THE EXCEPTIONAL MANAGER

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

The rating of skills is a complex task, being a skillful person in business is

fundamental in order to be a great worker, but also to be an exceptional manager.
There are certain skills that are basically required to be a manager, for instance,
having knowledge of your business field, being capable of successfully
communicating things to different people, and having the ability to identify and solve
problems that might arise at any time. In fact, according to Katz’s theory, a
successful manager has three managerial skills (technical, conceptual and human).
The lack of any of those skills reduces the chances of being a successful manager
and generally successful organization. Nowadays, a successful manager can hardly
be imagined without basic skills (Katz, 1991).

In my professional experience I have encountered situations in which successful

management was lacking. When I started working as a supermarket clerk with no
experience, the person responsible for me -my manager- did not train me or guide
me during my first few weeks to make sure that I did not make big mistakes or that I
even knew what the job was about. This not only demonstrated a lack of human
resources management but also a deficit in mentoring and assessing training needs.
As a result, this gave me an unnecessary rough time during my first month working
there, as I was not familiar with their ways of working and their procedures, and I had
to quickly adapt to the situation and imitate what other workers did to be able to do
the job. However, there is a difference between getting the job done and being
efficient when you are working face to the public. It is essential to know where each
product is and know how to answer your customers' questions, something almost
impossible if you are not trained to do so. Without customers, the organization would
not survive, and employee performance plays a big role in customer satisfaction
(Robbins et al. 2015). Therefore, my manager not only let me down, but also our
customers, since we were not offering the best experience we were capable of due
to a deficit of those skills in her management.

As I see it, it does not seem fair to value one skill more than another, because at the
end of the day, all of them are going to play an important role in our professional
career. Therefore, I would shift the focus to identifying which skills we are deficient in

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and invest in developing them, which is fundamentally what I learned from my
experience dealing with a decent manager and not a successful one. This would not
only be beneficial for us as people, but also for the business in which we work, since
it leads to enhancing our performance. This is what truly matters, because you can
have basic skills that make you a decent manager, but we should not settle for this,
we must strive to be an exceptional manager.

Patricia Rodríguez Alonso

Global Business - Ivana Rihova

REFERENCES

Afshari, M., Honari, H., Qafouri, F., Jabari, N. (2012a). Prioritizing managerial
skills based on Katz’s theory in physical education offices of universities in Iran.
World Applied Sciences Journal, 20 (3), 388-394.

Razaghi, Mohammad Ebrahim. (2015). PRIORITIZING MANAGERIAL SKILLS

BASED ON KATZ’S THEORY. 10.13140/RG.2.1.4903.6960.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277325697_PRIORITIZING_MANAG
ERIAL_SKILLS_BASED_ON_KATZ%27S_THEORY

Rihova, Ivana (2023). Defining management and managers’ role and tasks
[PDF slides]. European University of Valencia. Download Topic 2 Management
roles and skills.pdf