5: Managerial skills and roles

Section 1: Managerial Skills and Roles

Understanding managerial skills and roles is fundamental to Organizational Behavior (OB), defining what managers do and the capabilities they need to be effective. This knowledge helps explain how managers influence individuals, groups, and the entire organization.

Core Managerial Skills (Katz's Taxonomy):
Robert Katz identified three essential skill sets crucial at all management levels, though their relative importance shifts:

1. Technical Skills: Proficiency in specific tasks, processes, and procedures relevant to a particular job or function. These are most vital for first-line managers directly supervising operational work (e.g., using specialized software, understanding production machinery).
2. Human (Interpersonal) Skills: The ability to work effectively with, understand, and motivate people – subordinates, peers, superiors, and external stakeholders. This encompasses communication, empathy, conflict resolution, leadership, and team building. These skills are critically important at every level of management, as all involve interaction.
3. Conceptual Skills: The mental capacity to analyze complex situations, understand abstract ideas, see the organization as a whole system, recognize interrelationships among parts, and think strategically. These skills become increasingly vital at higher management levels (e.g., top executives formulating long-term strategy).

Managerial Roles (Mintzberg's Framework):
Henry Mintzberg challenged the traditional view of management as merely planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Through observation, he identified ten distinct roles managers perform, grouped into three categories:

1. Interpersonal Roles: Focus on relationships and symbolic duties.
   • Figurehead: Performing ceremonial/symbolic duties (e.g., hosting visitors, signing legal documents).
   • Leader: Motivating, training, coaching, and influencing subordinates.
   • Liaison: Maintaining networks of contacts outside the vertical chain of command for information and favors.
2. Informational Roles: Focus on receiving, processing, and transmitting information.
   • Monitor: Seeking and receiving internal and external information relevant to the organization.
   • Disseminator: Transmitting information received from outsiders or subordinates to members inside the organization.
   • Spokesperson: Representing the organization to outsiders, transmitting information on plans, policies, and results.
3. Decisional Roles: Focus on using information to make choices and take action.
   • Entrepreneur: Initiating and designing planned change to improve the organization.
   • Disturbance Handler: Taking corrective action during unexpected problems or conflicts.
   • Resource Allocator: Deciding where and how to apply organizational resources (e.g., money, people, time, equipment).
   • Negotiator: Representing the organization in major bargaining sessions with other parties (e.g., unions, key suppliers).

Mastering the appropriate blend of skills and effectively navigating these diverse, often simultaneous, roles is critical for managerial success. It highlights the dynamic, multifaceted nature of managing within complex organizations.