Personality And Strengths And Characteristics Of An Effective Manager

Among the many different personality traits and skills related to relationships with other people, there are a handful that tend to stick out as particularly useful for developing strong management abilities. This paper discusses some of those traits and skills in the context of describing the life and personality of a fictional character. In the real world, it is unlikely that one person would hold all of these traits and display all of these skills consistently. Nonetheless, understanding the ideal skills and traits for effective management goes a long way toward allowing an individual to claim as many of them for himself as he can. Of course, the first steps must be to understand what these skills and traits actually are, and then apply

The most important of these is self-awareness, as it is the foundation for not only the other personal skills but also the interpersonal and group skills. One way that some companies improve their managers ' self-awareness is through self-awareness training (Whetten & Cameron, 2005) and self-disclosure exercises (Whetten, 2005), and Tom was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of such opportunities himself. Stress management is another essential personal skill, primarily because work-related stress is so costly for an organization. Tom has improved his stress management through long-term strategies such as eliminating stressors and developing resiliency, but sometimes relies on short-term methods like muscle relaxation and deep breathing (Whetten, 2005). The last major personal skill is problem solving, which is a skill he uses on the job every day. Tom has been able to improve his analytical problem solving by employing a four-step model that includes defining the problem, generating alternative solutions, evaluating and selecting an alternative, and then implementing and following up on the chosen solution (Whetten, 2005). Developing these personal skills has been essential to his success as a manager, but he had to work on his interpersonal skills as

One of the most important of these, and perhaps the cornerstone of management itself, is the skill of empowering and delegating. These skills rely on ensuring that employees have the right training and understand the intended vision for the company. When Tom is confident of their ability to get the work done well, then he can empower them with confidence as well. The next group skill is team building, which can significantly improve the organization’s performance (Whetten, 2005). The most effective teams are those who successfully manage their transition through the first three stages of team development, including forming, norming, and storming (Whetten, 2005). Tom has learned how to accomplish this mainly through experience. The final group skill that he developed was change making. Tom accomplishes this by utilizing a framework for positive change that includes creating a climate of positivity, a readiness for change, a vision of abundance, commitment to the vision, and then institutionalizing the positive change (Whetten, 2005). Instead of simply managing negative change, he leads positive change, strengthening the organization in the process. All of these skills and personality traits make Tom uniquely qualified to manage and