CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS OF MANAGERIAL SKILLS AND

THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH

by

Ogechi Ogbonna

According to The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007), a manager's job is varied and

complex. Hence, the report agrees with Katz (1955) Skills Theory, (published in 1974 by

Harvard Business Review), that managers need certain skills to perform the duties and activities

associated with being a manager. Such skills, it is believed, allow them to act as a leader in

specific situations they come across. Burkus (2010) writes that

the skills theory grew from the obvious flaw in the trait approach; traits are relatively

fixed. This meant that trait theory was not particularly useful for developing new leaders

who lack those traits. Skills theorists sought to discover the skills and abilities that made

leaders effective. Similar to trait theory, skills theories are leader-centric, focused on

what characteristics about leaders make them effective. The two primary theories to

develop from a skills approach were Katz’s three-skill approach and Mumford’s five

skills model of leadership.

Katz‘s (1955) Three-Skill Approach

Katz‘s (1955) three-skill approach is concerned with the sets of skills that managers need

for their increased effectiveness. He argued that effective leadership required three skills,

namely, conceptual, human and technical skills. Conceptual skill refers to the ability to work

with broad concepts and ideas (involves an understanding of how the different components of the

business are related to each other and to the business as a whole). Northouse (2010) says that

conceptual skills enable a manager work easily with abstraction and hypothetical notions and

they are central to creating and articulating a vision and strategic plan for an organization, hence,

these skills are most important at top level management

Human skills refer to being able to work with people (involves the ability to understand

oneself, work with others, to understand and to motivate others). These skills are equally

important to all levels of management. Technical skill refers to proficiency in a specific activity

or type of work (involves the ability to use the tools, procedure, and specialized knowledge and

techniques of one's field). These skills are more important at lower levels of management

(especially supervisory) because they are dealing directly with employees doing the

organization's work.

Whereas all the skills are important to every level of management, managers at different

levels may need to be more proficient at some skills than others. Hence, the three-skill approach

stated that, while all skills were important for leaders, their level of importance varies depending

on the organizational level of leaders. Therefore, as leaders move through the levels of the

organization (from lower to upper), skill importance moves from technical, to human, and then,

to conceptual. However, it has also been proved that human skills (i.e., ability to listen, verbally
communicate, show patience and empathy, and understand a subordinate's needs) are equally

important to success at every managerial level (Whetten and Cameron, 2002 as cited in The

Boston Consulting Group Report (2007)). See Figure 1 below for the extent to which Katz’s

Three-skills are needed across the management levels.

Fig 1: Basic Administrative Skills – Katz (1955) – Source: SAGE Publications

Mumford et al’s Skills Model of Leadership

Mumford et al’s (2000) skills model of leadership complements Katz’s three-skill theory,

but it is notably more complex than the Katz’s three-skill approach because it outlined five

components of effective leadership: competencies, individual attributes, leadership outcomes,

career experiences and environmental influences. The progenitors assert that effective leadership

is dependent on how leader competencies are affected by the leader’s attributes, experiences and

the environment. Northouse (2010) throws more lights on Mumford et al’s five skills as

elaborated below and represented graphically in Figure 2.

Fig 2: The Components of the Skills Model (Source – SAGE Publications)

1. Competencies involve Problem Solving (creative ability to solve new/unusual, ill-defined

organizational problems); Social Judgment (Capacity to understand people and social

systems - perspective taking, social perceptiveness, behavioral flexibility, social

performance; and knowledge (the accumulation of information and the mental structures

to organize the information).

2. Individual Attributes include:

a. General Cognitive Ability (person’s intelligence - perceptual processing, information

processing, general reasoning, creative and divergent thinking and memory).

 b. Crystallized Cognitive Ability (intellectual ability learned or acquired over time).

c. Motivation (three aspects of motivation are willingness, dominance and social good).

d. Personality (any characteristic that helps people cope with complex organizational

situations is probably related to leader performance).

3. Leadership Outcomes are made up of problem solving and performance (criteria for

measuring this skill includes originality and quality of solutions to problem situations:

good problem solving involves creating solutions that are logical, effective, unique, go

beyond given information). Performance on the other hand, entails the degree to which a

leader has successfully performed his/her assigned duties.

4. Career Experiences are made up of experiences gained during career. They influence

leader’s knowledge and skills to solve complex problems. Leaders learn and develop

higher levels of conceptual capacity if they progressively confront more complex and

long-term problems as they ascend the organizational hierarchy. Such career experiences

are acquired through challenging assignments, mentoring, appropriate training, and

hands-on experience with novelty.

5. Environmental Influences include factors outside of leader’s control. These are factors lie

outside of the leader’s competencies, characteristics, and experiences. Examples include

outdated technology, subordinates, etc.

Conceptual Frameworks of Management Skills

Building on the foundations of the foregoing skills theories, various theories of

Management skills have attempted to prescribe competencies that make up the domains of the

management skills. According to The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007), Conceptual skills
include decision-making, planning, and organizing. Gary (1998) expands the above framework

by saying that conceptual skill is competence in handling ideas and performing human processes

that involve perceiving, thinking, adapting, creating, innovating, problem solving, and decision

making.

