The 3 Skillsets of a Leadership Manager: Interpersonal Skills, Management Skills, and Specialist Skills. Used Together, Gets You to Executive!

From GW’s Leadership Manager Workbench….

Here’s the secret to becoming an executive: 3 skill sets.

Interpersonal Talent? (See, Skill Sets, Non-Cognitive)

The skills that a leadership manager masters that represent the interpersonal competencies which are used in every management role, which are not measurable.

The interpersonal skills, called “soft skills,” are those that a leadership manager uses in managing the direct reports as it relates to subjective areas of empathy, sympathy, diversity, etc. Interpersonal skills are trained skills, but many develop from the influence of your parents in growing up, or a leadership manager on the job. (See, The Axiom of Good Parent Raising)

248-AXIOM OF Good Parent Raising

When a Leadership Manager was raised by Good Parents, you don’t need HR coaching on Soft Skills, you only need mentoring on hard skill competencies!

The reason is simple. Good parents raise their children to be kind, generous, and empathetic to friends and family, eliminating the need to reinforce those soft skills later in business.

Management Talent (See Skill Sets, Cognitive)

The skills that a leadership manager masters in the management? competencies of the position.? Management skills represent the tenets and axioms of management, which are used in the executive role that require intellect and reasoning.

The management skills, called “hard” skills, are the blocking and tackling skills that are developed, not trained, and include combinations of the competencies that are mastered in the six functions of management success: strategy, planning, organizing, leadership, teamwork, and control.

It is a misnomer to say that management skills are the skills of specialist talent, because specialist skills are the easy skills to learn through training. Management skills are operational & strategic skills that usually are developed through mentoring.

002-AXIOM OF Management Talent

The more accountability a person accepts within a company, the more hard-skill competencies of management talent are required, and less specialist talent, interlinked with common interpersonal, emotional intelligence.

Every individual begins his/her career knowing only the specialist talent of the job, but as you promote them for their specialist talent, they require a growing amount of management talent, to include emotional intelligence. A CEO or executive needs very little specialist talent and a lot of management talent to be successful.

Specialist Talent

The skills that a leadership manager masters in the specialist competency of the position, i.e. engineering, accounting, warehousing, etc. Once the expertise is mastered, they become the easiest part of the workload, but are seldom used at the executive level.

The specialist skills are where the individual migrates and feels most comfortable on the job and reflects the department competency which the individual is a member of.

So which of the three talents is most important? It all depends on what your goals and objectives are.?

For example, it’s obvious if you want to succeed within a company that you do not own, mastering the management talent is most important. Keep in mind the quote from the renowned academic from the University of Chicago, Steve Kaplan: “…you need some interpersonal talent to get the job, but management talent to keep it.”

If you don’t want to move forward into a management position with a company you do not own, but want to remain a Subject Matter Expert SME, the specialist talent is the most important.

Initially, being an entrepreneur for a successful startup, the specialist talent is the most important, but as the company achieves traction in crossing out of the emerging quadrant of its life cycle, the entrepreneur needs more management talent.

Our workload research on leaders shows that successful leadership managers use hard-skill management competencies over 90% of the time, interpersonal skills 7% of the time, and specialist skills 30%. So place your L&D effort where you are going to use it most.

Suivez-Moi!

gw

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