As Someone Moves Up The Managerial Hierarchy, Which Skills Become Relatively Less Important?

Answer of MCQ | Importance of Managerial Skills At Different Levels Or Hierarchy of Management

What Are Managerial Skills (MS)

These are knowledge and abilities required during management process to complete organizational tasks efficiently and effectively. Following are the Fundamental Skills:

What Are Technical Skills (TS)

These are related with the specialized knowledge, ability in the specialized area such as specialized knowledge in accounting, law, engineering, computer science, etc. These are mostly needed at lower-level of management.

Interpersonal Or Human Skills (IS Or HS)

The abilities of manager to Interact with people working in the organization. How effectively communicate with individuals or group members and how to build relationship with them?

Conceptual Skills (CS)

The abilities of abstract thinking (thinking of ideas, solutions, etc., beyond their existence knowledge) in the complex situations and find solutions to their problems. Due to these skills, the manager is able to develop strategic plans, make vision & mission of the organization, create solutions to the problems in bringing the organization out of difficult situations due to his conceptualize thoughts, etc.

The correct answer of this multiple choice question (mcq) is (a). Technical Skills, as in the managerial hierarchy level, the more a person is going to a high level of management, his responsibilities increase so now he has to delegate his authority to lower-level or first-level managers. But, at bottom-level management, he should be technically competent and able to perform various day-to-day operating tasks / jobs. But as the level of hierarchy rises, he is now not directly involved in day-to-day operations which the lower-level-managers can do, that is why TS become relatively less important. Still, there is a need for middle or top manager to have such technical skills in order to manage the operations of the business but not so much required at this level of hierarchy, especially for top-level management.

At middle and top-level management, the manager should have interpersonal and conceptual skills, because, now he has to lead the lower-level management, subordinates, workers and those who are under his control. According to nature of work and level of management, the middle level and top-level managers need to change their minds and now oversee, make visionary decisions, lead and control the activities of the lower-level management.

For IS or HS, a top-level manager has to interact with different people like lower-level managers, subordinates, top level management, customers. He has to build relationship between top level management and lower-level management. He has to influence the lower-level management to work for achieving common goals. He can guide them with his own knowledge and work experience that he gained when he was working at low level management.

CS are must for top-level management, as at this level, they make strategic decisions, log-term plans e.g., for 5 years, leading from the front, motivate all of the members working in an organization, visionary, controlling power and implement the plans in order to achieve organization goals.

So, we can say that as someone moves to high level of hierarchy, technical skills become relatively less important but HS and CS become relatively more important for middle-level managers and top-level managers. Supervisory skills require in all levels of an organization.