department or the business as a whole may face.

3. Human or Interpersonal Skills

The human or the interpersonal skills are the skills that present the managers’ ability to interact, work or relate effectively with people. These skills enable the managers to make use of human potential in the company and motivate the employees for better results.

Examples of Management Skills

There is a wide range of skills that management should possess to run an organization effectively and efficiently. The following are six essential management skills that any manager ought to possess for them to perform their duties:

1. Planning

Planning is a vital aspect within an organization. It refers to one’s ability to organize activities in line with set guidelines while still remaining within the limits of the available resources such as time, money, and labor. It is also the process of formulating a set of actions or one or more strategies to pursue and achieve certain goals or objectives with the available resources.

The planning process includes identifying and setting achievable goals, developing necessary strategies, and outlining the tasks and schedules on how to achieve the set goals. Without a good plan, little can be achieved.

2. Communication

Possessing great communication skills is crucial for a manager. It can determine how well information is shared throughout a team, ensuring that the group acts as a unified workforce. How well a manager communicates with the rest of his/her team also determines how well outlined procedures can be followed, how well the tasks and activities can be completed, and thus, how successful an organization will be.

Communication involves the flow of information within the organization, whether formal or informal, verbal or written, vertical or horizontal, and it facilitates smooth functioning of the organization. Clearly established communication channels in an organization allow the manager to collaborate with the team, prevent conflicts, and resolve issues as they arise. A manager with good communication skills can relate well with the employees and thus, be able to achieve the company’s set goals and objectives easily.

3. Decision-making

Another vital management skill is decision-making. Managers make numerous decisions, whether knowingly or not, and making decisions is a key component in a manager’s success. Making proper and right decisions results in the success of the organization, while poor or bad decisions may lead to failure or poor performance.

For the organization to run effectively and smoothly, clear and right decisions should be made. A manager must be accountable for every decision that they make and also be willing to take responsibility for the results of their decisions. A good manager needs to possess great decision-making skills, as it often dictates his/her success in achieving organizational objectives.

4. Delegation

Delegation is another key management skill. Delegation is the act of passing on work-related tasks and/or authorities to other employees or subordinates. It involves the process of allowing your tasks or those of your employees to be reassigned or reallocated to other employees depending on current workloads. A manager with good delegation skills is able to effectively and efficiently reassign tasks and give authority to the right employees. When delegation is carried out effectively, it helps facilitate efficient task completion.

Delegation helps the manager to avoid wastage of time, optimizes productivity, and ensures responsibility and accountability on the part of employees. Every manager must have good delegation abilities to achieve optimal results and accomplish the required productivity results.

5. Problem-solving

Problem-solving is another essential skill. A good manager must have the ability to tackle and solve the frequent problems that can arise in a typical workday. Problem-solving in management involves identifying a certain problem or situation and then finding the best way to handle the problem and get the best solution. It is the ability to sort things out even when the prevailing conditions are not right. When it is clear that a manager has great problem-solving skills, it differentiates him/her from the rest of the team and gives subordinates confidence in his/her managerial skills.

6. Motivating

The ability to motivate is another important skill in an organization. Motivation helps bring forth a desired behavior or response from the employees or certain stakeholders. There are numerous motivation tactics that managers can use, and choosing the right ones can depend on characteristics such as company and team culture, team personalities, and more. There are two primary types of motivation that a manager can use. These are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Bottom Line

Management skills are a collection of abilities that include things such as business planning, decision-making, problem-solving, communication, delegation, and time management. While different roles and organizations require the use of various skill sets, management skills help a professional stand out and excel no matter what their level. In top management, these skills are essential to run an organization well and achieve desired business objectives.

Additional Resources

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to management skills. CFI is a leading provider of career resources for finance professionals. To continue learning and advancing your career, the additional resources below will be helpful:

Henry Mintzberg proposed an alternative approach to defining what management is about. Instead of describing in theory what managers should do, he studied what managers actually spend their time doing. This led him to describe management in terms of the different roles that managers undertake. The ten major roles that he identified are discussed in 1.2.1 below.

1.2.1 The roles of managers

'Mintzberg shows a substantial difference between what managers do and what they are said to do. On the basis of work activity studies, he demonstrates that a manager's job is characterised by pace, interruptions, brevity, variety, and fragmentation of activities, and a preference for verbal contacts. Managers spend a considerable amount of time in scheduled meetings and in networks of contacts outside meetings.

