Teaching Managerial Skills:
Moving Beyond Current Practice
*John D. Bigelow
Management Department
Boise State University
1910 University Drive
Boise, Idaho 83725
(208)385-1267
May 20, 1998
Abstract
Managerial skill teaching has become established in universities, and there are strong similarities among most skills texts in the way they approach skills. The image of skills, pedagogy, and content which typify "current practice" in skill teaching is clarified. Two issues with current practice are raised: skill learning does not carry over well to later situations, and managerial skills are more complex and divergent than current practice implies. Four changes needed to increase the effectiveness of university skill teaching are proposed: (1) shift our emphasis from developing managerial skills to developing skillful managers, (2) emphasize effective inductive learning, (3) reduce destructive interactions between deductive and inductive learning, and (4) develop a "content free" and minimally prompted skill assessment process.
Teaching Managerial Skills:
Moving Beyond Current Practice
In the past few years we've seen a surge of interest in incorporating managerial skill learning into university settings. The reasons are not hard to find: repeated criticisms by employers as to the inadequate skills of university graduates, revisions in AACSB accreditation standards designed to increase responsiveness to constituents, and a downward trend in business college enrollments. One indication of the seriousness of the intent of universities to address skill issues is that during the last four years we've seen the number of university skills texts increase from one to nine--and additional texts are in process.
The "skills movement" has moved beyond the stage of a questionable experiment, to the point where managerial skills courses have become an accepted fixture in many colleges of business. We now know how to conduct a sustainable skill learning process in a university setting.
If one examines the skills texts and teaching approaches currently available, one can quickly see some strong similarities in scope and pedagogy which run through most of them. To the extent existing texts are an indicator of how we teach, we can surmise that there is a "current practice" which is common to most university skill courses. Since this practice has been in use by university instructors for more than 8 years (i.e., since the publication of the 1983 Whetten and Cameron text), we now have considerable experience in its application. We are in a position where we can capitalize on this experience by considering what we are doing, how it is working, and how we might improve.
My purpose in this paper is to consider what we have learned about current practice and to propose some ways of improving our skill teaching practice. I will first clarify what constitutes "current practice" in teaching skills. Next, I will identify two key issues with current practice. Finally, I will propose a number of changes to current practice in order to improve our effectiveness. In developing this paper I will draw strongly on university skills texts, since these are the publications which are having the greatest impact on current practice.
Current Practice in Skill Teaching
I see three areas in which skill literature has explicitly or implicitly defined current practice. The first is our image of what managerial skills essentially are. The second is pedagogy: how we go about teaching skills. The third is the content of what we teach. Below, I discuss each in more detail.
1. Current Image of managerial skills
Surprisingly, there is very little consideration in the current literature of what a skill is. In reviewing nine skills texts, I found only one which explicitly defined "skill" (Robbins, p. 9). Instead of defining skills, most texts lay out a learning process intended to improve skills. Our current image of skills, therefore, is indirect; to be inferred from how skills are dealt with. Based on current texts, this image might be expressed as follows:
"Managerial skills refer to theories, techniques, and behavioral guidelines which, if applied properly, will enhance a manager's practice."
2. Current Pedagogy
Whetten and Cameron's 1983 skills text provided a skill learning model based on the social learning model put forth by Bandura (1977). Subsequent skills texts have generally adopted, directly or indirectly, variants of this model. The steps involved are as follows:
a) Preassessment. Most texts begin a skill unit with some form of preassessment activity (usually self-administered). This activity is intended to provide students with some insight into their current skill level, and perhaps also to educate students as to important dimensions of skills.
b) Conceptual learning. Preassessment is followed by readings designed to provide a conceptual understanding of the skill. This and the previous step were added to Bandura's model by Whetten and Cameron, and subsequent texts have generally included them as well.
c) Modeling. Some texts (though many do not) include skill modeling; i.e., demonstration of competent skill use. This is often done through videotapes, but can also be done through reading of written scripts or live modeling by instructor or others.
d) Practice. Following this, students practice applying their understanding. This practice usually takes place in two phases. The first involves practice in applying concepts to cases and other described situations. The second phase involves live skill practice in role-playing situations and exercises, often followed by feedback from other students, using behavioral guideline checklists.
