Personal Assessment: Developing Management Skills - Essay Example

Management skills are extremely important for each person who wants to succeed in life. These skills, however, come with experience; a person develops them with time in different life situations. Currently, I assess my management skills as fair (2) because I still need practice to be more confident in my ability to lead. Having no work experience as a manager, I practice my skills in other spheres of life, which are the same critical for future managers and leaders.

Relationships with my family and friends are the greatest source of experience I have. I always prefer the leading role in any group because it gives me the authority to organize people. In any complicated situation, I believe that directed actions and insightful discussion of the issue can lead to productive solutions acceptable to all group members. If any conflict takes place in my family, I motivate others to share their opinions about solutions to develop a shared vision of the problem.

Such a strategy makes people collaborate and the problem disappears quickly. In this way, I develop my communication, team building, and delegating skills. For instance, my father could not come to common ground with my uncle and it caused many inconveniences for other family members. I had a neutral relationship with my uncle, so I was able to communicate with him on friendly terms. I explained that even though my father seemed to be angry, he was not intended to do anything bad to my uncle.

That talk with my uncle was productive because he changed his position and attitude toward my father. In this way, I took a decisive part in the solution to this conflict because I was the only person who managed to make my relatives listen to each other and compromise. I applied to delegate skills to reach my main objective and resolve the conflict between the relatives. I apply the same strategy of a “peacemaker” in communication with my friends. In any critical situation, I prefer to slow down everyone and discuss emerging problems.

I am a people-oriented leader; I stress the importance of relationships and a friendly atmosphere most of all. In teamwork good and respectful relationships predetermine success. I have noticed that such personal qualities as selfishness or stubbornness lead to decreased effectiveness in anything people do together. If people do not wish to communicate or compromise, they usually fail to do anything together. In this respect, I am convinced that communication must be treated as the main factor in leading.

Verbal communication is regarded as a top-important management skill by Whetten & Cameron (2011). Listening is also included in this broad term.