Management Skills Pyramid

To be successful, there are many skills a manager needs to master. I adapted Kammy Hatnes' pyramid structure to show the increasingly difficult management skills you must master at each level and to also display how these management skills build on each other to help you achieve success in your management career. The result is the Management Skills Pyramid shown here. Each level of the Management Skills Pyramid is listed below and is discussed in more detail on the linked pages.  

The Management Skills Pyramid, Level 1

Level 1 of the Management Skills Pyramid shows the basic skills a manager must master just to get the job done. These are the fundamentals of the management job:

• Plan
• Organize
• Direct
• Control

The Management Skills Pyramid, Level 2

After you have mastered the basic skills in level 1, you need to move on and develop your skills on Level 2 of the Management Skills Pyramid. These are the management skills that you use to develop your staff. There are many specific skills required, and these are discussed in Level 2 of the Management Skills Pyramid, but they are grouped into these categories:

• Motivation
• Training and Coaching
• Employee Involvement

The Management Skills Pyramid, Level 3
When you have become skilled in developing your staff, it's time to focus on Level 3 of the Management Skills Pyramid, improving your own development. These management skills are grouped as:

• Self Management and
• Time Management

Time management gets its own category because it is so important to your success in all the other skills.

The Management Skills Pyramid, Top Level

The peak of the Management Skills Pyramid, the single skill that will help you the most in developing success in your management career, is leadership. As you develop your skill as a leader, as you make the transition from manager to leader, you will achieve the success you truly want in your management career.


By F. John Reh
http://management.about.com/