Management Skills

Career consultant and executive coach Tony Charles of Cardiff-based Tony Charles Associates looks at the importance of good management skills in a changing global economy.

During more than 20 years of career and executive coaching with senior managers in Wales it has surprised me that so many have had little formal management training.  Yet many have been tremendously successful and have become true business leaders in Wales and beyond.

The view held by some people, that to be successful, one had to be very academically bright, go to university and undertake lots of professional training may be misplaced.  In reality, many successful managers, business people and entrepreneurs have left school at 16 years of age, gone straight into a career and worked their way up from the bottom to the top through hard work, good people skills and commitment.

Once upon a time it was thought that individuals with high intelligence (IQ) would be successful.  But this has long been superseded by other ideas from business psychologists and replaced by other theories such as Emotional Intelligence.  These theories look more at personal and social competence.  Factors such as self-awareness, motivation, empathy and social skills have become recognised as sometimes being very important than academic/specific knowledge.

So no wonder some of the business gurus in the US relate things like success to being about successful relationship building.  For example, sales guru Ron Willingham says, “People do business with those they know and trust.”   Here in Wales, some of the most successful business people are the ones with excellent networking skills.

So how can we continue to develop a successful business economy here in Wales bearing in mind the need for academic intelligence and practical business skills?    Well clearly, management training and development are still vital, even though some of the largest global companies in Wales do not invest substantially in management training.

Good induction and support for an executive in a new role is vital.  Also, it is important for both the organisation and the individual to have identified clear performance goals.  Recent research is indicating that more than 40% of middle managers ‘fail’ in the early stages of a new appointment and do not survive the ‘honeymoon’ period.

Monitoring of key performance indicatiors, mentoring and support are important ingredients for success, as is training and continuing professional development.  Yet  many senior executives are so busy juggling a multiplicity of demanding issues in the new global competitive market place that these things get ignored.

But there are some new positive trends.  Executive coaching in Wales is on the increase as a tool to improve individual and business performance.  The recent establishment of Coaching and Mentoring Wales (CAMW), arising out of a Wales Management Council report, will further assist the development of coaching.

Coaching involves regular sessions over an agreed period with an external coach and offers managers and executives the opportunity to become even more effective in the organisation. 

Coaching can involve -

·         management theory and tools

·         practical discussion of key personal and business issues

·         use of materials to reinforce and reference issues

·         practical application of issues covered in coaching

·         discussion of their application and effectiveness.

Many managers who undertake coaching often wonder where they need to focus attention.  After all, if you have had little management training, can you identify the areas in which you need to develop?  How do you know what you are missing? 

Initially, psychometric profiling or some other forms of self-analysis can help, as can any recent appraisal information or interview feedback data.  It is important that any coaching support is shaped to the needs of the individual executive, rather than the executive experiencing a standard ‘one size fits all’ programme.

My experience of working with senior executives in the £50k - £300k salary band over the last few years prompts me to list some of the key management issues below and suggest that executives should ask themselves how confident they are in each of the areas on a scale of 1 – 10.

• Understanding yourself – your skills, strengths, etc.

• Understanding your personality and how this relates to other people’s styles.

• Practising good communication and presentation skills

• Managing change and business improvement

• Managing relations – conflict management and organisational politics

• Team management skills – motivation, delegation

• Undertaking effective recruitment, selection and development

• Planning and strategy

• Project management

• Exercising good leadership skills

• Managing work life balance

• Managing your career for the long term

• Managing the first 100 days in a new role

There are many other areas that can be identified and explored.    The problem is that most of us spend more time choosing our summer holidays than we do managing our careers.  Career management is not self-indulgent.  It’s essential in a new global economy where, in many organisations, the notion of a ‘job for life’ has gone. The employment psychological contract has been recast resulting in all of us having to become more personally responsible for the management of our careers.

Tony Charles is an experienced management consultant specialising in career consulting, executive coaching, outplacement and psychometrics and works for corporate clients undergoing change.

www.tonycharlesassociates.com

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