e) Life application. Students then are given assignments which encourage skill application outside the classroom in settings naturally occurring in students' lives.
f) Skill Assessment. The final step is assessment of what has been learned. While the previous learning steps are conducted for each skill unit, skill assessment is commonly conducted for groups of units, and is more for the purpose of grading than for learning. Given the difficulty of assessment, most instructors use traditional examination methods of multiple choice and essay exams, possibly augmented with student reports and assessments. Two other approaches, however, have been developed to assess skill learning. The first is an "action exam" approach. This was pioneered by Jim Waters (Waters, Adler, Poupart, and Hartwick 1983), and has undergone some development since then (e.g., Bigelow, 1991, chapter 10). Essentially this approach involves the use of role plays accompanied by scoring through the use of established criteria. The second approach involves "assessment centers" (e.g., Bigelow, 1991, ch. 9). An assessment center has students undergo a battery of tests, then provides a systematic assessment of the status of the student's skills.
The pedagogy of current practice then, is related to social learning theory in that it incorporates a "learning from experience" process. It, however, amends this process by adding a significant cognitive component prior to practice. Students are expected to apply this material in developing their skill behaviors.
3. Current Content of Skills Courses
With the exception of Keleman et. al. (1990), current texts portray managerial skills as a set of distinct, though interdependent skill topics, which are organized as a sequence of topic chapters. A listing of the skill topics included in a number of skills texts is shown in Table 1.
---------------------------------------------
Table 1: Major Skill Content Areas
---------------------------------------------
This table indicates that a variety of skill topics have been identified as important by one author or another. These skills may be organized into five categories, according to their target or relation to skill learning:
1. Intrapersonal skills, in which self-related goals receive primary emphasis; e.g., decision making, planning, time and stress management, goal and action management, personal productivity, and self-motivation.
2. Interpersonal skills, in which external relational goals and changes in others are emphasized; e.g., communication, delegation, influence, conflict, group management, motivating others, and leadership.
3. Learning skills. which enable or facilitate the development of other skills; e.g., self-awareness, creativity, and learning from doing.
4. Personal characteristics, which may not be skills in themselves, but attributes of individuals which studies suggest are related to managerial skillfulness and skill development; e.g., proactivity, disposition to lead, perceptual objectivity, positive regard, and risk taking.
5. Administrative skills, used to carry out administrative functions; e.g. decision making and planning. These skills in themselves tend to require more cognitive and less interpersonal process in their execution.
Summary of Current Practice
There are three characteristics which distinguish current practice. First, it is a process-oriented approach, based on the premise that if students undergo the prescribed learning steps their skills will improve. While students do some personal assessment of skills initially, skill definition and measurement are not central to current practice. Second, it is a sequential approach. While some texts have integrating frameworks and/or integrating later chapters, skills are in the main dealt with one by one. Third, it is largely a deductive learning approach, in which skill learning consists of assimilating and applying the skill learning of others.
A caveat: While "current practice" describes what most current skills texts support, it is not the only practice currently employed. At least two other university skill learning approaches can be identified. The first is a self-managed learning approach in which students' skills are assessed and students use the results to develop a learning program. The second is a situational approach in which emphasis is given to skill practice in critical management situations. Both of these approaches have important advantages. I would argue, however, that "current practice" describes the approach which is at present most commonly used in teaching university managerial skills, and I will limit my discussion to this approach only.
Issues with the Current Approach to Skill Teaching:
Two Observations
Is our current practice effective? That is, do graduates of skill courses show evidence of a sustained increase in skillfulness? Given the lack of good measures of skill learning and the preliminary nature of skills research, this is a difficult question to answer. At this point, based on experience and research, I can offer two observations:
Observation 1: Skill learning is not carrying over well to later practice.
