Assignment 2

Management Skills (Z13MANEL)

AUTHOR’S DECLARATION:

This assignment is the author’s own work and has not been submitted
wholly or in part for any academic award or qualification other than that
for which it is now submitted.

Student name: Olusegun Adekoya

Student no: 9127957

Date: 18 hours, 23rd April 2019

Word count: 1,601 words

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 3
MAIN BODY ............................................................................................................................................. 4
1. Importance of effective management skills in the council ............................................................. 4
2. Importance of diversity in the Council ............................................................................................ 6
3. Theories of management on decision making, motivation and problem solving .......................... 8
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................... 10
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 11

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INTRODUCTION

Management skills constitute the central piece of enterprise: the ability to

manage the resources or production for efficient working, managing people and

optimising other factors of production. The context of the report is the Warwick

Council to give clear understanding to the importance of diversity and different

management models for decision making and motivation.

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MAIN BODY

1. Importance of effective management skills in the council

Warwick Council is a local government council in the United Kingdom which has

its headquarters in Leamington Spa. Every environment that aggregates factors

or resources need a management that is efficient to carry on smooth operations

and same is the case with Warwick Council. The management need skills to

maintain discipline and work environment in the Council among its members of

staff and other stakeholders.

There are different types of skills which are required by the Council and by

developing these skills the benefit that the Council will get is also mentioned

below.

Conceptual skills – The management of Warwick Council requires ability to

visualise the entire organisation as whole piece, notwithstanding the disparate and

independent departments, units and divisions. The management of the Council

must evolve a conceptual skill that will aggregate the entire Council and therefore

identify the cause of problem in each department and see the interrelationship

with problems in other departments or units. This way, there is an improvement

in the creative as well as initiative skills. This skill helps the managers to plan

goals for every situation and help them fighting with uncertainties that may be

peculiar to some units or interrelated. Conceptual skills are related to the brain

and gives basic understanding to the managers to understand issues of the

Council. It helps the management to work with concept and ideas with logical

thinking (Noe and et.al., 2017).

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To develop conceptual skills managers can closely observe the leaders of the

Council and can see and learn from them to know how they tackle the situation

based on rationality and sound judgment. This will benefit the Council by reducing

biases, confusion, chaos, preferences and prejudices.

The other way to develop conceptual skills is to identify issues in the Council and

try to solve them as case studies. This will benefit the entire Council, as there will

not be frictions and arguments between the members on issues that will could

have been addressed by the management in the initial stage. The manager can

also attend various seminars and training development programmes to increase

their communication skills, decision making and conceptual development. All these

will benefit the Council in increasing cooperation among the members and for

carrying smooth operations of the Council.

Human relation skills – This skill is also called interpersonal skills which is very

important in the Council as it means ability to work with people and function well

as a team and team member (Hoffman, 2018). This skill enables the manager to

understand and communicate with others within and outside the Council. To

develop human skills, the manager needs to accept its members by accepting

people of diverse backgrounds in terms of faith, colour and other orientations. The

other way to develop human relation skills is to appropriately reward members

according to contribution on a scale that had been set by the Council. This

motivates staff member to work better and leave a room for sanctions that had

been clearly communicated to member before the start of the programme (James,

2018).

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The other way to improve human relation skills is to listen to listen to team

member because a listening manager is admired and trusted members (Craig,

2019)

Technical skills – Managers of the Council must have technical skills which

means ability to perform the work that is assigned to them and members working

below them in the Council. (Kroner, 2017). Technical skills helps the manager to

use various tools, machines and techniques to create problem-solving attitude

(Gallagher, 2018). To improve technical skills, managers need to attend

workshops and seminars which can increase technical knowledge or can develop

attitude of Continuous Professional Development which will benefit the Council in

its operations as when the manager will know all the technical aspect of every

operation in order to save time and money of the Council (Durkin, 2016).

2. Importance of diversity in the Council

The issues in Council arises are either issues between member, culture

indifferences or business management issues. It has been observed that staff

members of the Council are leaving the Council too often and hence the issue of

staff turnover has arisen. The other issue that members of the Council are

unhappy about is energy wasted on racial prejudice which reduces efficiency and

effectiveness of the work (Marshall, 2018). The other problem of Council is that

management is not flexible in its approach. Communication only flows down which

means members need to follow orders but management does not listen to their

suggestions and this create unhealthy environment of working and create dis

satisfaction among employees (Terziev, 2017).

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It has been observed that Council and its members lack trust on each other which

arises as a big issue as without trust and integrity no council can work. The other

problem lies in old structure of the Council which reacts slowly to external and

internal changes and affects the stability of the Council. The problems in the

Council takes too long to solve which affects its productivity and resources

utilisation (Grange, 2017).

