Managerial Skills for Senior Managers

Recently there has been a growing awareness in the Western world that to be effective senior managers need to acquire people‐related skills. In contrast, in developing countries management educators and trainers still seem to be preoccupied with traditional task‐related management training. To discover which topics senior managers in developing countries believed should be incorporated into a management course, a survey of senior officials in Zimbabwe′s public sector was carried out. A combination of questionnaire and semi‐structured interviews as a means of data collection proved to be productive. The results revealed that a suitable management training programme should provide senior managers with a balance of people and task‐related managerial skills, and with an opportunity for self‐development. It is concluded that if management training programmes for senior managers were designed accordingly, this would lead to increased job satisfaction and managerial effectiveness.