3 Skills of a Confident Senior Manager

To rise to the top of your organisation whether you are in HR, sales, marketing or operations you will need to be confident when talking to the board. Where does that confidence come from?

The 3 critical components of confident Senior Managers

1. Functional expertise

You may have a broad general experience, but you should expect to be highly competent in the function that you are leading. Competence means knowing your limits, knowing what you do and don't know and knowing where to find the specialist expertise you need to support you.

2. Financial Acumen

Every senior manager needs to be able to make sense of both the company internal management accounts and the published financial accounts. You need to know where your activity shows up in the accounts and what you can do that will influence the numbers. Financial acumen is as critical for public sector managers as it is for private sector. Indeed, for public sector where income may be fixed, understanding how you influence the outgoing numbers is even more important, no matter what your specialist expertise.

3. Business or Organisational Knowledge

You need to know your business or organisation very well, and how it relates to others in the same market or sector. All businesses are not the same, and understanding what it is that your business does to make money is critical. If you are in the public sector the same rules apply – Hospital A is not like Hospital B, and no amount of government intervention will give you the same catchment with the same workforce in the same environment.

One is not enough

You may well have been promoted or recruited to a senior role on the basis of just one of these components. The most common basis for appointment is functional expertise. Ironically in senior management this may be the least use on a daily basis. To be successful, and help your organisation succeed you need all three. So what can you do?

1. Functional expertise

* Keep up to date
* If you have moved into a new field, find the experts inside and outside quickly, get a crash course from them through conversations and recommended reading
* A high level conference or seminar will give you the main drivers
* ‘Introduction to training courses may not help – they are often very tactical and aimed at junior employees

2. Financial Acumen

* Aim for understanding not detailed execution
* Ask the Finance Director or senior financial controller to take you through the company and management accounts in detail
* Accountants measure intangible assets (the ones you can't touch) all the time – ask how to measure any intangible benefits you think your team brings
* Ask yourself how much financial value your team is contributing – ask the finance team how it could be measured
* Build a picture for yourself of how your organisation uses its money – reflect on how it could better use its money to meet its goals
* Introduction to Finance courses may be very useful

3. Organisational Knowledge

* If you have been brought in from outside, understanding what makes the organisation tick should be very high on your list
* Meet with your peer group managers on an individual and group basis often - don't let this get pushed out by your functional role
* Identify the informal influencers as quickly as you can and get to know them
* Think of the key things you need to know to be effective, and formulate your questions before you meet people
* If you are in a new sector, senior level seminars and conferences could give you a quick overview of the key sector drivers
* If you are an internal promotion, make sure you don't lose touch with the ‘grass roots' – you still have to get things done!