The exact skills required to be an effective manager can depend on the area within which you are to operate - performance monitoring, HR, admin, etc. These specific skills should be set out in the roles and responsibilities section of any job specification and are those which can be directly developed through experience and qualifications.
On top of this, in order to be a good manager it is important that your team works well for you. If you have the appropriate technical skills, then your team members may respect your ability, but in order truly manage and lead a team, it is important to develop more general skills. These skills include:
Motivation: Where your team members are well motivated, they are likely to work better, more efficiently and to be happier in what they do. You can motivate people by including them in decision-making, encouraging them to take ownership of work and outcomes, by rewarding initiative, effort and achievement and by encouraging personal and skills development.
Mentoring: It is important that you encourage the more experienced members of your team to mentor the less experienced team members, and also to offer mentoring and support yourself. Mentors can guide other employees to help them develop skills and also to develop the confidence to take on extra responsibilities.
Communication: Effective communication ensures that team members understand the context in which they are working, what the ultimate goal is and the part they play in achieving it. In order to do this managers need to have in place clear lines of communication - these make sure that everybody knows their role and their responsibilities within the team. However, good communication is not just about talking to people - it is also about listening and making sure to understand, and enabling a confident two-way system that all team members are confident and happy to be part of.
Conflict Management: Where conflicts arise, you should be in a position to manage and resolve differences in an equitable way. These conflicts may arise between team members, between team members and managers or even between different teams. In some cases, conflict may arise between team members and business customers. There are many different strategies for managing conflict, but they can include intervention, discussions and negotiation.
Management is.... - coping with complexity - planning and budgeting - organising and staffing - controlling and problem solving - effective action -
