Competition for management jobs intensifies each year. If you are betting your financial welfare on your next management position and subsequent promotions, you will need to be better prepared to capture these increasingly scarce opportuni

Empower Your Inner Manager

Essential Skills, Self-Assessment, and Effective Planning That Secure Successful CareersBy Ian R. Mackintosh

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Ian R. Mackintosh
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-2800-6

Contents

List of Tables.................................................................xiiiPreface........................................................................1Introduction...................................................................9How to Best Utilize This Book..................................................11Part I: Understanding and Assessing Your Management Skills.....................15Fifteen Essential Managerial Skills............................................17Specific Job-Related Skills and Training.......................................21Problem Solving................................................................29Decision Analysis..............................................................39Interpersonal Relati onships/Management Styles.................................49Delegating.....................................................................57Motivating.....................................................................65Planning.......................................................................72Organizing.....................................................................79Controlling....................................................................86Reengineering..................................................................93Team Playing...................................................................101Leading........................................................................109Mentoring......................................................................114Time Management................................................................121Public Speaking/Presenting.....................................................128Part I Summary.................................................................136Part II: Creating Your Development Plan........................................139Effective Self-Assessment......................................................141Dynamic Self-Development.......................................................147Part II Summary................................................................150Conclusion.....................................................................151References/Resources...........................................................153About the Author...............................................................155

Chapter One

Fifteen Essential Managerial Skills

So what is this skill set that we should consider and select from in order to pursue your personal development? Let's consider the following generic capabilities that an expert and competitively attractive management candidate should want to possess, understand, and have largely mastered:

1. Specific job-related skills and training

2. Problem solving

3. Decision analysis

4. Interpersonal relationships/management styles

5. Delegating

6. Motivating

7. Planning

8. Organizing

9. Controlling

10. Reengineering

11. Team playing

12. Leading

13. Mentoring

14. Time management

15. Public speaking/presenting

How to Make the Most Effective Use of This List

Truly this is a formidable list, but what many of you will discover is that your skills are already quite sound or serviceable, good, or even excellent in any number of these competence areas, even if you have deficiencies requiring immediate improvement in other areas. Let me reemphasize once again that our aim is not to teach you how to gain or develop any or all of these skills, but to help you assess your current level of skills—mastery, adequacy, or deficiency. Thus, what we must quickly do is document that set of skills which is unique to you. Armed with this, you can then put a simple plan in place that recognizes deficiencies, earmarks development plans, and yet lets you immediately put from your mind those issues where you now know your skills are acceptable and can be leveraged as is, and also where you excel so that you can showcase your best talents. Our goal is to create a concise, reliable, and honest self-assessment that will enable you to formulate an effective and workable career/ personal development plan.

The elegance of this plan is its efficiency. No longer are you constrained by waiting for company training that may or may not be forthcoming; no longer do you have to wait and hope for a management position that may belatedly bring you the development skills you already need. Now you can also be free from canned schemes that address the needs of many but that are not personalized to your specific development needs. Remember that the information presented in the following sections will enable you to quickly recognize where you excel (mastery), where you are average (adequacy), and where you need to improve (deficiency). This will then allow you to select those elements that will best enhance your personal chances and your prominence in the eyes of those able to select you for that key management position you desire. After all, if you proactively demonstrate the skills of that next position or opportunity, who wouldn't choose you in order to assist with their own staffing situation or business needs?

So let us proceed. In the following sections we will look at each of the fifteen individual management skills listed above, briefly describe what they are, and provide you with the tools you need to assess your current level of capability. After this, we will help you prioritize the elements in a development plan. Moving forward, you can either select one or two higher elements of concern for your development, or lay out a complete long-term development plan that will carry you through for years. It is your own choice whether to work on a few immediate essentials, a long-term plan, or even a single item. Again, this gives you the ability to make the best use of your time, resources, and energy by streamlining your focus into an effective, realistic, goal-oriented purpose.

In the future, you may choose to redefine or revisit the road map for your personal development. You always have the opportunity to return to this reference material to reassess yourself in light of changed responsibilities, additional personal development, and anything else pertinent. In this way, you will always have a tool at the ready to reassess what you should focus upon next. The process is simple to follow and easy to repeat in the future.

The basic skill-set definitions for managers will change little over the years. You, however, will develop and enhance your own abilities as the weeks and years pass. Whatever competence level you attain in any specific management skill area, you can (and really should) always have a prioritized list of those elements you still want and/or need to enhance. Something you possess adequacy in now might require mastery in order to obtain the position you desire—or you might just need such mastery in the future, regardless—thus, awareness of your own skill set at any given moment is crucial to your success. So, at any critical time in your future, you can readily return to this reference material, reevaluate yourself, and quickly redefine the customized development in which you personally need to invest in order to ensure that you succeed in achieving your goals.

Key Points to Remember

This list of fifteen essential managerial...