Success is the ability to obtain a desired object. It can also refer to the ability to accomplish what is intended or attempted. “Success is measured in terms of performance and compared with an individual’s desires” (Andersen 2). To determine success, there must be set targets or goals before a task is undertaken. On completion, the performance achieved is compared to the goals and success is determined. Managers are obligated to supervise, lead, motivate and mentor others in an organization. The ability of a manager to perform all these tasks effectively makes a big difference as far as success is concerned. However, achieving success in management is not easy. This is because it requires a combination of one’s personal qualities and the ability of subordinates. Every decision made by a manager has adverse effects on performance of an organization. This means that subordinates will perform their task in accordance with the manager’s directives, which might either bring success or failure.
It’s not all about skills, education or academic excellence, success is much more. In fact, not every educated executive is successful; three skills make managers successful in their fields, strategic mind, charismatic leadership, and proficiency of small tasks. This is what defines management and most leaders do not know it. This contradicts the understanding of various organizations who think that success can be achieved by over-working the subordinates, adding extra hours of work, setting targets for them, fixing strict deadlines or punishing them in case of failure. Unhappy employees cannot deliver as expected. This is because they won’t give their best or work with determination to achieve higher targets. Therefore, adoption of a strategic mind, charismatic leadership and proficiency of small tasks defines success as far as management is concerned.
A strategy refers to a plan or method adopted to bring an anticipated future (Harrison & Pelletier 17). This may be in the form of achievement of goals or effective solutions to a problem. Strategic is a term used to describe the decisions or plans formulated to impact favorably. It is the key factor of achieving the desired outcomes of a game, organization, venture, system or war. Therefore, having a strategic mind means adopting plans and decisions that are result oriented. They must be favorable and destined to achieve positive outcomes.
A critical strategy is not necessarily associated with education. One does not have to be so educated in order to have a critical strategic mind. It is associated with experience and desire for results. A manager might have academic papers that show their qualifications, but fail to deliver. This is because achievement is closely related to critical strategies. The ability to plan ahead, design plans and make decisions that are result oriented defines success (Harrison & Pelletier 35). It is either a manager has experienced the need for critical strategy in the success or may have noticed the importance of a critical strategy in their management background. It is more of a personality than education. Human thinking is associated with life experiences. Sometimes people’s thinking is influenced by past experiences. A manager who made plans and decisions that to him seemed effective. But turned out to be ineffective will not repeat the same again. That the manager will avoid such line of thinking and adopt a critical strategy that is different from the previous one.
Alternatively, a manager may have shared with another management in the same field of operation on a strategy that achieved success. This will give an insight of what success is all about and ways to achieve it. Moreover, the manager will gather some logistics and technicalities of a specific critical strategy in order to implement it effectively in his organization. Such a criterion does not require much of academic excellence and it is not automatic that an educated person will be able to implement the strategy out of his own thinking. Education will install knowledge in the brain of a human being. It will also enlighten a person on some critical issues in management and the business environment. Education will enhance competence in leadership as well as operations of various tasks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide an individual with experience and alternatives. Therefore, an educated executive needs to have experience and diverse reasoning for him/her to achieve success. Executives should have a strategic mind for them to achieve success in their endeavors.
Having a strategic mind has much to do with strategic thinking and planning. Strategic thinking is different from strategic planning and managers are categorized by their ability to identify those differences (Malphurs 6). Strategic thinking is all about synthesis, use of intrusion and creativity to design a vision as well as an integrated perspective of the way the organization is heading. On the other hand, strategic planning is a tool to facilitate better jobs, energies and focus talents while adjusting direction in accordance to performance and a varying environment. It is being clear with objectives, expected result, resources and combining them in either short-term or long-term context. An educated executive will possess strategic thinking capacity, but fail to portray strategic planning skills. They have a competent mind of making a sound decision, meaningful plans, sensible goals and effective objectives. They formulate decisions that conquer with the organization’s vision and mission to give direction.
