Top 15 Development Management Skills for Career Success

This post provides exhaustive information on the development management skills and qualities you need to have to be successful in your career as a development manager.

Please, read on:

Development is what everyone clamors for, be it in government, education, religion, or other spheres of life.

It is a wish and a desire for development to be more regular in our everyday life.

One aspect of life that demands a lot of development is the business world.

As good as the business world is, there is still the need for more development to be made.

For this reason, companies who desire to make more impact in the marketplace employ professionals who are capable and tasked with the duty of development management.

Who is a Development Manager?

A development manager is a person in a company or a business organization whose duty is to make strategic and workable plans, which are geared towards expanding the business, and to create avenue to establish a more workable relationship with the customers.

Therefore, the expansion of a business is the business of a development manager.

Here are major skills and qualities you need to have to become top in your job as a development manager:

Research Skills
Analytical Skills
Problem Solving Skills
Flexibility
Goal Oriented
Calmness/Pressure Management
Creativity
Passion for Success
Organizational Skills
Knowledge of the Market
Negotiation Skills
Interpersonal Skills
Good Business Skills
Communication Skills
Confidence.

Research Skills

Considering the fact that your job description puts you in a position where you are actively involved in the development of the business and making new inroads in the marketplace, it is pertinent to know that the beginning of your success is from the point of research.

You have to be good at research and also encourage your team of development management to be too.

You should develop the insatiable hunger to find out more and acquire new and relevant knowledge as it concerns your job description.

Your research skills can further your analytical and problem solving skills also.

This is to say that if you are a good researcher, you are more likely to be a good problem solver.

You can also learn from some notable individuals in the industry to know how best to carry out your research.

Analytical Skills

If you have made your research successfully, the next step is to conduct a critical analysis of your findings.

You do your thorough examination to know how relevant the data you have at hand is in regards to what is demanded of you.

When considering the findings from your research, you should be careful enough not to neglect the little details.

Work with every detail you have at your disposal because they are all important, if not for the time being probably in the future.

Also, when faced with new challenges in your job and other related issues in the workplace, you have to be analytical to avoid making rash decisions.

You have to be calm in adverse conditions in the workplace and think things through for you to be able to spring up with meaningful solutions.

Problem Solving Skills

Your worth is in your ability to solve prevailing problems in your job or other related issues in the workplace or in the marketplace in some cases.

You have to be apt in your approach to problems and should be ready to confront some challenges that emerge in your workplace.

For you to be able to solve problems, it is assumed that you have done your research in your own way, analyze your findings, and have a work plan which can be employed to solve the existing or future problems.

The essence of this is to minimize errors in decision making.

Also, understand that personal development is necessary for you to enhance this skill in yourself.

With regular study and training, you should be able to develop the capacity to handle some awkward situations even when you are not anticipating them.

Flexibility

As much as there are well known approaches to some challenges or issues in the workplace in regards to your job description, yet it is necessary to understand that situations may warrant you to make do with other methods of doing things contrary to your expectations.

This is due to the fact that change is constant and is something that can happen at any time.

You have to anticipate changes and develop sufficient capacity to face negative changes headlong knowing fully well that if you succeed with the new change, it is a plus to your resume.

Flexibility works hand in hand with adaptability but not the same.

Being a flexible development manager means you are able to work with different people and different methods as long as you arrive at your goal at the end of the day.

Goal Oriented

Your goal as a development manager is not just for you to analyze problems but to get practical work plans to help your organization get more presence in the marketplace.

This should be your number goal considering the fact that that is the reason you were hired in the first place.

So, your goal starts from having the organizational goal in mind and doing your best together with your team to achieve it.

You should be able to challenge yourself and your team to aim higher and see the organizational goal as the minimum success they can achieve.
Not to neglect your personal goals, you should work harder to become better than you are today.

There is a room for improvement and to improve demands conscious effort from you to do things better and in a better way.

That is a proof that you have your dreams alive.

Calmness/Pressure Management

There is no doubt that you will find yourself under pressure from time to time by reason of what your job entails.

There is no gainsaying that your job requires that you produce practical solutions to the developmental needs of the organization where you work.

The pressure can be managed if you have a structured plan on how to execute your findings.

The pressure is bound to increase when you are not organized in your approach to your job.

It puts you in a situation where you are left with several decisions to make even when you have no clear plan on what to do.

Also, the expectations from your employer can pose to be a great concern and pressure to you if your boss develops the perception that you are not performing to the expected level.

You have to keep calm and still do your best to match the expectations of your employer.

Creativity

There is no better way to show your class other than through creativity.

Creativity makes a difference in your job and career and can be the determining factor for your promotion to bigger roles.

Employers don’t joke with creative minds.

So, as a development manager, it is important for you to know that you are entitled to do your thing your own way as long as it yields the needed result in the workplace.

You shouldn’t be afraid to experiment some methods no matter how unpopular they might be.

