Three Essential Skills by Robert Katz

Nowadays good managers are becoming highly important in all companies. Management roles are useful to organize employees and develop a company. Manager acts as a guiding employee to carry out the purposes of a company. According to Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter (2009) managers can be divided into 3 levels of manager which are first-line managers, middle-level managers and top level managers. Every different level of managers have different role to manage the company. For example top level managers tend to plan a goal of the whole company while the lower level managers only focus on the productivity of the company. Furthermore, Katz (1955, as cited in Robbins et al., 2009) mentions that managers need three essential skills to perform their duties at the company. They are technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills.

This essay will firstly explain about what manager and management are. The essay proceeds to examine the three managerial skills by Katz and relate these skills in different management levels especially top-level manager. After that this essay will give some examples specifically for top level managers about Taylor and Charlie Bell. Finally, the essay concludes how important three essential skills in different level of managers.

According to Robbins et al. (2008, p.10), management means ‘the process of coordinating work activities so that they are completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people’. Manager is ‘someone who works with and through other people by coordinating their work activities in order to accomplish organizational goals’. Therefore a manager is a person who enables to manage other people to work effectively.

The first essential managerial skills are technical skills, which are “the understanding of, or proficiency in, specific activities that require the use of specialized tools, methods, processes, procedures, techniques, or knowledge” (Peterson & Van Fleet, 2004, para. 10). Technical skills...