15 Important Senior Manager Skills and Qualities for Career Success

15 Important Senior Manager Skills and Qualities for Career Success

This post provides detailed information on the skills and qualities a senior manager should have to be effective in their jobs, irrespective of the industry they might be in.

Please, read on:

Who is a Senior Manager?

A senior manager is one hired or appointed to oversee the affairs of different departments of a company.

In different departments, managers are appointed but the senior manager is known to be the manager of other managers.

15 Important Senior Manager Skills and Qualities for Career Success

Here are major senior manager skills and qualities to develop to be top in your career:

1. Leadership skill
2. Basic communication skill
3. Progressive learning
4. Creativity
5. Motivation
6. Goal driven
7. Delegation
8. Open mindedness
9. Conflict resolution
10. Hindsight
11. Insight
12. Foresight
13. Good planning
14. Organizational skill
15. Integrity.

1. Leadership skill

The senior manager role in an organization is one that demands a lot of leadership skill.

As a senior manager, you are tasked with exercising control and organizing a whole lot of individuals in the organization or workplace as the case may be.

To be effective in your role as the senior manager, one leadership skill you have to consider working with every day is influence.

Influencing the workers under you to do something must not be solely dependent on barking out orders.

Another leadership skill you need to have to succeed in your role as a senior manager is ability to learn.

Ability to learn from mistakes is one factor that can help you lead effectively.

Dealing with people will somehow bring out some flaws in you but your ability to learn from your mistakes will make you a better manager.

2. Basic communication skill

A senior manager is in a position where he/she has to relay information to people in the workplace.

He/she is not expected to be someone who struggles to communicate with people.

The inability to communicate effectively can really cause some undesired problems in the workplace.

Therefore, a senior manager is expected to be skilled in communicating with people in and outside the workplace because they have to relay messages in the workplace.

People under you need to know what the details of their job are both at the moment and in the future.

You also have to let them know some basic things about the organization.

Finally, remember that as a senior manager, you are more or less a coach to workers under your supervision.

Coaching is not possible if you cannot communicate effectively with the people you are expected to coach.

Let your communication be meaningful and purposeful.

3. Progressive learning

The moment we cease to learn we cease to progress in our careers regardless of our job description.

Success in your job is largely dependent on your ability to improve yourself individually.

You need to know that the knowledge you had yesterday or have today might turn out to be obsolete tomorrow, so, there is need to upgrade your knowledge.

Progressive learning means that you make deliberate effort to know more than you know now.

It is possible that you went to college to study management, but understand that is not enough to make you a good senior manager.

You have to deliberately make effort to know more beyond what you acquire from school.

When you progressive learn about new techniques or methodologies, your problem solving skills will improve too.

It is a natural phenomenon which you need to work on.

No matter the level you find yourself at the moment, there is a greater height to scale and that is dependent on your ability to know better than you know now.

4. Creativity

There is always a better way to do things, a better way to handle issues and a better way to get the best out of people in the workplace.

It is not impossible to have a team of workers who are at the top of their job and desire to be better.

It all starts with you the senior manager. To be a successful senior manager, you have to be creative in your thinking, actions, and analysis.

You need to avoid being too conventional always. Creativity makes you unpredictable in a good way.

When you are creative in your job, you will be able to find better ways to do things.

5. Motivation

A motivated team is definitely a winning team, and a demotivated team is a losing team.

One thing you should look out for in your team should always be their motivation level.

Your team of workers cannot do beyond what their motivation is.

Motivating your team should be your daily target. It is not just motivating them but keeping them motivated always.

Learn to make them believe in their abilities and in what they are capable of achieving if they keep their motivation high.

It is not to say that things will always workout the way they are planned.

Sometimes, it is possible that the team may not achieve the results they hoped for.

This is where you have to motivate them and get them back on their feet again.

6. Goal driven

Working without a goal in sight is like having no reason for doing what you do.

When operating in your job, set out both your personal goals and also goals for the team to achieve.

It is necessary to do this as this will be a yardstick to measure the success of the team and indirectly your own success too.

Your goal should be good enough to pull you out of your comfort zone. It shouldn’t be something common.

When you have a mammoth goal to achieve, you don’t get satisfied on old success; rather you push harder to achieve a feat greater than what you have achieved in the past.

When you are goal driven, it rubs off on your team members. Sometimes, all they need to see from you is that desire to succeed.

When your hard work matches your success, it becomes very easily to make them believe in themselves and work on their personal goals.

7. Delegation

It is safe to assume that as a senior manager you have a lot on your hands to accomplish every day.

It is also safe to assume that you want to achieve your goals as quickly as possible.

These things are true and are the concerns for anyone in the office of a senior manager.

Despite these factors heaping up pressure on your shoulders, there is a way out of the wilderness for you.

That is delegation.

Delegation makes your work easier and smoother.

Working as the topmost figure in your group shouldn’t make you write off the abilities of others to act in your capacity if the need arises.

Delegation is one way you can make your strength and mental balance.

However, care should be taken not to entirely overlook the activities of your delegate(s).

This is because should anything go wrong, you will bear the brunt of the criticism. So wisdom is needed in this scenario.

