How Good Are Your Management Skills?

 

In business, we often seem to focus less on good management, and more on the glamorous and exciting work of leadership.

However, managers are responsible for making sure that things are done properly. And while leaders may bring us vision, inspiration and challenge, these things count for nothing without the efficient implementation brought about by good management.

To be a great manager, you must have an extensive set of skills – from planning and delegation to communication and motivation. Because the skill set is so wide, it's tempting to build skills in the areas of management that you're already comfortable with. But, for your long-term success, it's wise to analyze your skills in all areas of management – and then to challenge yourself to improve in all of these areas.

This quiz helps you to quickly identify your areas of strength and weakness, so that you can capitalize on the former and manage the latter. We then direct you to resources that you can use to develop your skills further.

How Good Are Your Management Skills?

Instructions

For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the "wrong direction." When you are finished, please click the "Calculate My Total" button at the bottom of the test.

20 Statements to Answer	Not at All	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very Often

20 Statements to Answer	Not at All	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very Often
1When I have a problem, I try to solve it myself before asking my boss what to do.
2When I delegate work, I give it to whoever has the most time available.
3I follow up with team members whenever I see that their behavior has a negative impact on customer service.
4I make decisions following careful analysis, rather than relying on gut instinct.
5I let my team members figure out for themselves how best to work together – teams are a work in progress!
6I wait before disciplining a team member, so that people have a chance to correct their behaviors for themselves.
7Technical skills are the most important skills that I need to be an effective manager.
8I spend time talking with my team about what's going well and what needs improving.
9In meetings, I take on the role of moderator/facilitator when necessary, and I help my team reach a better understanding of the issue or reach consensus.
10I fully understand how the business processes in my department operate, and I'm working to eliminate bottlenecks.
11When putting together a team, I consider the skills I need – and then I seek people who best fit my criteria.
12I do all that I can to avoid conflict in my team.
13I try to motivate people within my team by tailoring my approach to motivation to match each individual's needs.
14When my team makes a significant mistake, I update my boss on what has happened, and then I think of it as an important lesson learned.
15When conflict occurs within a new team, I accept it as an inevitable stage in the team development process.
16I talk to team members about their individual goals, and I link these to the goals of the entire organization.
17If I'm putting a team together, I select people with similar personalities, ages, time with the company, and other characteristics.
18I think that the statement "If you want a job done well, do it yourself" is true.
19I talk with team members as individuals to ensure that they're happy and productive.
20I brief my team members so that they know what's going on around them in the organization.

 

Total = 0

Score Interpretation

Score	Comment
20-46	You need to improve your management skills urgently. If you want to be effective in a leadership role, you must learn how to organize and monitor your team's work. Now is the time to start developing these skills to increase your team's success! (Read below to start.)
47-73	You're on your way to becoming a good manager. You're doing some things really well, and these are likely the things you feel comfortable with. Now it's time to work on the skills that you've been avoiding. Focus on the areas where your score is low, and figure out what you can do to make the improvements you need. (Read below to start.)
74-100	You're doing a great job managing your team. Now you should concentrate on improving your skills even further. In what areas did you score a bit low? That's where you can develop improvement goals. Also, think about how you can take advantage of these skills to reach your career goals. (Read below to start.)

Effective management requires a wide range of skills, and each of these skills complements the others. Your goal should be to develop and maintain all of these skills, so that you can help your team accomplish its objectives efficiently and effectively. Read on for ideas and resources that you can use to do this.

A Model of Effective Management

Our quiz is based on eight essential skill areas where managers should focus their efforts. By covering these basics, you'll enjoy more success as a team manager:

1. Understanding team dynamics and encouraging good relationships.
2. Selecting and developing the right people.
3. Delegating effectively.
4. Motivating people.
5. Managing discipline and dealing with conflict.
6. Communicating.
7. Planning, making decisions, and problem solving.
8. Avoiding common managerial mistakes.

We'll explore each of these in more detail.