Current pedagogy does enable students to "demonstrate" key aspects of skills--if prompted. In addition there are usually a few students who are "ready" for the course and report a great impact. For most students, however, there is, little indication that this learning is carried forward to later situations. This observation is based on a number of sources:
a) From action exams: In giving action exams (in which students are invited to demonstrate skills in role play situations) I have found that students can in varying degrees demonstrate skills. However, they often have difficulty relating conceptual learning to behavior, and frequently revert to what they "naturally" tend to do. From these exams and other sources I have summarized some of these tendencies, which are listed in Table 2.
--------------------------------------------------
Table 2: Status of Student Action skills
--------------------------------------------------
A number of businesspeople in a large local firm reviewed this list. All agreed that the list was very characteristic of recent college of business graduates.
b) From routine interactions with students: Students interact with me in a number of ways, in and out of the classroom. In these interactions I repeatedly encounter students who miss opportunities to apply relevant skills to the interaction. For example a student who is dissatisfied with a test score may come to see me and say, "I didn't understand how I got this grade." The student then waits, hoping I will then take the initiative to identify and solve the problem. If I ask the student to explain what he/she is doing in terms of skills we have covered, I often get a response of this type: "If you wanted me to use those skills you should have told me so beforehand." As another example, students often come in and ask me to provide a recommendation for their employment portfolio. In doing so these students commonly do not implement guidelines for delegation; e.g., establishing when I will have completed the recommendation or what I will do with it. Again, if I point this out, the student is likely to respond that I should have told them beforehand that I would expect them to use delegation skills.
c) From studies relating skill measures with other variables. McEvoy (Bigelow, 1991, ch. 11) compared action exam scores with subsequent ratings of supervisors, peers, and subordinates. He did not find consistent or adequate correlations between the two. A similar study by Raynis (1992) compared assessment center results with a number of job success variables, and concluded, "Unfortunately, our primary hypothesis about a positive predictive relationship between assessment center performance and job success was only weakly supported by the data" (p. 132).
The lack of correlations in these studies can be explained in a number of ways; e.g., because of small sample size, errors in measurement, or simply that the wrong skills were taught. The point made here is that neither study disconfirms the possibility that while students may have been able to demonstrate skills during the learning process, they did not continue using them.
d) From indications of student resistance to learning. Rasmussen (Bigelow, 1991, ch. 13) found that his students resisted using active listening skills because they regarded them as passive, manipulative, ineffective, time-consuming, and a sign of weakness. In such situations these students preferred to offer advice, and assumed that this was what the other person essentially wanted. These students were willing to learn active listening for the purposes of the course, but were disinclined to use them in the "real world".
The above points suggest that while our current approach to teaching skills does enable students to learn and demonstrate some skill behaviors, the use of these behaviors is likely to be discontinued at course's end. Why don't students continue to use skills? The authors above also provide some possible explanations for this lack of carry-forward:
a) Will vs. Skill. McEvoy (ibid) suggests that students learn to demonstrate the skill, but are largely motivated by grades. Lacking equivalent motivation later, students cease using the skills.
b) Lack of prompts. in the current approach, skills are typically taught in highly prompted situations, and one at a time. In "natural" situations there may be few prompts that managerial action is needed. The need for action may be more obvious in "reactive" situations where something is going wrong (e.g., an escalating personality conflict), but may be less obvious when opportunities for development exist; e.g., developmental delegation or motivation.
c) Competing practice skills. Rasmussen (ibid) makes the important point that students have prior and subconscious "practice theories" which are more efficacious than classroom learning in determining behavior. When confronting a situation in which a skill is called for (e.g., active listening), a more efficacious practice theory is likely to dominate (e.g., give advice).
A skill course is only effective if people actually wind up putting those skills to use later on. If we are to make skills courses more effective we need to increase the carryover of skill learning from the classroom to later situations.
Observation 2: Managerial skill practice is more complex and divergent than our current image of skills implies.
The current image of managerial practice is reminiscent of behavioral job skill training. In this view job skills are "designed" skills, intended to be simple, prescriptive, behaviorally dominated, measurable, and easily learned. Often managerial skills texts give the impression that skillful managerial behavior is much like any other job skill. In considering conflict for example, a text may identify a number of alternative conflict approaches, contingencies for choosing one or another, and guidelines for implementation. The student is then tested by asking him/her to determine the correct approach for a particular situation, and to then apply the appropriate guidelines.
