Individual managers

Management is a process, which exists to get results by making the best use of the human, financial and material resources available to the organization and to individual managers. (Armstrong, 1990) On the other hand, in economics point of view, it said that economics is the subject, which try to maximize utility of every scarce resource. As you can see, these two subjects also emphasize on the important of adding value to the resources, and this added value depends on the skill and commitment of the people who are responsible for managing the business.

Management functions are the activities that take place in organizations and the things that the people who manage these activities do, which involves using processes, responding to instructions, allocating work, getting teams into action and seeing that the required results are obtained. (Armstrong, 1990) Managers should have the competence to recognize the standards and quality in their organisation in order to meet the customer requirements and also understand how to get the work done with other people. Especially, at this moment, the globalisation trend has spread all over the world.

There are many companies that try to raise or expand itself to become a multinational company. The expansion of these business organisations forces every manger to develop themselves and upgrade their skill in order to deal with the new situation. Due to the change in business environment, the manager of every company must have more skill than before whether they are ready or not. From the weekend training, I realise that there are a lot of managerial skill, which is important for every manager in order to bring the effective management to the organisation such as communicating skills and stress management.

Communicating with other people is the main activity of managerial life. (Mintzberg, 1973) It has two important aspects: first, the maintenance of personal relationships, and second, the efficient transmission of messages. (Young, 1986) In my opinion, I think communicating skill is the most necessary skill for the effective manager because manager is in the middle position between executive and worker. Manager may be called on to make presentations to their board, at a meeting or at a conference. They must therefore develop effective speaking skills.

In addition, managers have to spend much of their time in meetings engaged in intercommunications with their colleagues. So, every manager has their duty to receive the policy from their boss, executive officer, and pass that policy to the organisation’s worker. Listening and speaking skills are the most important communicating skills because managers have to use them in order to make the communicating process, input or output. Listening may seem easy but in fact it involves attention, hearing, comprehension, and memory.

(Young, 1986) A good listener will absorb more information and achieve better understanding with the other person. Generally, people cannot listen effectively because four problem. Firstly, sometime they are unable to concentrate with the speaker. Secondly, they are over-concerned with what they are going to say next. Thirdly, they are uncertain about what they are listening to or why they are listening to it. And lastly, they are unable to follow the points or simply not interested in what being said.

There are many ways to be an effective listener such as concentrating on the speaker, following not only word but also body language, respond quickly to points made by the speaker, ask questions frequently to make clear meaning and to give the speaker an opportunity to underline the point, comment on the points made by the speaker, make notes on the key points, prepare to let the speaker go on with the minimum of interruption. (Young, 1986) In my opinion, language is another listening problem, especially for the foreigner.

Because if the listener is not the native speaker, it might take some more time to understand some complicated points, which the speaker has made. So, the listener should interrupt when he/ she cannot understand the speech clearly. Speaking, there are three keys to effective speaking. Firstly, the speaker has to overcoming nervousness. Actually, some nervousness is a good thing. It forces the speaker to prepare the speech and raising performance. But the excessive nervousness ruins the effectiveness and must be controlled.

The reasons for excessive nervousness are the fear of failure, looking foolish, and a sense of weakness. There four way out to overcome nervousness. Firstly, take the opportunity to practice by speaking in public in order to become more confident. Secondly, the speaker has to know the subject, which he/ she wants to speak. Thirdly, trying to understand and know what are the audiences expecting to hear. Lastly, make sure about the goal that the speaker wants to speak. (Young, 1986)