Understanding Team Dynamics and Encouraging Good Relationships

(Questions 5, 15, 17)

Good management means understanding how teams operate. It's worth remembering that teams usually follow a certain pattern of development: forming, norming, storming, and performing. It's important to encourage and support people through this process, so that you can help your team become fully effective as quickly as possible.

When forming teams, managers must create a balance so that there's a diverse set of skills, personalities, and perspectives. You may think it's easier to manage a group of people who are likely to get along, but truly effective teams invite many viewpoints and use their differences to be creative and innovative.

Here, your task is to develop the skills needed to steer those differences in a positive direction. This is why introducing a team charter and knowing how to resolve team conflict are so useful for managing your team effectively.

Selecting and Developing the Right People

(Questions 11, 17)

Finding great new team members, and developing the skills needed for your team's success is another important part of team formation.

You can improve your recruiting skills with our Recruiting Skills Bite-Sized Training pack, and with out articles on Hiring People – Questions to Ask, InBox Assessment, Using Recruitment Tests, and Aptitude Testing.

And you can develop people's skills with our articles on, among others, Successful Induction, Understanding Developmental Needs, Training Needs Assessment, and the GROW Model. You'll also find our Bite-Sized Training session on Mentoring Skills useful.

Delegating Effectively

(Questions 2, 18)

Having the right people with the right skills isn't sufficient for a team's success. Managers must also know how to get the job done efficiently. Delegation is the key to this. Some managers, especially those who earned their positions based on their technical expertise, try to do most of the work themselves. They think that, because they're responsible for the work, they should do it themselves to make sure it's done right.

Effective managers recognize that by assigning work to the right people (not just those with the most time available), and clearly outlining expectations, teams can accomplish much more. But it's often difficult to trust others to do the job. As a manager, remember that when your team members have the right skills, training and motivation, you can usually trust them to get the work done right.

Motivating People

(Questions 13, 19)

Another necessary management skill is motivating others. It's one thing to motivate yourself, but it's quite another to motivate someone else. The key thing to remember is that motivation is personal. We're all motivated by different things, and we all have different levels of personal motivation. So, getting to know your team members on a personal level allows you to motivate your people better. Providing feedback on a regular basis is a very powerful strategy to help you stay informed about what's happening with individual team members. You can test your motivation skills with our quiz, and use your answers to develop your skills further.

Managing Discipline and Dealing With Conflict

(Questions 3, 6, 12)

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, there are problems with individual performance. As a manager, you have to deal with these promptly. If you don't discipline, you risk negative impacts on the rest of the team as well as your customers, as poor performance typically impacts customer service, and it hurts the team and everything that the team has accomplished. It's very demotivating to work beside someone who consistently fails to meet expectations, so if you tolerate it, the rest of the team will likely suffer. In our article on team management skills, we explore this issue in further detail and give you some examples.

Team performance will also suffer when differences between individual team members turn into outright conflict, and it's your job as team manager to facilitate a resolution. Read our article on Resolving Team Conflict for a three-step process for doing this. However, conflict can be positive when it highlights underlying structural problems – make sure that you recognize conflict and deal with its causes, rather than just suppressing its symptoms or avoiding it.

Communicating

(Questions 8, 9, 16, 20)

An element that's common to all of these management skills is effective communication. This is critical to any position you hold, but as a manager, it's especially important (you can test your communication skills with our quiz here). You need to let your team know what's happening and keep them informed as much as possible. Team briefing is a specific communication skill that managers should improve. Also, develop the ability to facilitate effectively, so that you can guide your team to a better understanding and serve as a moderator when necessary.

Planning, Problem Solving and Decision-Making

(Questions 4, 10)

Many managers are very comfortable with planning, problem solving and decision making, given that they're often skilled specialists who've been promoted because of their knowledge and analytical abilities. As such, one of the most important issues that managers experience is that they focus so intensely on these skills when they think about self-development that they fail to develop their people skills and team management skills. Make sure that you don't focus on these skills too much!

However, if you need to develop these skills, see our major sections on Problem Solving, Decision-Making, and Project Management. You'll find many rich skills improvement resources in these areas.

