ESSENTIAL MANAGERIAL SKILLS Essay Example

QUESTION 1

Organizational development and growth are key and managers come in handy in ensuring that it is achieved. Managers need to have skills and implement the skills to ensure successful organizational development. Some of the important managerial skills needed include communication, decision-making, and leadership skills.

Communication skills are essential for the managers since effective communication is one of the pillars to organizational development. Communication skills can be either verbal or written and managers need to have both these two types of communication skills. Managers need communication skills to build their relationships with the employees and fellow managers. Proper communication skills are needed for managers to propel organizations towards development. The key to communication is clarity and proper presentation of ideas to the employees. Overall, good communication skills from the manager ensure that there is a free and direct flow of organizational communication.

Decision-making skills are important for any effective manager. Decision-making skills allow the manager to weigh different existing options to solve a particular problem and pick an appropriate and effective one. The decision-making skills are essential for all managers since they are faced with decisions to make in their jobs on regular or even daily basis. The ability of a manager to judge and know the right times to implement a decision is critical to the development of an organization. Organizational growth and development hinges on huge decisions and steps mainly regarding change and thus having a manager with good decision-making skills is an ultimate key to the development of an organization.

Finally, another important skill is the leadership skills. Leaders are made and being a Manager is a leadership role and thus the need to possess leadership skills. For a manager to excel and an organization to achieve growth and development, leadership skills are a requirement. Leadership skills can be viewed in verbal form or through actions. Leadership skills entail setting a proper example for the employees and fellow managers. Some essential leadership skills include delegation of responsibility and accountability, clear sharing of personal and organizational vision and goals with the employees, innovative and influential by motivating employees, driving effective organizational change, the creation of a good working environment. When a manager excises these skills in the daily job activities then an organization is automatically subject to growth and development. Overall, employees should be able to look up to the manager since leadership skills are reflected through the behavior of the employees he or she inspires.

QUESTION 2

Hierarchical management levels require these managerial skills but at different capacities since there is a difference in the jobs between the top level, middle level, and low-level managers. All of them are managers but low-level managers, for example, are more involved with the employees since they deal directly with them.

Communication skills as an important managerial skill are squired by all the management levels but the requirement levels are different. Middle-level managers who are mainly departmental heads need good communication skills more than the other management levels since they are the link between top-level and low-level managers. Any breakdown of communication between the two management levels can be a disaster in an organization and thus organizations that have departmental heads with good communication skills are more likely to develop and grow. Low-level managers are the next on the list concerning good communication skills since they have to communicate to the employees directly in their daily jobs. The low-level managers need to communicate to the employees and thus proper channels are needed and one of an essential channel is good communication skills. Overall, all levels of management require good communication skills since communication starts from the top of an organization to the employees. Leadership skills are essential for all levels of management without any special requirement for any level. All managers are leaders starting from top level all the way to low-level managers and therefore they all need to possess leadership skills to guide them in their jobs. As stated earlier, some essential leadership skills include delegation of responsibility and accountability, clear sharing of personal and organizational vision and goals with the employees, innovative and influential by motivating employees, driving effective organizational change, the creation of a good working environment. All these aspects are required by all the management levels. Similar to leadership skills, proper decision-making skills are also a requirement for all managers regardless of the level and do not vary since all managerial level jobs involve making decisions.

It is essential for managers to possess learning skills just as stated by my colleague. Learning skills are based on attitude changes, behavioral changes, and development of knowledge and skills. All these aspects of learning skills are a requirement for the managers. Since learning is related to development, organizations with managers that have good learning skills are bound to grow and develop compared to those that do not have this kind of managers. Apart from proper learning skills improving personal development, they are also critical to the overall organizational development. I agree that learning skills are important for a manager’s job since when they possess such skills, they are able to grow daily and develop their careers. Furthermore, managers with good learning skills can pass the skills to their employees through behavior and attitude change and knowledge growth. With these improvements to the employees of an organization then organizational growth and development can easily be achieved. The three levels of learning skills stated in the easy as a requirement in a manager’s job are instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory learning skills. I agree that all these three types of adult learning skills are critical to a manager since they combine to form effective skills that can aid in the overall individual and organizational growth.

My colleague also pointed out the critical reflection and critical thinking skills as managerial skills required by managers in their jobs. It is true that these skills are essential for self-improvement, especially the critical reflection skills. Critical thinking is however different as it involves more of logical knowledge on a particular aspect. Critical thinking skills often allow managers to enhance their creativity by innovating through a logical reflection of particular issues in their jobs. It is fair to conclude that learning, critical reflection, and critical thinking skills are essential skills required by managers and leaders in performing their duties and responsibilities.