Skill Management

Skills management is the practice of understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills Well-implemented skills management should identify the skills that job roles require, the skills of individual employees, and any gap between the two. Skills management must be an ongoing process, where individuals assess and update their recorded skill sets regularly. These updates should occur at least as frequently as employees' regular line manager reviews, and certainly when their skill sets change.

To perform management functions and assume multiple roles, managers must be skilled. Robert Katz identified three managerial skills essential to successful management: technical, human, and conceptual*. Technical skill involves process or technique knowledge and proficiency. Managers use the processes, techniques and tools of a specific area. Human skill involves the ability to interact effectively with people. Managers interact and cooperate with employees. Conceptual skill involves the formulation of ideas. Managers understand abstract relationships, develop ideas, and solve problems creatively. Thus, technical skill deals with things, human skill concerns people, and conceptual skill has to do with ideas.

There are different types of skills in the corporate world. Soft Skills, communication skills, business writing, corporate presentation, public speaking, sales, marketing, leadership and managerial skills are few of the skills. Now come to different levels, a manager's level in the organization determines the relative importance of possessing technical, human, and conceptual skills. Top level managers need conceptual skills that let them view the organization as a whole. Conceptual skills are used in planning and dealing with ideas and abstractions. Supervisors need technical skills to manage their area of specialty.