Avoiding Common Managerial Mistakes

(Questions 1, 7, 14)

Good communication helps you develop facilitation skills, and it also helps you avoid some of the most common problems for managers. Some of these common mistakes are thinking that you can rely on your technical skills alone, asking your boss to solve your problems, putting your boss in the awkward position of having to defend you, and not keeping your boss informed. Our article on Team Management Skills highlights what to do to avoid these, and other managerial problems that you should be aware of.

Key Points

You need to develop and improve your managerial skills on an ongoing basis as your career develops and as you meet new managerial challenges.

Whether you manage a department or a project team, it's important to know how to get the work done right. When you're asked to achieve something with the help of others, it's complex – and you spend much of your time managing relationships instead of doing the actual work. So, you must develop not only your technical skills, but your management skills as well.

Delegating, motivating, communicating, and understanding team dynamics are some of the key skills needed. With those skills, along with patience and a strong sense of balance, you can become a very effective manager.

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Top frameworks for strategic planning

 Lucid Content Team

If you want to stay ahead in business, you need to constantly be improving. It’s how you stay relevant and remain profitable. But improvement and success don’t come just because you want them enough—you need to develop a strategic plan that details:

• Where you are right now: Look at your current strategic position relative to your competition. Describe your current problems keeping you from progressing. Define your mission, vision, and values.  

• Where you want to go: Describe your competitive advantage and understand where your organization is currently headed. Look for ways to solve your current problems.

• How you will get there: Define your goals, objectives, and the steps you will need to take to achieve your goals.

This is an oversimplification of the strategic planning process. There are many different strategic planning models you can use that expand on these three basic elements.

Let’s look at some strategic planning frameworks that will help you to see where you can improve, define your goals, and map out the processes and procedures you will use to keep achieving your goals.

Strategic planning models vs. strategic planning frameworks

A strategic planning model maps out how your company plans to implement a strategy for improving operations, delivering quality, and meeting specific goals. It is like a template or a tool you use at the beginning of the planning process. It helps you flesh out the ideas that will take you where you want to go. 

A strategic planning framework outlines how you will conceptually approach your strategic plan. Frameworks tend to be visual and detail the activities that are performed in your organization’s strategy plan. Think of the framework as a blueprint or the foundation for your messaging and brand narrative. The idea is to communicate to internal and external stakeholders the aspirations of your strategic plan. 

Common strategic planning models

Why is a planning model important? Because it’s hard to achieve your company’s goals if your employees don’t know what the goals are or how you plan to reach them. 

Strategic planning models are the roadmaps that keep your team focused on what needs to be completed to reach your goals. And you will need to constantly monitor and review your plans to ensure that you quickly address issues and realign processes as necessary to keep your production working as smoothly as possible.

The following are a few strategic planning process models that can help you to create the roadmap your team will follow to success.

Basic model

Sometimes called the simple model, the basic model is often used by companies that:

• Are new and don’t have a lot of experience with or are new to strategic planning
• Are small and don’t have the resources to develop complex plans
• Don’t have too many serious problems to solve
• Don’t have a lot of time to create an extensive plan

This model focuses on establishing your company vision and mission statement, setting goals to make the vision a reality, outlining specific steps to take to reach the goals, and monitoring progress to keep everybody on track and to address issues when they come up.

Issue-based model

This model is also known as the goal-based model. It’s essentially an extension of the basic model. The issue-based model is more dynamic and popular with established companies to develop more comprehensive plans.

Begin with a SWOT analysis to assess current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis will help you to understand how these factors impact your business. Next, suggest ways to overcome weaknesses and leverage strengths, and develop a budget. Then implement the plan and monitor progress. Repeat as needed.

Alignment model

The goal of this model is to align your business and IT strategies with the company’s strategic goals. This model is good for organizations that need to reassess objectives or correct problem areas that impede progress.

Like the issue-based model, this model has you look at your internal operations to develop a strategy. The model involves the following steps:

1. Review your vision, mission statement, and company goals.
2. Determine what is currently working well and what needs to be realigned.
3. Make suggestions for improving the problem areas.
4. Implement changes to improve or eliminate weak areas.

