Management and administration involve a number of specialised professional skills. Skills with people are among the most important of these—managers spend about two-thirds of their working time with other people. These social skills are not things that can be picked up in everyday life; they require special analysis, research into the best techniques, and training in how to perform them. There has been a great deal of research into social skills, and social behaviour at work, during recent years. This research tells us a lot about the best ways to handle different situations and relationships at work.
Those of us who do this research always hope that use will be made of it; very often it remains buried in the journals. Elizabeth Sidney, Margaret Brown and myself thought of this book as a kind of ‘Spock’ for managers—describing the most effective social skills for different kinds of interview, taking the chair at meetings, leading groups, etc. In addition we have tried to give some understanding of the processes involved, both in individual social performance and inside working groups. We have drawn on a very extensive body of carefully conducted research, which has produced clear-cut and widely confirmed findings in many areas. Research shows how much the effectiveness of interviewers, leaders, etc., varies between different performers, and that it depends on the specific social skills used. These findings do not always agree with current practices in industry, or with the doctrines which are now fashionable among consultants, and embodied in management theories.
Of course it takes more than reading actually to acquire these skills—though reading can give deeper understanding of what is happening in social situations. We have all been involved in the development of methods of training in social skills for some years, and the first two authors are very experienced in teaching management skills. We discuss follow-up studies which compare the before-and-after effectiveness of those who have experienced different kinds of training.
We now know that many people fail to learn the right social skills by experience on the job, and that social skills can be learnt, and fairly rapidly, by specially designed training experiences. Training courses usually need special materials, and we have produced an example of these in a set of films, tapes, etc. (Selection Interviewing Training Programme, Mantra, 1969). We have not produced a complete bibliography to the numerous studies referred to in the text.
Instead we thought that it would be more useful to give carefully selected references to further reading at the end of each chapter. We also give check lists at the end of those chapters where the contents can usefully be summarised in action. We are greatly indebted to many colleagues and friends, who have been involved in the research reported here, or collaborated in training courses. I should also thank the SSRC and the Oxford Regional Hospital Board for financial support for my own research.
Most work is done in groups and organisations, and most people at work have to spend a good deal of time communicating in some way with other people in order to achieve the necessary coordination of effort. This is true of manual workers, research workers and everyone else in a working organisation. However, it is particularly true of managers, who spend something like 65 per cent of their time with others in a variety of different situations and relationships.
Communicating is not the whole of a manager’s job and social skills are not the only skills he needs, but this is a very important part of his work. We define social skills as the ways in which a person behaves towards others in different social situations. Examples would be how a manager conducts an interview or a committee meeting or how he deals with an individual or group over a period of time. Just as some ways of performing a manual skill produce better results, so do certain ways of conducting social situations and managing social relationships. | The effect may be immediate—for example, the manager may be able to handle individuals or groups in such a way that they immediately work more efficiently, or the effect may be long-term—for example, he may be able to select the right candidate for a post even though the benefits of this appointment will not be fully realised for some years. A lot is known about the skills of manual workers.
Manual jobs are studied, the best way of doing each job is found out, and carefully designed training courses are given to teach the necessary skills. By contrast, managers usually receive very little training or instruction in the social skills which they must exercise; they are expected to pick them up on the job. It is true that everyday social skills are normally learnt by experience. However, it is now known that this is a very unreliable kind of training, whereby some people fail to learn much at all, and others even learn the wrong ways of handling people.
It is our view that managerial skills are specific and complex professional skills, which are not picked up in everyday life and for which special training is needed. It is rather paradoxical that so much effort has been devoted to training manual workers rather than to training managers in their respective skills, in view of the fact that managers have a far greater influence on the productivity of an enterprise. The reason is that until quite recently very little was known about the nature of social skills, or the skills which are most effective in work situations. Now that this knowledge has become available it is possible to devise training in the styles of behaviour which are known to be effective.
The idea that social skills are important is not new. Elton Mayo maintained that social skills were the key to industrial problems; he was referring mainly to supervisory skills. The American social scientists who produced what is commonly known as the Human Relations Movement also emphasised supervisory skills and the importance of cooperative working groups. In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest
in various forms of social-skills training—T-groups and other kinds of group experience. Our approach is somewhat different in that we shall deal with a series of specific managerial social skills rather than with social competence in general. We shall also, after considering these specific skills, look at the social environment in which the manager works, which can affect his ability to use these skills.