Table of Contents
Introduction
The essence of this paper is the analysis of management aptitude test which measures a person’s skill as it pertains to conceptual ability, technical ability, and human skills. Daft stresses that for one to be an effective manager, he should possess one or more of these skills, and if the person has all three skills, it would be of great value as having all three skills would most certainly make the person succeed in their position.
A brief overview of these skills is given below:
- Human Skills: Is the ability to creates and work effectively as a group member, alongside as well as through individuals. Human capabilities are shown by the manager’s method of inspiring, encouraging, organizing, managing, engaging or settling disputes concerning other people.
- Technical Skills: Technical Skills (Daft, 2016, p. 13) characterizes practical aptitudes as realizing the processes associated with completing explicit tasks. An individual with specialized abilities must have the option to exhibit unique know-how, analytical ability, and sensible utilization of methods and apparatuses to solve issues in the workplace. As the business condition keeps on developing innovatively, managers must equip themselves with modern technological skills to have the option to handle issues posed by uncertainties, competitor edge, and sudden changes.
- Conceptual Skills: the intellectual reasoning to consider a general business to be a complete entity and the connections among its different parts. Conceptual abilities include realizing where one’s group fits into the absolute corporation and how the association fits into the business, the community, and the more extensive business and social condition. It implies the capacity to think deliberately to take the wide, foresight to see and to recognize, assess, and take care of complex issues
The self-assessment posed questions bothering on all three skills which seek to measure our abilities in being effective managers. I answered all the questions honestly and I believe this analysis will help as I continue in my professional career (Daft, 2016, p. 14).
Results
The grading scale for this analysis is from 1-5. 1 measures the least likelihood, while 5 measure the most likelihood.
From the Analysis conducted, I was gathered the following results:
- Human Skills: 4 Points
- Technical Skills: 26 Points
- Conceptual Skills: 20 Points
I must say I am a bit shocked at my human skills score because I am always in denial about my relationship with people. I like to believe that I am people-oriented, but judging by this result, it appears I have a lot to do in this regard. My job requires that I communicate with kids on a daily, a staff needs assessment was conducted in the school I work at, and it was discovered that I and a few other teachers require retraining on communication. I’d say I am more technical inclined amongst all three skills. I believe this is because, since my days as a child, I have always been fascinated by technological advances. The result is a true reflection of my technical prowess. Given that no one person can boast of having complete management skills, I can still improve in this regard. As for conceptual abilities, I believe that ideas run organizations, and managers must be able to devise plans and strategies that would take their organization to its desired destination.
Interpretation
After going through all three management skills in the text, I discovered that all three management skills are important for organization management.
the image shown below gives the top 8 qualities required for a good manager, and we can see that most of the qualities itemized are related to human skills, employers now demand that their managers listen to their employees, train the employees, build solid relationship with their employees; managers should be approachable, they shouldn’t see themselves as demi-gods. and create a business environment that would encourage teamwork (Daft, 2016, p. 13-14).
Source: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss,” by Adam Bryant, published March 12, 2011, in The New York Times. Courtesy of Google, Inc.
I belong to the school of thought that if you need something done properly, you have to do it yourself. This mindset has isolated me from people and I believe it is partly responsible for my low Human skill score. When teaching my class, I try as much as possible to motivate my students the best way I can, but I am often discouraged because I feel I need to motivate my students. I have to give them something of great value, and when I reward the students who perform well in class, the others may be sidelined and may become unwilling to pay attention in class. In other endeavors of human skills, like interacting with students, I believe I do pretty well with that.
In the aspect of conceptual abilities, I am constantly brainstorming on new teaching methods that would aid the way I impart knowledge. I also do a self-assessment from time to time to evaluate my impact on the students, and when I feel I haven’t really done enough, I come up with new teaching strategies.
As regards Technical abilities, my grade of 26 is an indication of my efforts in that regard. (Badawy, 1995) stated that the requirement for specialized ability diminishes as a manager ascends to more elevated levels of the management. Nonetheless, he likewise recommended that specialized abilities are basic for first-level administrators, serving a few significant capacities, for example, discussing successfully with subordinates, checking the sufficiency of choices they settle on, and making key decisions based on recommendations provided by his subordinates. In my previous employment where I exhibited more technical ability, I discovered that after spending three years on the job, I didn’t have to showcase my technical skills any longer, as I had to delegate duties to my juniors, and check on their work from time to time and offer feedbacks when necessary.
Conclusion
After carrying out this analysis and reading through chapter one of the text, I agree that having one or more of the three technical skills will determine how successful a manager becomes in their role. I like to believe that each of these skills complement each other, and a manager would be wise to have all three skills as they will make their jobs easier.
As much as I am doing pretty well with conceptual and technical abilities, I won’t abandon the human skills. In hard times, managers truly need to remain on their toes and apply every one of their aptitudes and abilities such that the organization and its partners benefit from it, as well as its workers, clients, speculators, the network, etc. As of late, various profoundly advanced models have demonstrated what happens when managers neglect to apply their aptitudes adequately to fulfill the needs of an uncertain, quickly evolving world (Daft, 2016, p. 14).
References
- Badawy, M. K. (1995). Developing Managerial Skills in Engineers and Scientists: Succeeding as a Technical Manager (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
- Daft, R. L. (2017). Management (13th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
- DeRosa, D. M., & Lepsinger, R. (2010). Virtual team success: A practical guide for working and leading from a distance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.