8. Open mindedness

You may not be completely perfect in your job. You will at some time be involved in some errors or mistakes.

You will need to be corrected whether by a superior or by a subordinate in the form of a suggestion or an advice.

Try to listen and implement the corrections where needed.

To do this will definitely be possible if you are open-minded in your job.

Open mindedness will help you accept criticism; analyze the criticisms and make the necessary corrections where needed.

You don’t have to lock up your mind from criticisms.

Sometimes, you have to listen to members of your team to know the way forward.

Being the senior manager does not in any way mean that the members of your team should not be allowed to make suggestions to you, it can help you go far on your job.

9. Conflict resolution

The team that you have is made up of different individuals that think differently.

You have to understand that and prepare for conflict or clash of interest from them.

This is almost inevitable where you have people from different background.

If you understand this fact, you will be better placed to handle conflicts when they do arise.

Conflict resolution is one skill that demands patience and critical analysis.

You need to analyze conflicts and set up mechanisms to help prevent them rising to a full blown and unmanageable crisis.

This is your job and something you have to learn to do always.

When resolving conflicts in the workplace, it is important you give no hint to the parties involved that you are taking side.

Try as much as you can to deal with conflicts professionally rather than sentimentally.

There is no place for favoritism when resolving conflicts.

10. Hindsight

By applying hindsight, we mean preventing mistakes that shook your job from happening again.

As earlier stated, at some point in your job, you might get involved in unintentional mistakes, that is normal but what is not normal is if you allow it to happen again.

Hindsight helps you keep in mind the mistake(s) you made that affected your job negatively in the past and doing all you can to avoid a repeat it.

When you allow mistakes to happen time and time again, it shows a level of irresponsibility on your part as a senior manager.

Mistakes may not be from you directly but from your subordinates in the workplace.

Through the power of hindsight, you should be able to help them prevent mistakes from happening frequently. Your experience counts in this case.

11. Insight

Insight is the ability to analyze issues or events in relation to what is obtainable in the contemporary time.

There is a place for the past, and there is a place for the present.

You have to be aware of what is obtainable presently to avoid making fatal mistakes in your job.

This refers to knowing what is needed or required of you presently to be able to succeed in your job.

By reason of the high rate of competition for the number of jobs available, the bar has been raised to a level that you will need to step up your skills.

So, before you think of climbing to the top in your present job, you have to be sure that you have what it takes to take you there.

It is failure on your side to think that the knowledge of yesterday is enough to sustain you today. It is not safe to assume that.

12. Foresight

When you have hindsight you can prevent future mistakes, when you have insight you can be balanced in your job, but when you have foresight you can easily predict the future and prepare well for it.

In your job, there is need for you to prepare for future changes and get ready, and develop yourself to match what the future may throw at you in your job.

Don’t rest on your laurels, upgrade yourself and acquire more skills. That is how to put the power of foresight to use.

If you want to develop yourself for the future, you have to keep improving yourself mentally and physically.

You have to deliberately attend seminars, workshops, and other training programs. This will prepare you for the future changes.

13. Good planning

Planning your activities in the organization is one sure way to escape being tagged irresponsible.

It is not a good idea to wake up any day without a clear plan of what you want to achieve in your job.

That is tantamount to irresponsibility and clear indication of purposelessness.

When you are working as a senior manager, you need to outline your goals and make a good plan on how to achieve them.

Trying to take the day the way it appears will make you lose relevance with time and threaten your job in the long run.

Also, try to plan not just for the events of the day, but also for events in the next few weeks, months, and years in extreme cases.

Try not to leave things to chance, thinking that things will work out by themselves without proper planning.

14. Organizational skill

Organizational skill shouldn’t be stressed because it is something you know as a leader that serves as an acid test to your ability to effectively do your job.

Organizational skill can be developed over time. However, you should have the basic knowledge of how to organize people to start with.

Organizing human beings has never been an easy job. So, you just have to keep developing your organizational skills to make you more effective and potent in handling human related issues. This will help you a lot.

15. Integrity

What you are known for in the workplace is a product of your average character and lifestyle over a long period of time.

This means that you have to be careful not to paint a wrong picture of your personality in and outside the organization.

You have to be mindful of what you say and what people think about you in your job.

Try as much as you can to discard behaviors that do not aid in projecting you in a good light to the people in the workplace.

This will definitely play a role in your job either for good or for bad.

Also, be sure to say exactly what you do and don’t be known for double standards.

You have to be able to stand by what you say and not be tossed about by waves of opinion.

Do what is good in the interest of the company and not just what is pleasing to you.

Senior Manager Skills for Resume

If you are making a new resume or CV for a senior manager position, it will be beneficial to include some of the skills and qualities discussed above in the core competence or skills section of the resume.

This can boost your chances with the recruiter/employer as it shows that you are competent for the senior manager job and will be effective in it.

You should however ensure that you actually possess the above senior manager skills and qualities; otherwise it will be wrong and deceptive to apply them in your resume when you don’t have them.

Conclusion

The job of a senior manager is a sensitive one which can be pivotal to the fortunes of companies or workplaces.

You therefore need to have certain skills and qualities to be effective in your job and take your career to a higher level.