If we consider actual situations in which managerial skills are exercised, however, a much more complex image of skills emerges. Some of these differences are shown in Table 3, and are discussed below.
-------------------------------------------------------
Table 3: "Training" vs. "Managerial" Skills
-------------------------------------------------------
1. Managerial skills are interactive, nonroutine, and unfolding in expression. Skill situations are typically interactive, and during an interaction a manager may learn new things which fundamentally change his/her appreciation of the situation. The manager may try an approach, but find it is not working; e.g., advice is rejected, or efforts at producing a compromise are failing. This means that the person must be flexible, good at assessing how an approach is working, and have more than one tactic in his/her skill "tool box".
2. Managerial skills involve multiple, possibly conflicting goals. In an interaction a manager may be working on more than one goal, and these goals may be conflicting. For example, a task may need to be done quickly, but also have developmental possibilities which require more time. A manager may need to balance his/her own life, and have more opportunities than there is time to pursue. A manager may need to encourage an individual's creativity and conformance to collective activities at the same time. In such situations the manager's response is likely not to be the sum of the responses to the two goals taken singly.
3. Managerial skills are often unprompted. Whereas job skill trainers work hard to ensure that environmental or other prompts are provided to cue worker skill behavior, the managerial environment is usually less structured and less predictable. Often the manager's biggest challenge is to sort out the issues in an ambiguous and unprecedented situation. The skill behavior in itself may be simple; a smile, praise, or simply saying nothing. The timing and context, however, can make the behavior highly effective.
4. Managerial situations often need to be defined by the manager. In a behavioral job skill approach, exercisers of job skills work in situations defined by others. If a situation occurs which has not been anticipated, it is usually considered to be a failure of managers or other job designers; not of the worker. Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for making sense of situations. They cannot blame others if they fail to pick up on an important issue. This suggests that a part of managerial skillfulness is the ability to make sense of situations, to identify important issues, and to create action plans to address them.
5. Skillful Behavior may be manifested in creative or unexpected action. Literature on skill practice tends to conclude that there is one or a limited number of action tactics from which a person may draw in a given situation. Since our research methods are designed to produce convergence, this tendency is predictable. Particular situations, however, may make possible alternative, even unexpected approaches not normally thought of. Thus, skillful managers may "break the rules", but nonetheless accomplish their goals. A number of behavioral strategies can be identified which have been successful, but are not typically taught; e.g., the use of silence, jokes, "cooling out", positive rumors, "good guy-bad guy" strategies, allowing situations to worsen, and crystallizing opposition. The list of possible tactics a manager may use is divergent, not convergent. We cannot hope to train students in all possibly useful skill tactics. Rather, they must become to some extent innovative in developing action tactics.
In sum, graduates who have learned skills via current practice are unprepared to deal with the complexity of actual skill implementation. They may have difficulty maintaining flexibility, trying different approaches, dealing with multiple goals at once, recognizing when skills are called for, interpreting situations, and creating responses capitalizing on possibilities unique to the situation.
Needed Developments in Skill Teaching
In the previous section I have pointed to some problems with current practice. In order to address these problems we need to reexamine our thinking about what we are trying to accomplish, and how we bring those accomplishments about. Below, I propose four changes needed to address problems with our current practice.
Change 1: Shift our emphasis from developing managerial skills to developing skillful managers.
I have argued earlier that there is much more involved in the ability to use skills in actual situations than the simple ability to demonstrate skills. Instead of setting an overall goal of teaching a set of managerial skills then, we need to set a goal of developing students' skillfulness in managerial situations. By shifting our teaching to focus on developing skillful managers, we change our emphasis from mastering individual skills to handling actual, complex, managerial situations. This requires developing not only "skills", but also the ability to assess situations, identify possibilities inherent in them, resolve goal conflicts, formulate and implement a plan of action, monitor one's progress, and change one's line of action if needed.
Change 2: Emphasize effective inductive learning.
