Management: striking the balance between interpersonal skills and technical know-how

Drawing on more than 20 years of experience developing our clients' managerial skills, we have come to understand one essential thing: a good manager must know themselves well. Not only must they be able to adapt their interpersonal skills to different situations, but they must also develop their technical know-how.

Interpersonal skills (soft skills) are measured through various psychometric tests that focus on the manager's personality. What are their attitudes? How do they position themselves in relation to their team? How do they communicate? Are they assertive? Extroverted? More task-oriented or relationship-oriented? More intuitive or sensing?​

Technical know-how (hard skills) consists of measurable competencies linked to specific tasks (using a software program, speaking another language, mastering a theoretical field, and so on). It is measured through various competency tests, often profession-oriented. How does the manager handle their time? Do they delegate tasks? Do they conduct their appraisal interviews?​

The practice of management requires bringing together interpersonal skills and technical know-how. They are like two toolboxes that must be drawn upon together.

Let's take a concrete example

A manager has to conduct a corrective interview. They must adopt both the right interpersonal approach (appropriate attitude, eye contact, ability to listen, empathy, and so on) and the right technical know-how, that is, the right method (framing the interview, setting measurable objectives, putting indicators in place, complying with the law, and so on). ​If either one is lacking, the interview cannot be successful. ​

Measuring interpersonal skills Many psychometric tests of varying sophistication exist to measure interpersonal skills. Most are Jungian in nature, meaning they build on Jung's work on personality. Simplified to be easily applicable in the professional world, they often offer a personality analysis based on colours (or letters). Among the best known, we can mention Nova, Insights Discovery, Arc-en-ciel and MBTI. One of the most common mistakes when using these profiles is to assume that certain colours correspond to certain competencies. For example, "reds" are supposedly better managers because their enterprising, directive and extroverted personality matches what has traditionally been expected of a manager. This belief is false, because colours tell us nothing about competencies, about hard skills.

Example of a Nova motivations chart

Measuring technical know-how

Managerial know-how is more difficult to measure. This is for the simple and sound reason that managerial competencies are usually regarded as "common sense", and training in this field most often focuses on the technical aspects of project management rather than on those of people management. Yet it is indeed competencies, measurable hard skills, that must be brought to bear in order to manage successfully.

We developed the Prisme tool, the first profile on the market to measure a manager's areas of expertise. The range of managerial competencies is made up of 24 areas of expertise (each corresponding to hard skills) in which the manager is more or less comfortable.

The strength of this tool is that it perfectly complements psychometric profiles, providing both hemispheres of the managerial art.

Example of a Prisme chart - areas of expertise

Interaction between the two types of profile

Using both profiles together makes it possible to avoid any shortcut and any "pigeonholing" of personality. Indeed, a manager with extroverted interpersonal skills, of a yellow-red type, is not doomed to be a good speaker and a poor planner. They are perfectly capable of developing competencies in implementing indicators (KPIs) and management monitoring. The colour of one's personality does not condemn one's competencies.

In the same way, an individual with competencies in a creative field, with a strong orientation towards solutions and innovation reflected in how they organise their working time (brainstorming, teamwork, cross-departmental collaboration, and so on) may very well be "blue" in terms of personality, and have a need for meticulous planning, risk anticipation and control in their private life. Human beings are complex, and combining these two approaches (soft and hard skills) helps to capture some of that complexity.

A brief statistical study of the two tools: Nova (soft skills) and Prisme (hard skills)*

We wanted to verify scientifically that these two types of profile really do measure different things. So we chose Nova, an interpersonal-skills measurement tool that we consider the best on the market, and Prisme, our technical-know-how measurement tool, and compared them in a statistical study.

The sample consisted of 61 managers, each of whom had completed both profiles within a two-week period, and here are the results:

• There is a significant correlation between the two profiles. This means, for example, that there is often a correlation between being a blue colour (soft skills) and having developed competencies in planning, control and indicator monitoring (hard skills).

• However, the average scores obtained on the two profiles are significantly different. This means that the scores obtained on the two tests are always different, and therefore that the two tests do not measure the same thing. In other words, that interpersonal skills and technical know-how are two quite distinct and complementary things.

Conclusion

When it comes to measuring the complexity of human functioning in a professional environment, the temptation to reduce that complexity is strong. But this can have very negative consequences for the development of managerial competencies and their effective deployment within the organisation. The most common mistake is to think that a red manager will develop the competencies traditionally (and wrongly) attributed to the colour red. No, a personality type does not necessarily determine competencies. The two are often correlated, but they are never identical. So always take care to keep the two separate:

• Personality: ask yourself what kind of personality you need in order to manage the team. Someone extroverted? Someone more emotional or more rational? A personality with "a firm hand"?

• Competencies: ask yourself what competencies you need: project management? Risk control? Maintaining indicators? Coaching staff? Setting objectives and micro-management?

For this reason, it is important to measure both interpersonal skills and technical know-how during managerial training, recruitment, the reorganisation of a department or a team-building exercise. Once you have mastered these two levels of analysis, you can go on to greater complexity and take an interest in the team's life cycle, in the organisational culture of the team, the department and the company, in management style, in the circle of values, and in all those wonders that make management one of the most complex but one of the most fulfilling of professions.