Concerning Human skills, The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007) says that they

include developing self-awareness, managing personal stress, coaching, counseling, motivating,

managing conflict effectively, and empowering others. Nakade (2011) enlarges the scope of The

Boston Consulting Group Report’s (2007) human skills by saying that the elements of Human

skills include how to communicate, motivate, lead, and inspire enthusiasm and trust. Again, he

says that human nature refers to their distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking,

feeling and acting that humans tend to have naturally.

As for Technical skills, The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007) further says that

they include competency in financial management techniques, general and specific computer

skills, and pharmaco-economic analysis. Taylor (2013) on his part describes Technical skills as

Personal Characteristics, a quality that describes behavioral or competency-based criteria

logically associated with the successful accomplishment of important tasks/responsibilities in a

particular job. He observes that required technical skills are sometimes found on the job

descriptions, and suggested that further job analysis should be completed to identify the qualities

not noted on a job description. Further still, the author says that some qualities can be technical

as well as personal. Hence, Technical skills can be categorized as general or very specific to each

job or soft skills. His list of General skills include - accuracy, computer competency, customer-

focus, orientation to details, good phone etiquette, multiple tasks ability, mechanical aptitude,
planning ability (sets and follows a course of action to accomplish goals), project management

skills, and quality assurance. Taylor’s Job Specific skills include - Excel spreadsheet

Intermediate level, licensed electrician, etc. His list of Soft Skills include - Analytical skills;

Attention to detail; Decisiveness (makes decisions, renders judgment, takes action);

Impactfulness (good first impression, confidence, commanding respect); Independence/self-

motivation; Leadership (utilizes skills and methods to develop and guide direct reports towards

goals); Good delegation to and utilization of direct reports; Oral Communication (in individual

and group situations); Organized; Persuasive (obtains agreement, cooperation, or acceptance

with or without authority); Presentation skills; Problem solving; Sensitive to organizational

objectives (sees the bigger picture and /or overall impact and implication of decisions); Team

player; Written communication (clear expression in writing; Assertiveness; Cooperative;

Creative; Flexible (able to adapt or modify behavior to reach a goal); Good judgment (makes

quality decisions based on logic and factual information); Hardworking; Honest; Initiative/Drive

(takes action to achieve goals); A self-starter; Self-Motivated; Quick learner; Reliable/Punctual;

Resourceful; Self-confident; Sincere; Stable; Tenacious (stays with a plan of action until

completed or it is no longer attainable); Tolerates stress (stable performance under pressure).

In my opinion, the foregoing conceptual frameworks of management skills are

holistically useful for any meaningful comprehensive organizational development endeavors,

especially, in the realm of human resource management aimed at meeting both corporate

business and personal growth goals. Again, as The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007)

posits, there is no doubt that skills will continue to be an important way of describing what a

manager does.
Summary and conclusions

Going by The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007), the following four trends are

likely to impact managerial work and skills development in the future: 1. Rapid Changes

involving shifts in economic conditions, modifications in customer preferences, rapidly changing

technology, and so on. Hence, dynamic managers are required in the twenty-first century, who

will have to be able to guide their companies to successfully meet these changes. 2. The work

force is becoming increasingly diverse. Hence, they say that managers will need to be able to

effectively utilize a much broader selection of personnel in the immediate future:

Managing diversity is the planning and implementing of organizational systems and

practices that maximize the potential of employees to contribute to organizational goals

and develop their capabilities unhindered by group identities such as race, gender, age,

or ethnic group. In the coming millennium, managers themselves will reflect the

emerging diversity and, at the same time, will need to be able to effectively utilize and

increasingly diverse work force (The Boston Consulting Group Report, 2007).

3. Businesses are increasingly facing global competition. Therefore, managers need to have

greater knowledge of international business and to develop a global perspective. 4. Quality

management programs have become increasingly important and total quality management

program aimed at continuous improvement have been implemented in many businesses. Global

competition has created an emphasis for better quality.

In my thinking, the foregoing trends have far reaching implications for managerial skills

development and human resources deployment in the corporate world including spiritual
enterprises like ours. As a matter of fact, The Boston Consulting Group Report (2007) concludes

that the continuous changes in both the economy and technology, alongside, changes in the speed

of change, suggest that managers who lead modern organizations need to be engaged in a

constant learning process. The organizations too must engage in continuous learning. By

implication therefore, employees who are invaluable to an organization must be willing to

constantly upgrade their skills and take on extra work outside their own specific job areas. In this

case, management training and development programs are required on continual basis to improve

the capacities of persons in managerial positions.

These realities are not only true, but also, highly instructive for the Seventh-day

Adventist Church (SDAC) context, as well as SDA Church institutions and leadership at all

levels. The awareness of the propositions of the skills theories in all their diversities is especially

useful for our proper human resources skills development, deployment and succession plans.
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