Current practice organizes the learning process around a series of skill units--each containing a body of knowledge about a particular skill. This makes sense as a way of systematically progressing through a body of knowledge. As we have seen earlier, this approach can enable students to demonstrate particular skills based on this knowledge. It does not, however, lead to continuance of skill use. Figure 1 proposes an explanation for this lack of continuance.
---------------------------------------------------
Figure 1: Generating Skillful Behavior
---------------------------------------------------
There apear to be three "layers" involved in generating skilled behavior, and these are shown in the figure. The first layer is a person's orientation; i.e., the issues which the person identifies as important in a situation. The second layer is a person's practice theories. These are a set of ways by which the person can, through his/her behavior, impact on issues identified as important. The third layer is the person's actual actions--the translation into behavior of the person's selected practice theories.
The horizontal dimension of this figure represents an individualistic orientation, in which issues of self-benefit are identified as important--often in a short-term time frame. The vertical direction represents a collective orientation, in which issues impacting the collective entity are identified as important--often in a longer-term time frame. Since it is a manager's job to act on behalf of the firm, a collective orientation is a major aspect of a manager's orientation.
The generation of behavior, then, can be seen as a vector--a line moving from the origin, through orientation, practice theories, and then behavior. Vector (a), a more horizontal line, represents behavior generated from a more individualistic orientation. This is probably representative of the behavior of many U.S. students, given that they live in an individualistic society, and an individualistic point of view tends to be reinforced in university learning.
Vector (b), a more vertical line segment, represents behavior directed in a more collective direction. This is representative of behavior which might be advocated in a current skills course; e.g., motivating performance. If the behavior is demonstrated by a student, one might say the behavior is "dislocated", since it is out of line with the student's orientation or practice theories (vector (a)). One would not expect such behavior to be stable; rather, one would expect the person's behavior to soon restabilize around vector (a), in line with the person's orientation and practice theories.
In order to produce lasting skill learning then, a skills course must impact not only on a student's behavior, but also his/her orientation and practice theories. Deductive learning--learning and applying what others know--in itself impacts on neither.
One thing that we know of which does impact on orientation and practice theories is learning through experience, or inductive learning. While the current approach does provide skill practice, usually through role plays, these activities tend to be deductive in nature since students are primarily practicing applying others' learning to their own behavior.
Inductive learning requires that one confronts problems and attempts to solve them. Learning occurs by repeated solution attempts followed by assessing the results. The form of a learner's behavior is generated internally, leading to greater ownership of the learning. It is not surprising, then, that inductive learning will impact more deeply on students.
By emphasizing the student's ability to create problem solutions, in contrast to simply implementing the solutions of others, an inductive approach better prepares students for the realities of situations in which skillfulness is required. Managerial skillfulness does not lie simply in the manager's ability to implement a bounded set of skill procedures. The variety of actions a manager may effectively take in a particular situation is unbounded, leading to the possibility of creating new approaches which capitalize on the peculiarities of a particular managerial situation. To the extent this is true, no set of behavioral guidelines can encompass skilled behavior. Rather, managerial skillfulness is more characterized by a manager's ability to develop effective, possibly innovative, action programs which positively act on managerial issues.
Instead of organizing around units of deductive learning (skill readings), then, skills courses should organize around units of inductive learning: the kinds of situations in which managers may need to act skillfully. An emphasis on situation-based inductive learning offers a number of potential advantages. Specifically, it:
a) allows learners to become more self-prompting in situations, since they start with the situation--not a particular skill.
b) allows learners to develop a more comprehensive ability to deal with actual situations than is addressed by current practice. In addition to application of cognitive models and behavioral practice, a situational approach allows learners to identify managerial issues in the situation, set objectives, develop an action plan, maneuver in the interaction, and assess results.
c) provides the opportunity to not only apply what others have learned, but also to develop creative solutions which are possibly unique to the situation.
d) provides a forum in which learners' previously learned orientations and practice theories may be surfaced, tested for adequacy, and developed.
Change 3: Develop our ability to use deductive and inductive learning processes together.
