Top 15 Management Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

Top 15 Management Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

If you are in a managerial position, you will have the responsibilities to manage both people and material resource.

And to do this effectively, you will need to utilize management skills in dealing with your team to get them to operate at high efficiency, and to achieve set goals.

This post presents major management skills and qualities to imbibe to be successful in your managerial duties and responsibilities.

Please, read on:

Who is a Manager?

A manager is someone in the company who is tasked with the duty of overseeing the activities of a department or the business as a whole.

So, the manager can be seen as one who has oversight over a department or a business as a whole.

Top 15 Management Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

Here are proven skills and qualities for success as a manager

Organization skill
Listening skills
Conflict management
Communication skills
Time management
Patience
Leadership skill
Coaching skills
Open mindedness
Delegation
Pressure management
Good planning
Analytical skills
Problem solving skills
Business acumen.

Organization skill

Being a manager is a call to organize people and activities in the workplace. There is no running or shying away from this.

You have to build and reinvent yourself to be able to organize people in the workplace and help them do the right thing at all times.

Also, it is necessary for you to organize yourself first before you should proceed to trying to organize other people in the workplace.

First thing first, plan and organize your activities in the workplace, then you will be able to teach them how to do things.

Organizing people in the workplace is a sign of professionalism and strong work ethic.

You should be able to help people under you organize their labor and seek for help where the laid down plans are not working out fine. Do it for them.

Listening skills

Do you know that your listening skills should be better than your talking skills as a manager?

There is the temptation to always find yourself in the talking end of every conversation by reason of your position as a manager but you have to be a better listener to be a better talker.

You should be able to listen to what others in the workplace are saying about activities in the organization pertaining to your job.

It is important to do that in order to know where you are making mistakes or not meeting up to standard.

When you are a good listener, you will gain more understanding about the expectations of people (employer and subordinates) regarding you.

Sometimes, you need to allow employees under you to make suggestions to you; it has the ability to improve your job.

Conflict management

Conflict management is one of the most important skills you should have as a manager in any company you work for.

Conflict management is required to resolve issues between employees or between employees and the employer.

It is important that you are braced for conflict in the workplace.

As a manager of many people (employees), it is important that you are well skilled in handling conflicts between them.

This is because if you don’t, you will be working with a divided team of workers and this will definitely undermine your personal effort as the manager.

Also know that you are a mediator between the employees under you and the employer above you.

Sometimes there might be a discontentment among the employees about the employer’s working style.

Take up the matter and know what to do to solve the problem within your capacity.

Else, if it is allowed to continue, you might be faced with mutiny in the workplace and this can be catastrophic.

Communication skills

If there is one person that demands that you constantly stay in touch, it is the employer.

The employer will appreciate it if you can stay in touch always and relay the state of the company to him/her.

It will help the employer to be better placed to handle more responsibilities.
Also, the people working under your supervision will be happy if you can also stay in touch with them.

As a manager, you are also a coach and this involves you training and guiding them to maturing on the job.

This is where you will need to be in constant touch with the employees.

Communication, be it written or oral should be timely and should be something your employees should be able to work with.

If you want employees to do something, it is important that you tell them on time to help them make the necessary preparation and give it their best.

Time management

Time means a lot to everybody in the business world. In the business world, be it inside or outside the organization, you should be able to make sure you manage your time and other people’s time effectively.

This implies that you plan your meetings and activities well enough to avoid waste of time.

One way to save or manage time in the course of administering your duties is to engage in structured planning.

In structured planning, you have to take cognizance of jobs involved and prioritizing them.

When you prioritize them, you will be able to channel your time and energy more on the most productive activities.

When you do not prioritize your activities, you will find yourself acting in a disorganized manner.

That is, you will see yourself doing a whole lot of things all at the same time and by that stressing out yourself unnecessarily because of bad planning.

Patience

Working with the people in the working place is certainly a hectic task, especially when you see that they are not responding to coaching or not meeting up with the required output.

First of all is that you will need to be patient with them.

Don’t compare yourself with them as you may not be so sure about what might be the cause for their inability to work effectively.

It can be due to personal issues that are weighing them down.

Family issues can also be the cause. You just have to help overcome their challenges.

When dealing with employees, you also need to be patient. Though they might have good grades from school, yet practically they may be lagging behind.

So, in order to accommodate their slow pace of learning, you have to be patient.

Leadership skill

To be a good manager means that you have to show yourself to be a capable leader in the workplace.

Being a leader demands that you should be an example of what you want the employees under you to be.

Some skills need to come to the fore for you to be tagged a leader in your workplace.

One of the skills is sufficient knowledge of various job descriptions in the workplace.

This means that you should be able to diversify your knowledge about possibly most jobs available in the company.

You don’t have to be just knowledgeable in your own job, but in other job areas too, as this will help you become a better coach and leader to your employees in the workplace.

Be versatile and also develop yourself in other aspects of the company’s job descriptions.

Coaching skills

A manager is a leader and also a coach. A manager imparts knowledge to the employees under him/her.