Most of them, however, fail utilize strategic planning in their operations. It is until a manager is exposed to a particular job environment for a considerable time that he/she is able to utilize strategic planning effectively. As earlier mentioned, strategic planning deals with tools of performance as far as success is concerned (Malphurs 13). The managers who have experienced success have an idea of what it’s all about. They might either have achieved it themselves or have associated with people who have achieved it. This puts them in a better position to formulate tools that have the ability to fuel success. Therefore, an educated executive who seeks to emerge a competent manager should possess both strategic planning and strategic thinking. This will enable one to think and plan strategically to enhance the effectiveness in organizational performance.
This is leadership based on an individual’s ability to behave and communicate in various ways that reach followers on an emotional, basic way to motivate and inspire (Poon 16). It is rather difficult to identify the characteristics, which makes a charismatic leader able to communicate on a powerful emotional level and certainly include some personality traits. Relying on charisma in leadership is problematic. This is because a leader may be tempted to lead people into horrible situations due to lack of skills and leadership characteristics.
Far from dress code, facial appearance is also important in the management. Facial appearance has to be mature because t is connected to people’s perception of competence and likability. Ling (1) argued that more mature looking people are perceived as competent and less likable. However, the two related traits must be possessed by a competent manager. “Facial appearance can go further to distinguish between managers of large companies and managers of small organizations” (Poon 45). Mature faced individuals enjoy an advantage over their baby faced competitors. Generally, managers who possess a serious mature facial expression are perceived competent and effective. They have high chances of being trusted by both the subordinates and the customers.
People who work in all sectors should consider how they look. Appearance is a determining factor and how one looks can either present a job opportunity or assure success on the job. It goes as far as making one comfortable on the job and also making other to be comfortable around him/her. However, appearance is more than just dress code and facial expressions. It also includes communication and speech. The way a manger communicates presents his/her appearance to the audience. There is a need for a manager to possess effective communication skills that will work to offer guidance to employees while enhancing terms with other stakeholders. Communication comprises of both verbal and non-verbal. The choice of words when speaking with various stakeholders is important for business success. This is because, the statements made by a manager are taken seriously and if their don not make sense, stakeholders are bound to lose faith in a particular organization. It also involves the tone of voices and the attitude during reporting. This can show a manger’s seriousness in the job context. Consequently, appearance is very important in enhancing charismatic leadership in an organization.
As mentioned earlier in this discussion, charismatic leadership is all about communication and behavior in relation to followers. Managers need to have a sense of the gap between this two as it impacts directly on their operations. An educated executive with no experience on the job may fail to possess such a trait. This is because to identify the gap between the organization and followers require a bit of experience on the field. This will help a person to know those stakeholders who are part of an organization and those who are not. Moreover, the way followers are treated is different from the way organizational stakeholders are treated. Also, their expectations and motivation is different as far as the relationship is concerned.
A manager with experience on the job will be able to identify the gap between the two in terms of their treatment and expectations (Sloan 54). Once, the gaps are identified, charismatic leadership is now put to effect. Communication is done differently to either of the two. The attitude and treatment is also varied towards the two. Experience managers do realize that organizations and followers have different motivation and they perceive things differently. Therefore, when dealing with them, managers tend to vary their approach. This is for the better of the organization as they both have serious impacts on an organization. Not all educated executives can identify the gaps react this way. It calls for determination and passion while taking initiatives when necessary. Charismatic leadership involves emotional expressions and personality traits. As it is well-known, personality traits are influenced by the environment and emotional expression has a lot to do with experience. This means that educated executives have to be careful with their personality traits and emotional expressions if they have to win the stakeholders’ hearts.
If a manager cannot be trusted with small tasks, there is no way he/she can be trusted in higher and demanding tasks. It is essential to prove oneself with small tasks before being trusted with a big task in management. For instance, if a manager fails to deliver when trusted with customer care operations, he/she can not be competent when given a planning task in the same organization. Proficiency at small tasks is very important (Grossman 24). Educated executives need to portray proficiency in their first jobs or their first stages in a particular job. This shows their competence and trusting them with big organizational tasks is possible. It is easier to trust a person who has been promoted from a low position to a more advanced position for running organization. However, trusting a person from the grounds of academic qualification might be wrong. This is because there is no base to lay trust on since there is no experience. Running organizations should be trusted on those people who have shown competence and excellence in a previous task that they had full control over.
