Managerial Skills: How Effective Managers Drive Productivity

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Managerial Skills: How Effective Managers Drive Productivity

Business Essentials · Chapter 5: Management Functions and Strategic PlanningSection 5.1 · lesson 24 of 10512 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Why a manager is judged on a group's output, and what that demands.

  • Define management and its three levels
  • Describe technical, human, and conceptual skill
  • Explain how the skill mix shifts with level
  • Separate authority, responsibility, and accountability

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Management Functions and Strategic Planning

Managerial Skills: How Effective Managers Drive Productivity

Every organization has people whose job is getting work done through others. This section asks what that job really demands. We'll define management, and see why moving into it is one of the hardest transitions in a career. We'll look at the three levels of management, and the three categories of skill managers draw on. Then we'll see how the skill mix shifts as people rise, and the trap that creates. And we'll pin down three terms that are routinely confused: authority, responsibility, and accountability.

What Management Is

Results Through Other People

Management is the process of achieving an organization's objectives, through the coordinated effort of other people. That definition has a consequence that shapes this whole chapter. A manager is a person responsible for the work of others. And a manager is judged on the output of a group, not on what he or she personally produces. Compare a skilled technician. She's judged on the quality of the work she does with her own hands. A manager is judged on what the people she directs accomplish together. That could be far more than any one of them could do alone. Or far less. The difference is the manager's contribution. So management isn't a reward for being good at the work. It's a different job, measured a different way.

The Hardest Transition

From Individual Contributor to Manager

This is why moving from individual contributor to manager is among the hardest transitions in a career. An individual contributor is a person whose value comes from his or her own work. The skills that earned the promotion were about doing that work superbly. And those skills are no longer the main thing the job requires. The new work is invisible, at first. It's arranging, explaining, deciding, listening, and removing obstacles. None of it produces something you can point to at the end of the day. So many new managers respond by returning to what they know how to do, which is the technical work. We'll see exactly where that leads, in the case at the end of this section.

Three Levels

Who Decides What, and How Far Ahead

Managers work at three levels. What separates them is what they decide, and over what time horizon. Top management means the senior executives. They're responsible for the direction of the whole organization, and for its relationships with the outside world. That means investors, regulators, and major customers. Their decisions concern where the organization will compete, and what it will become. They look years ahead. Middle management translates that direction into plans for departments, or divisions. It also coordinates between the top and the front line. Its decisions concern how a department will contribute to the direction, and they look months ahead. Frontline management is also called first-line, or supervisory, management. It's responsible for the daily work of employees who aren't managers themselves, like the supervisor of a shift, or a team. Its decisions concern who does what today and this week, and how problems in the work get resolved. So moving down, horizons shorten and detail increases. Moving up, breadth and uncertainty increase.

Three Skill Categories

What Managerial Work Draws On

Managerial work draws on three categories of skill. And a skill, here, means an ability that can be developed through practice. Technical skill is proficiency in the methods, tools, and techniques of the specific work. Think accounting, welding, or programming. Human skill is the ability to work with and through other people. That includes understanding them, communicating with them, and motivating and coordinating them. Conceptual skill is the ability to see the organization as a whole, and how its parts depend on one another. It's grasping how a change in one place will be felt in another. One point matters a great deal. These are not personality types. Each one can be learned. And every manager needs each of them, in some measure.

Skill Mix By Level

The Mix Shifts as You Rise

Here's the central claim of this framework. The mix of the three skills changes with the level of management. At the front line, technical skill is the largest part. Supervisors must understand the work well enough to guide it, check it, and help with it. At the top, conceptual skill is the largest part. Executives deal with the whole organization and its environment. They have little need to do technical tasks themselves. Human skill is different. It's needed in roughly equal measure at every level, near a third of the mix. That's because every manager, at every level, works through people. Now the cautions. These proportions are illustrative. They aren't measurements. And the pattern is a tendency, not a law. A top manager of a small engineering firm may need more technical skill than the pattern suggests. But notice what the pattern implies. The skills that earn a promotion are exactly the ones whose share shrinks. That's why the transition into management is so difficult.

The Promotion Trap

Measured on the Wrong Thing

That skill mix produces a familiar difficulty, called the promotion trap. People are promoted into management because they're excellent at technical work. Then they need human and conceptual skills that nobody assessed. They may never have had occasion to practice them. Promote your best engineer, salesperson, or analyst on individual performance, and there's a real risk. You may lose a strong contributor, and gain a struggling manager. Notice where the fault lies. It isn't the person promoted. It's the selection, which measured the wrong thing. The trap shrinks when human and conceptual skill are assessed before promotion, and people are prepared afterward. Each skill category develops differently. Technical skill grows through instruction, and practice in the work itself. Human skill grows through practice with feedback. Coaching, observing difficult conversations, and deliberately rehearsing skills like listening. Reading about those skills helps little, unless they're used. Conceptual skill grows through exposure to the wider organization. Think rotations across functions, and cross-departmental projects. Case analysis helps too, and so do mentors who explain how decisions look from higher up. In every case, development needs to begin before the promotion, and continue after it.

