Managerial Skills That Predict Leadership Effectiveness

Overview of the Study

Three prominent leaders in the field of organizational and managerial psychology authored the article "Relative Importance of Managerial Skills for Predicting Effectiveness," published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology. Scott Tonidandel is a professor of psychology at Davidson College in North Carolina. Phillip W. Braddy and John W. Fleenor are both affiliated with the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. In their article, the authors examine four dimensions of managerial skill with regard to predicting managerial effectiveness. The dimensions explored are: administrative skill, citizenship behavior, human skill, and technical skill. Moreover, the authors discuss the relative importance of these dimensions with respect to variance by organizational level of the manager and by manager gender.

Research Methodology and Data Collection

Supervisor evaluations and peer ratings of managerial skills were obtained through 360-degree assessments of 733 managers enrolled in a nationally recognized leadership program. These ratings constituted the data collection for this quantitative study. The research hypotheses were tested through the use of multiple regression analysis and relative weight analysis.

Key Findings on Managerial Skill Dimensions

The ratings of managerial effectiveness, gathered from multiple sources for each study participant, indicate that all four dimensions of managerial effectiveness play a significantly important role as markers for predicting manager effectiveness. Although all of the dimensions were statistically significant, the human skills dimension was shown to be more significant than citizenship behavior and technical skill. Administrative skills were found to have the strongest — most significant — moderating impact on the relationship between effectiveness and manager skills. Moreover, gender was not found to significantly influence the effectiveness-skill dynamics; however, organizational level did prove to be a significant factor.

Implications for Recruiting, Developing, and Evaluating Managers

Given that each of the manager skill dimensions assessed in this research was found to be significantly related to managerial effectiveness, the implications for those responsible for recruiting, hiring, developing, and supervising managers are clear. Measures specifically designed to gauge these skill dimensions should be a part of the work processes of both the managers and those charged with determining their performance evaluations. According to this study, particular attention should be paid to the skill levels and implementation of human skills and administrative skills — and, as the authors note, the higher up the organizational hierarchy the assessments travel, the more emphasis on administrative skills should increase.

The human skills construct was measured by 28 items that included attribute description language such as: "Shows interest in the needs, hopes, and dreams of other people." This particular question item was significantly correlated with effectiveness at r = 0.97. The authors argue that their hypothesis about the importance of human skills, particularly for middle managers, did not materialize because of the different approaches to addressing the construct. In prior studies, the human skills construct tended to be narrower, focusing on empathy and warmth, for instance; but in this study, the human skills construct was broader. Overall, the skill dimensions in this research represented more holistic interpretations than what are found in earlier studies on managerial skills.