Scenario model

This model looks at different outside influences that could have an impact on your organization. For example, government regulations can have a big impact on a manufacturer, such as what materials can be used to make their products. 

The idea is to look at how outside influences might impact your operations from the following perspectives: best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and reasonable-case scenario.

These scenarios help you to figure out the best way to respond to each. Determine which would be the most likely scenario and determine how you will address it. Then add it to your strategic plan.

Organic model

This model is not linear or structured like the other models. Its focus is on your company’s shared vision and values instead of plans and processes. The idea is that a company’s vision is achieved more organically when teams are able to openly and continuously discuss what steps to take. This requires a clear understanding of the vision, frequent and consistent communication, and dialogue among various stakeholders.

The model might include the following three basic steps:

1. Clarify shared vision and values.
2. Based on shared values, determine the actions and responsibilities for each person so they can work toward the vision.
3. Stakeholders report the results of the action plans.

The organic model can work in large organizations that can afford to take a long time to achieve their vision and who can work well in a less structured environment. 

Real-time model

This model is fluid and designed for organizations that need to react quickly to a rapidly changing work environment. Long-term, detailed plans quickly become irrelevant because of rapid changes.

Real-time strategic planning involves the following:

• Organizational strategy: Define your mission and vision, understand your competitors, and know what the current market trends are.
• Programmatic strategy: Research external environments, list opportunities and threats, and brainstorm the best ways to approach each.
• Operational strategy: Analyze internal processes, resources, and systems. Develop a strategy that addresses internal strengths and weaknesses.

Inspirational model

This model is designed to inspire your people to energize them as they work toward goals. People come together to discuss an inspirational vision for your company. Then, participants are encouraged to brainstorm far-reaching, exciting goals to realize your company vision. 

The inspirational model works well for organizations looking to lift the spirits of its staff or quickly produce a plan.

Types of strategic planning frameworks

Without a strategic framework, you risk inconsistent messaging that can confuse customers and stakeholders. If your message and purpose are not completely understood, you can alienate stakeholders and lose employee motivation.

Here are some of the different types of strategic planning frameworks that you can use:

Balanced scorecards: Works as a strategic planning and management system. The balanced scorecard helps companies to align daily tasks with long-term strategy, communicate progress, set priorities, monitor progress, and measure success.

Strategy mapping: Provides a visual document to communicate your strategic plan. A strategy map make it easy to show relationships among various takes and objectives.

Porter’s Five Forces: Helps you to assess how competitive the market is. Porter’s Five Forces focuses on your company’s ability to enter a market, similar products customers can buy instead of yours, buyer power, supplier power, and the effect a competitor’s change in strategy would have on your company.

SWOT analysis: With this strategic planning framework, you analyze your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

PEST/PESTLE analysis: This framework looks at a business environment to see if there are any factors that could impact your organization’s health. PEST analysis includes political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors.

Ansoff matrix: This strategic planning framework analyzes four potential opportunities for growth: market penetration, product development, market development, and diversification. Try the Ansoff matrix when seeking out new opportunities.

Objectives and key results (OKRs): In The objectives refer to what you want to achieve. The key results indicate how you’ll measure your progress toward your objectives.

Blue Ocean Strategy: With this framework, your company creates demand for products in an uncontested market space. You focus on differentiating your product from the competition rather than trying to beat them.

Value, Rarity, Imitability, and Organization (VRIO): This strategic planning framework answers questions concerning your product’s value, the amount of competition in your market, how easily your product can be imitated, and how well-organized your company is.

Hoshin Kanri: This framework is used to align goals with tasks, keeping everything coordinated and ensuring that everybody is working toward the same end result.

If strategic planning models and frameworks seem similar, it’s because they are. While strategic planning models outline the high-level structure of your plan, the strategic framework describes the design concepts and the plan’s details. 

It doesn’t matter which model and framework you choose to use. You can even combine aspects of several models or frameworks to meet your needs. The important thing to remember is that strategic models and frameworks are vital to creating and communicating a clear strategic plan that will keep your company relevant and competitive.

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