Looking Closer

Human and Conceptual Skill, Decomposed

Human and conceptual skill can both sound vague. So let's break them into abilities you can observe. Human skill has five. Communication is conveying information and expectations so that the listener understands them. Listening is taking in what others say, including what isn't said, before responding. Feedback is telling people, specifically and promptly, how their work compares with what's needed. Conflict handling is bringing disagreements into the open and working them through, not ignoring or suppressing them. And reading a situation is sensing a group's mood and unstated concerns, and adjusting to them. Conceptual skill has three parts. Systems thinking sees the organization as a set of interdependent parts. So a decision in one part gets traced to its effects in the others. Pattern recognition is noticing that separate events belong to a common cause, or trend. And holding competing considerations means keeping several conflicting priorities in view at once. The discipline is not collapsing them into a single one too soon.

Diagnostic Skill

Find the Real Problem First

A fourth ability underlies both human and conceptual skill. It's diagnostic skill. That's the ability to identify the real problem, before attempting to solve one. It matters because managers often act on the first problem they see. And that first problem is often just a symptom. Take a drop in a team's output. The easy explanation is effort. But the real cause might be a broken process. It might be a shortage of materials, or a change in demand. Apply the wrong remedy, and two things happen. Effort is wasted, and trust is damaged. Picture being pushed to work harder, when the real problem was a process nobody fixed.

Table 5.1.1

Behaviors That Show a Skill, and One That Imitates It

If skills matter this much, how can you tell whether someone has them? Watch what they do. Each skill has behaviors that demonstrate it, and a look-alike that only imitates it. Technical skill shows when someone solves a problem in the method of the work, and can explain why the fix works. It also shows when they document the method, so others can follow it and check it. The imitation is fluent specialist vocabulary, without the ability to apply it. Human skill shows when someone restates what a colleague said, before responding to it. And when they give specific feedback promptly, while it can still change the outcome. The imitation is being friendly and approachable, while avoiding every difficult conversation. Conceptual skill shows when someone traces how a decision in one department will affect three others. And when they weigh competing priorities, and state the trade-off they're accepting. The imitation is talk of the big picture and synergy, without tracing a single connection. Here's the catch. The look-alike is usually easier to display. So assess what people do, not how they sound.

Precise Terms

Authority, Responsibility, Accountability

Three terms are routinely confused, so let's state them precisely. Authority is the right to make decisions, direct the work of others, and use resources. Responsibility is the obligation to perform the tasks or duties that have been assigned. Accountability is being answerable for results. It means having to explain, and accept the consequences of, what was or wasn't achieved. Here's how they come apart. A manager asks a team member to prepare a report, and gives him the access he needs. She has delegated authority, and responsibility, for that task. But she remains accountable to her own superior for the outcome. Accountability can't be handed off. So what is a manager accountable for, that nobody else is? The results produced through the group. That includes the conditions the group works under, and the decisions about people and resources those results depend on.

Case Vignette (Composite)

The Specialist Who Kept Doing the Work

Let's finish with a case. It's a composite, constructed for instruction. Aisha has been the strongest claims analyst in her department for five years. She's promoted to supervise the team she used to belong to. In her first months, she keeps taking the most complex claims herself. She can do them faster, and better, than anyone. She stays late to finish them. Yet her team's output is lower than before. And two members complain they aren't being developed. The role needs something different. A supervisor's output is the output of the team. By taking the hardest work, she removed the chance for others to learn it. She created a bottleneck in her own day, and left no time for feedback, planning, and removing obstacles. The constraint is that she doesn't yet trust the others with complex claims. The trade-off is quality on each claim now, against a team that can produce quality without her. After a conversation with her manager, Aisha sees that her contribution has changed. She assigns complex claims to the members with the most potential, and reviews their work with them, giving feedback. She treats the temporary drop in speed as the cost of building capacity. The skill she had to acquire was human. And no one had assessed it before the promotion.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Managerial Skills: How Effective Managers Drive Productivity

What are the three types of managerial skills?
The three types are technical, human, and conceptual skills, a framework usually credited to Robert Katz. Technical skill is proficiency in the methods and tools of specific work, such as accounting or programming. Human skill is the ability to work with and through people. Conceptual skill is seeing the organization as a whole and how its parts depend on one another. Each can be learned, and every manager needs some of each.
Which management skills matter most at each level of management?
Technical skill makes up the largest share for frontline supervisors, conceptual skill the largest share for top executives, and human skill is needed in roughly equal measure at every level. Supervisors must understand the work well enough to guide and check it, while executives deal with the whole organization and its environment. These proportions are illustrative tendencies, not measurements; the head of a small engineering firm may still need substantial technical skill.
Why do great employees often struggle when promoted to manager?
They are often promoted for technical excellence and then need human and conceptual skills nobody assessed, a pattern called the promotion trap. A manager is judged on the group's output rather than personal output, so a new manager who keeps doing the hardest technical work becomes a bottleneck and leaves no time to develop others. The fault lies in selection; assessing human and conceptual skill before promotion and preparing people afterward reduces the risk.
What is the difference between authority, responsibility, and accountability?
Authority is the right to make decisions, direct others, and use resources; responsibility is the obligation to perform assigned tasks; accountability is being answerable for results and their consequences. A manager can delegate authority and responsibility for a task, such as preparing a report, to a team member. She remains accountable to her own superior for the outcome, because accountability cannot be handed off.

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