He/she is meant to be someone that intimidates the employees about the short term and long term visions, goals, and aspirations of the organization.

Also, he/she serves as an adviser in areas where any employee experiences difficulties in executing his/her job.

Out of his/her wealth of experience and professionalism, he/she offers solutions to job related problems experienced by employees.

Also, as a supervisor, he/she monitors the work rate of the employees and try to figure out how best to work on the employees to make sure they operate at full capacity.

This is what makes you a coach over the employee, not necessarily by position.

Open mindedness

To be a better manager demands that you have to accept appraisals as well as criticisms from people within the organization.

You give room for people to suggest to you what you need to be more successful in your job.

It can come from your superior or as a suggestion from your subordinates in the office.

Also, dealing with criticisms shows how open-minded you can be. Open-mindedness will definitely help you deal with your weaknesses in the course of doing your job.

As difficult as it may be, it is important that you remain open-minded at all times.

Some people don’t like this because sometimes the approach people use might be displeasing, but however they show up, swallow the bitter pill and move on with your job.

Delegation

The team is not all about you and is not a platform to showcase individualistic tendencies.

You have to think about yourself and about the employees too. You have to find a way to keep them motivated and keep improving them from time to time through delegation.

When you delegate some employees to do certain jobs, you afford them the opportunity to acquire some experience which will definitely be of help to them both in the now and the future.

You have to afford them that opportunity.

Delegating tasks is a human/people management skill. It is a skill you use to get the best out of the people under your influence in the workplace.

There is no need to overstress yourself when you have people who can help you do some of the jobs in the office. It is beneficial to you too.

Pressure management

The work of a manager is a job that comes with pressure. It is true and is something to lookout for.

As unpleasing and uncomfortable as it might be, it is largely unpreventable; pressure will come both from within and without.

So, what do you do?

There are some mechanisms you can put in place to help you minimize pressure that comes by reason of stress and other physical factors.

One of those mechanisms is the mechanism of delegation. It is one way to handle pressure.

Also, learn to be calm in difficult situations. Though pressure is not preventable, however, you can manage yourself well to handle pressure moments.

It is not out of place if you routinely take time out to be alone either in the office or during break hours and regain your strength.

Good planning

A good manager is supposed to be a good planner. In every phase of your job as a manager, you have to plan your way out of situations and circumstances that are militating against the smooth execution of your job.

As a manager in the workplace, you have to be strategic with your plans, both in the handling of staff in the workplace and the clients out there.

You have a two way planning to do and this is a true test of your usefulness in the workplace.

Also, when planning, it is necessary that you have hindsight, insight, and foresight.

These three elements should come into play in your planning. Your plans should correct the mistakes of yesterday and should take cognizance of what is obtainable now.

It should also take into consideration the possibility of change occuring in the future.

Analytical skills

As critical as your job is, so is the place of analysis in the execution of your job.

Your job demands someone that has the ability to think deeply and to analyze situations and events way beyond what can be seen from the surface.

When adverse situations arise, it is necessary for you to be analytical both in your assessment and interpretation of facts.

Sometimes, you may have to be patient enough for you to be able to effectively analyze problems or challenges for you to come up with meaningful solution.

Analytical skill is the first step towards problem solving.

Anyone who wants to be a good problem solver must first be an analytical thinker.

You need to think things through before deciding your next line of action, else you are more likely to make mistakes in your decisions.

Problem solving skills

Business ventures are always faced with challenges from day to day. Some are preventable while some are not.

Either way, you have to brace up and face the challenges squarely.

The challenges in the workplace demand that your problem solving skills should be top notch.

A good manager works towards combating future challenges. He/she is of the notion that there is a lot to learn through overcoming challenges in the workplace.

This is not to say that challenges are pleasant, but they are necessary for gaining experience on the job.

To an extent, part of problem solving skills is to make sure that loopholes that lead to certain problems in the workplace are fixed to prevent further damage.

Sometimes, some of the problems faced in the workplace are products of negligence and unprofessionalism.

So, that has to be fixed to get the problems solved.

Business acumen

The essence of starting a company or business organization is to render services in order to make profits.

So, to that effect, as the manager, you have to be versatile in business knowledge.

This is achievable through regular improvement and upgrade of your business acumen.

This will ensure that you are well placed to maintain the business goal and aspirations of the company you are working for.

Without good business acumen, you just cannot improve the quality of output in the organization.

Quality of output and marketing skills are the two factors that can make your company a heavy presence in the business world and that has a lot to do with you.

Management Skills for Resume

If you are making a resume or CV for a leadership or managerial position, you can apply the above management skills and qualities discussed.

This will give your resume a boost as employers/recruiters will be more favorable at inviting you to an interview as they are convinced that you have the right skills and qualities to be effective on the job.

However, you need to first possess or develop the management skills presented above before using them in your resume or CV.

Conclusion

As someone holding managerial responsibilities, you need to apply management skills to be able to effectively work your team and achieve your goals.

This post provides major management skills and qualities you should develop or imbibe in your work.