Organisational Behaviour - Skills and Roles in an organisation

Management Skills

Skills are those mind tools with which a manager performs certain tasks. Different kind of skills are required to perform different tasks. According to Katz there are three essential basic skills which a manager needs to perform a task. These are as follow:

1. Technical Skills: Technical skills are the proficiency and knowledge required in an specific area like IT skills in the field of IT, Finance skills for finance work, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture for buildings, etc. Technical skills are more required at the execution level of a project for junior and middle management level.

2. Interpersonal Skills: Interpersonal skills of a manager shows how he interacts with subordinates, peers, seniors, customers and business partners. Interpersonal skills are required at all the levels in an organisation. It helps a manager to understand, to motivate and to resole conflict if any in his team. It helps him to lead the team effectively by knowing every person of his team well, by taking maximum output from the strengths of his team member. It includes motivational skills, understanding other's perception and attitude, communication skills, negotiation skills, etc. These are normally called as soft skills.

3. Conceptual Skills: Conceptual skills are more required at the top management level as they are the people who are basically involved in giving direction to the organisation and big decision making. Conceptual skills are those skills which helps a manager to see the organisation in a big picture like impact of upcoming government policies in the related field, budding competition, expansion plans in a new territory, need of a marketing campaign, etc. It helps a manager to understand the relationship between various sub units and visualize how organisation fit into this broader environment.

Roles in an organisation

According to Mintzberg (1975) managers of all levels of hierarchy behave in the same way, carry into effect similar activities and therefore fulfill similar roles. He divided these activities into 10 roles and defines them as “organized set of behaviours”.
Further Stoner and Wankel (1997) grouped these 10 roles into 3 main roles as:

1. Interpersonal Roles: Interpersonal roles are concerned with creating and maintaining interpersonal relationships in work. These are:

a) Figurehead role: Manager represents organisation in all matters of formality, legality and socially to inside or outside the organisation. He is like a symbolic of the organisation.

b) Leader Role: Manager being a leader of the department sets goals, makes plan to reach the goal, motivates employees look after their needs and leads the team to achieve that goal.

c)  Liaison role: Manager interacts with people inside and outside the organisation to gain valuable information, to come into an agreement, to gain orders for the organisation.

2. Informational roles: These are concerned with  informational aspect of managerial work like receiving, collecting, and disseminating information. These are:

a) Monitor Role: Manager looks out for information regarding the organisation. He collects the information from inside (like information regarding problem areas of the organisation) as well as outside (information regarding competition, new technology, etc) the organisation through reports, magazines, etc.

b) Disseminator Role: Manager transmits the important information gathered from inside or outside the organisation to related organisational members. He may do this by holding informational meetings, sending reports or emails, making phone calls etc.

c) Spokesperson: Manager transmits organisation's information to outside like government, departments, public, media etc. This information may include organisation's annual reports, achievements, plans, policies, etc. They may do it by holding board meetings or advertising in newspapers, etc.

3. Decisional roles: These are related to making decisions. These are:

a) Entrepreneur: Manager analyses organisation's development opportunities and possibilities and bring about organic changes to grow the organisation and make it more profitable. He motivates employees to give their suggestions and achieve organisation's objectives.

b) Disturbance Handler: Manager takes corrective actions whenever any disturbance or crisis occurs inside or outside the organisation. Handles disputes among employees, among employees and business partners, and among business partners. Thus he plays the role of a rescuer.

c) Resources Allocator: Manager allocates the organisation's resources like people, money, infrastructure, etc so that it is optimally utilised and enhance its productivity. He approves plans, budgets and programmes, and set priorities.

d) Negotiator: Manager negotiates with the team, departments and organisations to defend business interests and gain advantage for his team, department and organisation.