The fragmentary nature of what managers do leads to the suggestion that they have to perform a wide variety of roles. Mintzberg suggests that there are ten managerial roles which can be grouped into three areas: interpersonal, informational and decisional.

Interpersonal roles cover the relationships that a manager has to have with others. The three roles within this category are figurehead, leader and liaison. Managers have to act as figureheads because of their formal authority and symbolic position, representing their organisations. As leader, managers have to bring together the needs of an organisation and those of the individuals under their command. The third interpersonal role, that of liaison, deals with the horizontal relationships which work-activity studies have shown to be important for a manager. A manager has to maintain a network of relationships outside the organisation.

Managers have to collect, disseminate and transmit information and have three corresponding informational roles, namely monitor, disseminator and spokesperson. A manager is an important figure in monitoring what goes on in the organisation, receiving information about both internal and external events and transmitting it to others. This process of transmission is the dissemination role, passing on information of both a factual and value kind. A manager often has to give information concerning the organisation to outsiders, taking on the role of spokesperson to both the general public and those in positions of influence.

As with so many writers about management, Mintzberg regards the most crucial part of managerial activity as that concerned with making decisions. The four roles that he places in this category are based on different classes of decision, namely, entrepreneurs, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. As entrepreneurs, managers make decisions about changing what is happening in an organisation. They may have to both initiate change and take an active part in deciding exactly what is to be done. In principle, they are acting voluntarily. This is very different from their role as a disturbance handler, where managers have to make decisions which arise from events beyond their control and unpredicted. The ability to react to events as well as to plan activities is an important managerial skill in Mintzberg's eyes.

The resource allocation role of a manager is central to much organisational analysis. Clearly a manager has to make decisions about the allocation of money, people, equipment, time and so on. Mintzberg points out that in doing so a manager is actually scheduling time, programming work and authorising actions. The negotiation role is put in the decisional category by Mintzberg because it is 'resource trading in real time'. A manager has to negotiate with others and in the process be able to make decisions about the commitment of organisational resources.

For Mintzberg these ten roles provide a more adequate description of what managers do than any of the various schools of management thought. In these roles it is information that is crucial: the manager is determining the priority of information. Through the interpersonal roles a manager acquires information, and through the decisional roles it is put into use.

The scope for each manager to choose a different blend of roles means that management is not reducible to a set of scientific statements and programmes. Management is essentially an art and it is necessary for managers to try and learn continuously about their own situations. Self-study is vital. At the moment there is no solid basis for teaching a theory of managing. According to Mintzberg, "the management school has been more effective at training technocrats to deal with structured problems than managers to deal with unstructured ones."'

Source: Pugh and Hickson (2007) pp. 30-31.

Which of the two descriptions of management (functions or roles) do you find more helpful? If you have experience of rural development, try to identify how this has influenced your answer.

Mintzberg's roles were intended to provide a better description of management in practice than the classical list of management functions. Rather than spending their days planning and organising in an orderly fashion, many managers live hectic lives in constantly changing contexts. Hence, they have to be adaptable and responsive, not just pro-active and controlling.

Moreover, managers are not just involved in managing the internal resources of their organisation, but also spend a great deal of time in maintaining contacts with other people, both within and outside the organisation. This is partly because they need to be aware of any changes in the environment which may affect their (part of the) organisation, an activity known as 'boundary scanning'. Managers in business need to be aware of what their competitors are doing, of trends in consumer demand, and of changes in the economic environment. Managers in public sector organisations or NGOs in rural development may need to monitor prices and activity in certain (local or wider) markets, progress with a cropping season, political developments relevant to their organisation, what other organisations are doing and so on.

Mintzberg's analysis is also valuable in highlighting the importance of various forms of information to an organisation. Information may be seen as a resource to be set alongside personnel and capital.

However, what managers actually do is not necessarily what they want to be doing or should be doing. Even if Mintzberg's respondents were all pursuing good management practice, recognition of his ten roles does not invalidate the importance of planning, organising, leading and controlling. Some of Mintzberg's roles express 'how' managers inform their plans, lead and motivate their staff etc. Others (eg disturbance handler, negotiator) could even be seen as skills that managers need to develop, so as not to get sidetracked from the strategic priorities of their position and of their organisation.

Important - urgent!