The deductive emphasis of current practice appears to be based on the premise that, at least where managerial skills are concerned, a conceptual understanding enhances skillfulness. Perhaps it is also based on a professorial practice theory that any university course must include significant conceptual content. Our experience with the current approach, however, indicates that cognitive knowledge about skills does not necessarily contribute to skillfulness. This is so for a number of reasons:
a) Conceptual thinking is a different thinking modality than interactional thinking. Conceptual thinking requires pauses and digressions in order to consider possible implications from another body of knowledge. During live interaction, individuals' mental processes are fully occupied by the dynamics of interaction, and most individuals have a very limited capacity to apply conceptual materials in developing their behavior. The difficulty of managing interactional and conceptual thinking at the same time is sometimes seen in action exams, when students break out of the interaction to reconstruct their notes on a piece of paper or reflect at length.
b) To the extent students are held accountable for conceptual materials in skill practice, they are likely to develop instrumental skills shown only in the course. In a course situation, most students are sensitive to factors impacting on grades. Conceptual materials are likely to give the impression that there is a "correct" approach to the skill, or at least one which is approved of by the profesor. Students desirous of a high grade, to the extent they see application of concepts as a grade-contributing activity, will be tempted to demonstrate behaviors based on conceptual materials--even if they do not think the behavior has much relevance elsewhere. Such grade-instrumental behavior , of couse, is unlikely to continue beyond the course.
c) The use of conceptual materials can lead to a goal drift where conceptual understanding, rather than skill accomplishment, is emphasized. The assimilation of conceptual materials is easier to test and a more familiar thing to consider in a university environment. Even an instructor with the best intentions may be seduced by course load and by students wanting a more familiar exam, and place increasing emphasis on conceptual understanding. This in turn can lead to increased attention to conceptual activities, reducing the amount of actual skill learning.
d) Conceptual materials provide "canned" external learning, which can reduce attention to students' abilities to create, learn, and develop on their own. To the extent students see conceptual materials as "the answers" to how to be skillful, they may also believe that no further learning is needed on their part; they only need to learn how to apply what is already known. To the extent students believe this, their ability to develop creative solutions and to develop their skills subsequent to the course will suffer.
The above points suggest that conceptual materials are a two-edged sword in skills courses. Used poorly, conceptual materials can derail inductive skill learning. Given the possible negatives of conceptual materials, it is understandable that some skill teachers choose to virtually eliminate it from their courses. On the other hand such materials can speed up the learning process, help students establish a systematic approach to handling situations, aid in the learning process, and acquaint students with problem-solving alternatives.
The essential contribution of conceptual materials, then, is not directly to a person's behavior, but to the person's processes prior to behavior. This means that the assessment of conceptual learning should be made independent of the assessment of the person's demonstrated skillfulness. In this way students are enabled to inductively develop their own ability to develop skillful behavior, without worrying about being counted down for not directly applying course materials.
Change 4: Develop a "content free" and minimally prompted skill assessment process.
As discussed earlier, current action exams are generally based on scoring criteria which are themselves based on use of a particular set of conceptual materials and guidelines. For example, in a conflict situation a person may be required to choose an appropriate conflict resolution approach from a list of approaches described in the readings, justify that choice, and implement the approach in the situation. There are at least three problems with assessing skillfulness in this way:
a) It provides prompts and reduces the need for diagnosis. It takes away diagnostic responsibility from the person by casting the situation as one requiring only application of a particular skill. Thus, a vital prerequisite to situational skill use--unprompted diagnosis--is removed from the exam process.
b) It restricts response alternatives and creativity. By requiring use of specific course materials, the exam tacitly removes the possibility of innovative responses which were not mentioned in the materials.
c) It denies skillfulness of non-participants. Because of the content-specific nature of current exams, it is possible that even skillful managers can fail the exam if they are unfamiliar with the course content. Ideally an action exam would be able to recognize skillfulness in terms of the person's effectiveness in handling the situation, and would be indifferent as to whether course materials were used.