Also, from the knowledge you have and the researches you make regularly, you should be able to think outside the box and do something new or differently.

This is the hallmark of every good development manager. Creativity should be what you are known for.

Passion for Success

One thing that can help you achieve your personal goals and your team or company goals is in your ability to have strong passion for what you do.

Success in your job does not happen by magic; rather it requires unrelenting passion to make it happen.

Your passion to succeed should be stronger than your fear of failure.

There is always a little atom of uncertainty surrounding the future but that should not overshadow your passion to succeed, no matter how bleak the future looks.

When your passion for success is sky-high, it propels you to take some courageous steps towards achieving your goals.

It also gives you a reason to continue doing your best in your job even when other factors fail you.

So, keep the passion alive.

Organizational Skills

Though a lot of success will be down to your individual brilliance, it is important for you to know that you may not be able to experience complete success if you do not help other people in the team to get the job done.

You are the leader of the team and you should propel them to give it their best.

This is where you will need organizational skills. With your team of intellectual gurus who are skill in one aspect or the other, you should be able to organize the manpower made available to you to be able to manage time and deliver expected results.

To be able to organize your team well, they should be abreast with the demands of the organization and what their individual inputs should be.

This is followed by good supervision to avoid laxity and other problems that arise due to lack of supervision.

Knowledge of the Market

The marketplace will keep changing from time to time, which means that anyone who desires to be a development manager should be able to know the state of the market at every point in time.

A day or a week is enough to experience a change in the marketplace.

To this effect, you should be able to have topnotch research skills and be collaborative in your job to help you keep in touch with present realities in the industry.

You really need to do this for you to make your job easier and reliable over time.

You are not expected to just have an idea on what the industry situation is but also have the ability to predict what the future holds, making reference to past and present trends.

This is what knowledge of the market is expected to do for you.

Negotiation Skills

A good development manager must be well skilled when it comes to negotiation.

Negotiation is an integral part of business life and activity. You have to be good at negotiating the best deals for customers and the company too.

Part of your job is to negotiate with either customers or other relevant stakeholders in the business world to help make your company a huge presence in the marketplace.

So, getting good deals and keeping the company afloat relies on your ability to negotiate well.

In working with other stake holders apart from the customers, you have to be adept with the demands of the jobs of other parties to determine what a good deal should be.

Remember that everyone wants to have maximum profit, which should also make you learn to negotiate.

Interpersonal Skills

Working to be successful is not just down to what you can do with your mental ability, it also has a lot to do with your ability to build meaningful relationships geared towards providing you with the necessary leverage to do better in business.

To establish and maintain a good working relationship, you need to have some interpersonal skills.

Interpersonal skills help you to work with people cordially, both in the workplace and in the marketplace.

Interpersonal skills are important to succeeding in career and business.

Interpersonal skills include empathy, patience, and delegation, and motivation.

Good Business Skills

Being a development manager exposes you to the business world. Having good business skills is something to have because it is the foundation of your job.

It is foundational to your success and it is also foundational to you accomplishing your goals.

By business skills we mean the skills you need to maintain cordial relationship with customers and still maintain good returns in the form of profits for your company.

Business skills however can be upgraded due to the ever changing nature of the marketplace and the introduction of technology that makes things easier.

So it is necessary that you develop your business skills regularly to stay abreast with the latest demands in the marketplace.

Communication Skills

It is important that you are well learned in the communication department to be able to relay your ideas and findings to the team and the employer.

To work and organize your team effectively requires that you establish a good communication channel, which will enable you to relay your message and get the organization to understand your stand on certain issues.

You should be good at both oral and written forms of communication.

There is nothing that takes the place of communication. To be a good communicator, you should be skilled to align your body language to speak more volume than what you say.

And also, you should be well skilled in the various forms of communication to be able to make use of any depending on your audience.

Confidence

It is not a good sight to behold when a development manager is not confident of what to expect from the marketplace.

It is good that you be confident in yourself because that will be a building block upon which you can instill confidence in the minds of your team members and the company you represent.

Confidence springs from the well of experience. When you have vast experience in the business world, it becomes easy to build confidence over what the future holds for the business world and your company particularly.

Another thing that boosts confidence is effective and structured planning, which outlines the challenges to be faced and detailed steps to annihilate those challenges.

This produces confidence in you as the development manager and your team as a whole.

Development Management Skills for Resume

If you are writing a new resume for a development manager position, you can create an impressive skills section for your resume by applying the skills and qualities discussed above.

That means you have to first develop the above development management skills and qualities and then highlight them in the skills section of your resume.

This will help to clearly show to prospective employers/recruiters that you have the right skills and qualities for the development manager role.

Conclusion

The prospect of becoming a development manager should not be seen as a walkover from you except you can boast of many of the skills mentioned above.

By having the skills and qualities discussed on this page, you are sure to having a successful career as a development manager.