The other business management issues are increase in competition which affects

the employees and operations of the Council which create chaos and pressure.

The other issue is cash and resource management as managing cash and

resources is quite a task and they need to be maintained efficiently when the need

of cash arises. To avoid all these issues related to individuals and culture the

Council need to adopt diversity in its working for efficient working (Grange, 2017).

The Council at first need to set ground rules and ask each member to respect each

other as an individual and also each other's culture and race diversity. Also let

them know how to make efforts in understanding each other's views. To solve all

these issues, the Council need to accept diversity as one of its cardinal programme

that respects individuals from different backgrounds and cultures to come together

under one roof to work with each other. Diversity at workplace brings innovation

and creativity as it includes members who has different experiences and

backgrounds (Kumar, and et.al., 2015). Diversity at workplace also plays an

important role as it allows business to have larger demographics which works in

favour of the council as then it can attract more members who belong to other

fellow member's background and culture. It increases and create mutual respect

among the members, it is difficult in initial stage as people get time to cop up with

each other but as they start communicating they start respecting each other's

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diversity which create idealistic atmosphere in the council. Diversity helps in

conflict reduction and resolving issues and helps in preserving quality members in

the council which helps in achieving its objectives. The other importance of

workplace diversity is that it increases the exposure of council in understanding

different kinds of member and their attitudes, beliefs and backgrounds and

treating them equally which decreases member turnover and increases their

loyalty (Morden, 2017).

3. Theories of management on decision making, motivation and problem

solving

The motivation theory which can be used by the Council is ERG theory of

motivation. It consists of attributes that are in existence, relatedness and growth

needs. Existence need include basic needs such as physiological and safety needs;

relatedness needs include fame, recognition, relationship with others and growth

needs include self – development and personal growth (McCarthy, 2016). This

theory of motivation will help the Council in motivating its employees by

concentrating on one need at a time and provide freedom to its members in the

council with new idea generation and ensures feedbacks from the members as

well as give advice to the members. This theory allows the members of the Council

to get the feeling of belongingness and contribution which increases the efficiency

of council.

The decision-making theory used by the Council is Simon's theory in which clear

steps of decision making which will include formulation of problems, collection to

information related to the issue, choosing best solution and implementing the

decision and at last analysing the performance. It will improve the management

of council as it is always goal oriented, is dynamic in nature and involves

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timeliness. It will help the management of council in making rational decision

which will increase cooperation and effectiveness in the council (Morden, 2017).

The problem-solving theory which can be used by the council is Generative theory

of problem solving in which the issue need to be selected and problem is judged

upon different aspect and then different solutions are evaluated and then best one

is selected. This improve the motivation of employees by solving issues and

conflicts and increase their efficiency, reduce their load and work pressure and

create positive work environment (Terziev, 2017). When problems are solved, and

efficient theory is adopted it decreases turnover of the members, creates work

environment, establish good interpersonal relationships and improves members

participation and communication with each other.

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CONCLUSION
The report concludes the importance of management skills and how council can

be benefited by improving the skills. It also focused on importance of diversity at

the workplace and how it helps in solving issues. At last the report summed up

with theories of management on motivation and decision making and their effect

on workplace.

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 REFERENCES
Carvalho, M.M.D. and Rabechini Junior, R., 2015. Impact of risk management on
project performance: the importance of soft skills. International Journal of
Production Research. 53(2). pp.321-340.

Cohen, E., 2017. Employee training and development. In CSR for HR (pp. 153-
162). Routledge.

Durkin, C. and Gunn, R. eds., 2016. Social entrepreneurship: A skills approach.

Policy Press.

Hoffman, M. and Tadelis, S., 2018. People Management Skills, Employee Attrition,
and Manager Rewards: An Empirical Analysis (No. w24360). National
Bureau of Economic Research.

Jan, S.U. and Anwar, M.A., 2018. Emotions management skills and barriers with
library staff: A correlational survey of agriculture students. The Journal of
Academic Librarianship. 44(1). pp.33-38.

Kumar, S., and et.al., 2015. Change management skills. Indian journal of
community medicine: official publication of Indian Association of Preventive
& Social Medicine. 40(2). p.85.

McCarthy, J., 2016. WISB: Warwick Integrative Synthetic Biology

Centre. Biochemical Society Transactions. 44(3). pp.678-680.

Morden, T., 2017. Principles of management. Routledge.

Noe, R.A., and et.al., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive
advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Terziev, V. and Nichev, N., 2017. Research on the management skills and abilities
acquired in the military education system.

Online

Mayhew, Importance of diversity 2019. [Online]. Available through:

<https://smallbusiness.chron.com/diversity-workplace-important-
employees-10812.html>

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