Rather than assess skillfulness on the basis of behavioral criteria then, a skill assessment process should seek to determine the ability of a person to effectively handle managerial situations. Thus, a set of skill assessment criteria for a situational role play might be as follows:
a) Was the person able to orient to the situation as a manager? I.e., did the person address important task, human, ethical, and larger/longer term issues inherent in the situation?
b) During the interaction, was the person able to elicit and respond to information impacting on his/her appraisal of critical issues and the way he/she is approaching the situation?
c) Did the person deal with critical issues as effectively as possible within the constraints of the situation? E.g., did the person establish a "win-win" context, establish a supportive relation, involve the other in problem-solving, and engender ownership of the problem and solution implementation by other?
d) Did the person handle the larger/longer-term situation effectively? E.g., by dealing explicitly with them in the situation, or by describing an appropriate action plan for dealing with aspects of the situation outside the immediate situation?
An assessment process based on these criteria would yield an assessment of skillfulness which is not dependent on knowledge of course materials. It would reduce the response cueing to the testee to a single cue: that the situation should be handled as a manager. It would recognize a variety of tactical alternatives as potentially contributing to equallly skillful performances. By detaching skillfulness from conceptual materials, it encourages a more inner-directed inductive learning process which can have a deeper and longer-lasting impact on students' skillfulness.
Concluding Comments
In this paper I have described a number of changes which I see as needed in order to improve the effectiveness of university skill teaching. My intent has been more to identify directions for improvement than to specify the ways these directions can be accomplished.
These ideas have very much impacted on my approach to teaching skills. In my MBA skills course I have used Keleman et. al.'s (1990) situational text. Much of class time is spent in skill practice and feedback. I include conceptual materials, but assess conceptual learning independently from skill learning. I'm still struggling to develop a viable content-free action exam. While I am still in the process of establishing a course design which responds to the recommendations made above, I am, encouraged by the results of my efforts so far. Feedback by students, both during and after the class, is positive, and supports the basic directions proposed in this paper. More than before, I feel I am facilitating enduring developments in students' skillfulness.
Moreover, I am finding that these changes are making the course more open-ended and interesting, as students struggle to raise issues, deal with conflicting goals, learn about approaches developed by others in the class, and seek effective solutions which best fit themselves. Ethical issues often arise as students consider the larger impact of their behavior. The inclusion of problem-solving and creativity in the course adds a depth and challenge of the kind which we would hope to see in university level courses, and moves away from the image of a behaviorally centered "training" course. This in turn promises to make the course more intrinsically rewarding for university professors to teach.
Reference List
Aram, J. (1976). Dilemmas of Administrative Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, Albert (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bigelow, John D. (editor) (1991). Managerial Skills: Explorations in Applied Knowledge. Newbury Park, London: Sage.
Bolton, Robert (1979). People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts. New York: Simon & Schuster (A Touchstone Book).
Gallos, Joan V. (1988-9). Developmental Diversity and the OB Classroom: Implications for Teaching and Learning. The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review, 13(4), 33-47.
Keleman, Ken S., Joseph E. Garcia, and Kathi J. Lovelace (1990). Management Incidents: Role Plays for Management Development. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.
Lewis, Chad T., Joseph E. Garcia, and Sarah M. Jobs (1990). Managerial Skills in Organizations. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Lussier, Robert N. (1990). Human Relations in Organizations: A Skill-Building Approach. Homewood, Illinois: Irwin.
Maniero, Lisa A. and Cheryl L. Tromley (1989). Developing Managerial Skills in Organizational Behavior: Exercises, Cases, and Readings. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Quinn, Robert E.,Sue R. Faerman, Michael P. Thompson, and Michael R. McGrath (1990). Becoming a Master Manager: A Competency Approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Raynis, S. and T.J. Johnson (1992) Programmatic Assessment of MBA's Managerial Skills: Predictive Validity and Career Success. Best Papers Proceedings: Academy of Management 52d Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada, August 9-12.
Robbins, Stephen P. (1989). Training in Interpersonal Skills: TIPS for Managing People at Work. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Rue, Leslie W. and Llloy L. Byars (1992). Management Skills and Applications (Sixth Edition). Homewood IL: Irwin.
Waters, J.A., Adler, N.J., Poupart, R., and Hartwick, J. (1983). Assessing Managerial Skills through a Behavioral Exam. Exchange, 8(2), 37-44.
