The manager's skills
Mintzberg's ten roles, Katz's skills, the Blake and Mouton grid, Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership and delegation: what a manager does, must know, how they lead and what they can hand over.
- 25 cards
- 5 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- Scenarios
- Understand
A few cards from the deck
Mintzberg's roles: what is it?
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Ten roles grouped in three families: interpersonal (figurehead, leader, liaison), informational (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson) and decisional (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator).
Henry Mintzberg identified them by observing real executives' days: a manager moves from role to role all day long, often in short bursts.
A new developer, motivated but with no experience of your architecture, starts a first task. Which Hersey and Blanchard style fits?
- Directing: precise instructions and close follow-up
- Delegating: hand over the entire task and let them organise freely
- Supporting: decide together how to go about it, as equals
- Coaching: explain the reasons behind each choice at length to win them over
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Directing: precise instructions and close follow-up
High motivation, low competence: you must show and frame. Delegating or deciding as equals leaves someone without bearings who cannot yet do it.
A team lead who masters the code but can neither listen nor motivate lacks … skills in Katz's sense.
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A team lead who masters the code but can neither listen nor motivate lacks human skills in Katz's sense.
An excellent technician promoted to manager often stumbles here: technical skill does not replace the ability to understand, communicate and motivate.
Katz's skills: what is it?
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Three managerial skills according to Robert Katz: technical (mastering the trade), human (understanding, motivating, communicating) and conceptual (seeing the organisation as a whole and anticipating).
Their weight changes with level: a team lead needs mostly technical and human skills; the higher up, the more conceptual skills count.
The manager hands the migration to a developer, then takes back every decision the day before go-live. What is the probable cause, and what to do?
- Delegation without a frame: set at the start the expected result, what the developer decides alone and the checkpoints where the manager steps in
- The developer's insufficient competence: no longer give them important tasks until they are trained
- Insufficient control along the way: demand a daily report from the very first day
- Excessive freedom given to the developer: approve their technical choices in advance to avoid surprises
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Delegation without a frame: set at the start the expected result, what the developer decides alone and the checkpoints where the manager steps in
With no goal, room for decision or checkpoints set, the manager does not know what they let go of and takes it all back, which cancels the delegation. A frame set at the start avoids both abandonment and last-minute takeover.