Skills and Work as Manager

The manager interviewed in this task is Mr. F who is the deputy manager of Company E and it is a big sized organization. The organization is responsible for the management of money savings, thus it provides service to the customer.  Mr. F is a middle level manager as he is required to report the performance of the organization to the upper level of management.  Major duties of Mr. F include supervising his staff members. Management involves coordinating and supervising the work or activities of others as to achieve effectiveness and efficiency. The most important resource in an organization is the human resource, because without it the organization would have difficulties to accomplish goals (Dumitrana et al., 2011). In order to achieve success in an organization, people should be managed and this is where the responsibility of a manager takes place. The aim of this task is to identify the relevance of Katz’s management skill on the work of the manager interviewed. Katz’s suggested that there are three types of skills which are technical, human, and conceptual ( Peterson &  Fleet, 2004).  However, this task only requires specific attention on the human skills. The importance of customers and social media that affect the manager’s job are also discussed based on the analysis.

Mr. F mentioned important skills required in his position in daily basis are communication, problem solving, informational and monitoring. These skills fulfill most of the Mintzberg’s theory.  Mintzberg claimed a manager gains interpersonal, informational and decisional roles which are beyond the classical skills (McLeod Jr. & Bender, 1982). All of these skills are needed as to complete the work in his position. However, Mr. F pointed out that the most important skill is human skills. Human skills is the capability to work accordingly with others, communicate in a right way, ability to solve problems and it is mainly related with people (Katz, 1955 as cited in Peterson & Fleet, 2004). Human skills especially communication is one of the main elements that a manager need to have in order to accomplish work. Communication in the context of an organization is exchanging information in order to receive objectives correctly and listening to the interlocutors is required.  (Niculae, T., Gherghi__ I., Gherghi__ D., 2006 as cited in Emanoil et al., 2013). Members of an organization regardless of any position need to communicate and communication nowadays is determined as an excellence and efficiency to an organization (Grunig, 1992 as cited in Emanoil et al., 2013) .The fact that Mr. F specified to communication shows that the Katz’s human skill is highly relevant in the work of manager.

According to the contingency theory, different organization development (OD) approaches is based on the people in the organization, hence the upper management should respond accordingly based on the ability and knowledge of the people which ables communication and decision making to be considered for the best performance of an organization.  (Lavan et al., 1981). In context of Mr. F, he explains that to lead the team to achieve organizational goal is to make the team members to have a clear view and understanding of the goal itself first, listen to the team members’ opinion, briefly explain and guide what should be done, give motivation and update the latest information from time to time. The way Mr. F leads the members shows contingency approach is implemented in the management of the organization, not the traditional approach. Traditional approach does not content the interpersonal dynamics that makes it hard to implement the vision.(Dansereau et al., 2013).  Thus, the traditional approach is less relevant to an organization these days . The interaction between people are much needed so that the vision could be clearly understand by all members. As what to Mr. F mentioned, listening to the opinion of members is also a need in order to achieve success. This practice also shows that the manager used people-oriented approach in his work. Overall, practices in Mr. F work as a manager shows that human skills is mostly used as interaction between employees are needed and recommended in the organization thus make the Katz’s human skill relevant to the job of a manager these days.