Whetten, David A. and Kim S. Cameron (1991). Developing Managerial Skills (second edition). New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Yukl, Gary (1990). Skills for Managers and Leaders: Text, Cases, and Exercises. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Table 1: Major Skill Content Areas
(by frequency):Drawn from Nine Managerial Skills Texts
|
Skill Area |
f |
Communication & listening & feedback |
9 |
Conflict |
8 |
Group Management & team building & meetings |
8 |
Motivation & job design |
7 |
Power & Influence & negotiation & persuasion & politics |
7 |
Interviews & Performance Appraisal |
6 |
Leadership & vision |
6 |
Decision Making |
5 |
Organization development, culture, planned change |
5 |
Time management |
5 |
Delegation |
4 |
Self-Awareness |
4 |
Stress management |
4 |
Goal setting |
3 |
Creativity & innovation |
3 |
Integration of skills |
3 |
Planning |
3 |
Assertiveness/initiative |
2 |
Coordinator/organizing |
2 |
Developing subordinates |
2 |
Problem Solving |
2 |
Career management |
1 |
Disciplining |
1 |
Mentor role |
1 |
Oral Presentations |
1 |
Personal productivity |
1 |
Productivity |
1 |
Writing effectively |
1 |
Table 2: Status of Student Action Skills
|
Skill |
Status of students |
|
Creativity/ Vision . |
• Suppressed • Low confidence • Tend not to see beyond the concrete • Emulate what other people are doing • Educational experience often blamed as inhibiting creativity |
|
Communi-cation . |
• "Tellers", not listeners • Do not elicit others' views or engender participation • Focus on literal messages, not underlying meaning • Written skills improving • Presentations are formulistic (dress up, pull some chairs to the front, and divide the presentation into individual card-read speeches) • Informative, not persuasive. • No assessment of audience and interests • No goal setting • Little ability to use visual aids or manage time |
|
Delegation |
• Tell delegatee what to do, then send him/her off • Doesn't engage delegatee in problem, elicit participation, surface possible problems, set expectations, establish a timetable, or ensure that the delegatee understands what is expected |
|
Influence and Politics |
• Employs rational argument, even when inappropriate • Little inclination to use bargaining • Ingratiation equated with "brown-nosing" • Views influence/politics as "bad", • Disinclination to link up with groups outside own |
|
Conflict management |
• Believes that dealing with conflict alienates • "Passive-aggressive" approach to conflict • Equates conflict management with compromise • Minimal ability to analyze conflict or to choose other possibly appropriate approaches besides avoidance or compromise • Gets caught up in "how you should think about this" or "who's right" rather than staying focused on issues • Gets caught up in reacting to the statements of the other • Moves quickly to a forcing/coercive "backup" approach |
|
Team skills |
• Finds groups aversive • Focuses soley on group task, avoids process issues • Often good at dividing up work (less so at integrating) • Little sense of how to start up or organize a team, obtain participation, or deal with process issues • Avoids establishing quality expectations, allocating group scores, or dealing with low-performing members |
|
Leadership |
• Few are willing to take on leadership responsibilities • Disinclination to take on responsibilities • Inability to work in ambiguous situations. • Autocratic view of leadership |
Table 3: Characteristics of "Training" vs. "Managerial" Skills
|
Training skills |
Managerial skills |
simple, procedural |
interactive, nonroutine, and unfolding in expression |
straightforward application |
Involve multiple, possibly conflicting goals |
clear prompting |
often very little little prompting |
situation defined by others |
situation often needs to be defined by manager |
prescriptive, convergent |
may be manifested in creative or unexpected action. |
Figure 1: Generating Skillful Behavior
About the Author
John graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior. He is currently a professor in the Management Department at Boise State University. Prior to his academic training he conducted skill training with the Peace Corps. He has been developing a university skills approach since 1980, and instituted a managerial skills course at BSU in 1983. He has developed an action exam process and conducted action exams with over a thousand students. Recently he edited a book on managerial skills. His current works include a review of current skills texts, and a paper exploring international managerial skills. His research interest currently has two prongs: managerial skills and managerial wisdom , which he hopes to bring together one day.