Managers who have performed small tasks previously have a detailed experience that is essential in running an organization. This is because in their operations they have encountered diverse challenges that have enhanced their understanding of a job environment. Experience is the best teacher. Managing small organizations gives an individual an idea in dealing with performance, success and challenges. Therefore, when a large organization is entrusted on such a person, he/she will have no difficulties dealing with issues as they come.
In the small organizations, one of the measures of proficiency is the ability to persuade people to do specific tasks. Management is all about giving direction and ways of doing things. It has much to do with decision making and planning with relation to set targets. When managers make decisions or plan, they always go ahead and monitor the progress. If it is not pleasing, they have to intervene. One way of intervention is through motivation, which is done through persuasion and incentives. A manager must be able to persuade the subordinates on the important issues and the need to have them. Once a manager is able to persuade the employees, there are high chances of an organization moving in a single direction. Moreover, such organization is able to achieve its goals in the long-run. This shows that education is not all that it takes. Managers need to experience certain operation techniques in order to be competent in their job.
Experience enables a person to be used to a certain job. This means that the individual knows everything about the job and is ready to undertake any form of task or challenges that come on the way. This builds self-confidence. Being a coward or afraid of outcomes is a product of a deficiency in self-confident (Sloan 63). Management is a task that is characterized by various hardships that require a bold individual to handle them. Unfortunately, if one has never experienced such before, there are no chances of being broad because one does not know what to expect. Self-confidence enables a person to manage the current operations of an organization while planning for future at the same time. The decision making and planning process is characterized by risk taking and determination. A self-confident individual is never scared of challenges. Instead, he/she tackles them head-on to clear the way for success. Success and achievement is the main motivation of self-confident people (Vanucci 12). They do not settle for anything less until they achieve success in all their endeavors.
Educated professionals need to have self-confident, which can only come from excellence in small tasks. They have to build self-confidence that would determine their success in the difficult tasks ahead. Therefore, having been educated, it is the duty of managers to acquire experience by participating in various roles in their career. Experience is not learnt in class. This means that there are no academic papers to show how experienced a manager is. It is until one gets a recommendation letter from a previous organization that he/she managed. Now this is the most important part as far as competence is concerned. Managers need to have self-confidence that will enable them take necessary risks and manage an organization to excellence. They will make firm decisions and lead other stakeholders in achieving the organization’s goals.
Education is very important and academic excellence is critical as far as technical operations are concerned. To manage an organization, one must have various qualifications depending on the field of study. It is not all about skills and academic excellence. However, this can not go without question. There is a need for prior experience, which prepares managers to the hard tasks ahead. They have to integrate what they learnt in school with what they find on the field.
Managers need to have a strategic mind for them to achieve success (Vanucci 10). This includes strategic thinking and planning that goes a long way to make effective decisions for an organization. Educated executives must adopt charismatic leadership in their endeavors. This will enable them portray emotional and personal traits that define an individual’s relationship with others. Finally, individuals need to have proficiency in small tasks or operations. This proficiency will enhance their ability to persuade people and their self-confidence. Generally, these traces their way back to experience. Having prior experience is very important as it prepares one for the tasks ahead. The breakthrough presented in this discussion shows that not all educated individuals are successful. This is because success is more than just academic excellence.
Works cited
Andersen, Erika. Being Strategic: Plan for Success; Out-Think Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change. London: St. Martin's Press, 2010. Print.
Grossman, Warren. Importance and Proficiency of Construction Technology Competency Elements. New York: University Microfilms International, 1980. Print.
Harrison, Frank & Pelletier, Monique. "Levels of strategic decision success", Management Decision, 2000:107 – 118.
Ling, Philip. “Physical appearance key to management success: study”. April 28, 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.canada.com/Physical+appearance+management+success+study/2960592/story.html
Malphurs, Aubrey. Advanced Strategic Planning: A New Model for Church and Ministry Leaders. New York: Baker Books, 2005. Print.
Poon, James & Fatt, Teng . "Charismatic leadership", Equal Opportunities International, 2000: 24 – 28.
Sloan, Julia. Learning to Think Strategically. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Vanucci, Tricia. “Understanding and Coping with the Fear of Success”. Women in Management Review, 2010: 2-7.
