4 Manager Skills Every Leader Needs but Most Managers Lack

What makes a good manager?

While there is no one-size fits all answer to this question, we can all agree there are qualities that most managers have in common. For instance, almost all managers are experienced, ambitious and passionate about their leadership roles. 

Then, there are skills that are vital to the success of a manager, but not many managers have them.

Eager to know these manager skills most leaders lack? Keep reading for the complete scoop!

1. Showing Empathy

Empathy is the ability to recognize and share the feelings of another person.

As a manager, being empathetic enables you to treat your staff not just as employees, but also as human beings. This helps you to identify workers who are going through various challenges in their personal lives and offer some support.

However, many managers lack this vital skill.

In today’s fast-paced workplaces, most managers are faced with the pressure to meet business targets. To achieve this, they push their employees to worker harder. In the process, they get too absorbed with organizational goals and forget to develop a human connection with the workers.

If you still think being empathetic is not an important skill, this stat will drive the point home. 72 percent of employees would consider leaving a company if it displays a lack of empathy.

2. Interpersonal Skills

In the workplace, you must know how to develop positive relationships with your colleagues.

But as the workforce becomes more diverse, a lot of managers are struggling to strike positive interactions with workers who’re from different racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. Diversity challenges can lead to low employee morale and poor teamwork.

As a manager, you need exceptional interpersonal skills to not only communicate effectively and build successful relationships at work but also bridge workplace challenges arising from cultural differences.

3. Technical Skills

You don’t have to work in a smart factory to know that artificial intelligence is fast shaping our workplaces. 

As a manager, it’s easy to feel your job is not under threat from robots. This is probably the reason the vast majority of managers don’t possess adequate technical skills.

Yes, your job might be safe – companies need humans at the helm after all – but you must maintain your technical proficiency. If you don’t, how else are you going to lead workers who have superior technical knowledge than you?

4. The Ability to Accept Feedback

Of course, you’re a manager by merit. You worked your way up. You deserve respect.

This is how most people in managerial positions feel.

While it’s not wrong to be proud of your achievements, pride can get in the way of your ability to accept feedback, especially from your juniors.

A good manager should be able to listen to and even learn from their workers.

Learn These Manager Skills and Take Your Career to the Next Level

To become a successful manager, you need more than vast work experience and advanced professional knowledge. You must also possess a range of manager skills, such as the ones fleshed out in this article.

Remember, some skills or abilities are not inborn. If you don’t possess these skills, you can learn them. It just takes practice.

While we’re still on the learning beat, here is how to boost productivity in the workplace.