What key qualities have you recognized in successful and effective managers?
What key qualities do you want to develop in aspiring managers?
Take a moment to note what came to mind when you read those questions. I wonder if your answers would be categorised as competencies or values.
For clarity, I’ll define what I mean by these terms.
Competence: The ability to perform an activity to the standard required in your organisation.
Values: The principles that help you decide what is right and how to act in various situations
I believe competence and values are of equal importance and work together – you need effective practice and principles.
Of course, managers must be able to do certain things well, like managing their own time, planning and delegating work or communicating with others.
They must also make decisions and act in a way that develops high levels of trust; it’s not just what you do, but also how and even why you do it that really matters.
So values are necessary to give direction and energy to competently delivered activities. And competence is required to make things happen and enable values to positively impact organisational performance. Good intentions need to be realised, ideas shared, words translated into deeds.
A manager possessing competence without strong values might get things done in the short term but fails to inspire and involve people, is untrustworthy, and, at worst, manipulative. This leads to discontent and under performance of the team or organisation.
A manager holding strong values without competence suffers the frustration of unfulfilled good intentions and, sadly, also loses peoples’ trust through failing to deliver. Once again, performance is compromised, and potential remains unfulfilled.
Effective managers, those that consistently achieve outstanding results over the long term are both competent and value-driven; the two sets of qualities work in harmony and reinforce one another.
Values give rise to drive, purpose, enthusiasm and a sense of direction that need to find expression. Competencies enable action that needs to be informed by a sense of purpose.
Think of them like the warp and weft threads in weaving: values running through the whole fabric of management practice and competencies interwoven to form a strong and coherent whole.
As a young manager, I spent some time reflecting on this and wrote down my guiding principles (or values) and the competencies I thought I needed. These have evolved over the years and now look like this:
Values
- Value every individual – treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself
- Honesty and Integrity – be honest, say what you mean and mean what you say
- Fairness – treat everyone fairly
- Determination – keep believing, keep going
Competencies
- A systematic approach – the ability to get things done
- Communication
- Teamworking and team leadership
- Coaching & delegation
- Managing change and conflict resolution
- Strategic thinking
You may have different sets, but it is worth thinking about and writing down the key values and competencies for you and your organisation. Then, you can work intentionally to continually improve them in yourself and to encourage them in those that you seek to develop as managers. Everyone will benefit – managers, team members, customers and the organisation as whole.
Clive is an accredited coach working with business owners and managers at all levels to help them achieve more.