The manager interviewed in the task is Mr. X from a NDT (Non-destructive testing)

inspection company, working as a managing director. Mr. X’s company is a small sized organisation

which performs jobs on oil and gas field. In this organisation, Mr. X works as a top level manager that

develop planning and making decisions which can maximise the benefits to their company. Katz’s

human skill is one of the important managerial skills. Katz had introduced three main skills: technical

skill, human skill and conceptual skill (Peterson, 2004). According to Peterson (2004), these three

main categories were the crucial part of managerial skills in these modern days. Through this

interview, it shows that how a manager applying Katz’s human skills when making arrangements and

allocations of works between their workers.

Based on the results from the interview, Mr. X as a top level manager says that a top level

manager requires higher human skills or interpersonal skills and conceptual skills than technical skills.

Human skills are clearly defined as the ability to work well with other people individually and in a

group (Robbins & Coulter, 2014). It is also stated that human skills is the capability to cooperate with

others and to communicate with each other efficiently (Peterson, 2004). Mr. X claims that

communications between the workers and the manager are very important. It helps a manager to

understand, communicate ideas, and convey messages to the subordinate. Mr. X is practising a “two-

way communication” in his organisation which means they will hold meetings to share ideas, to listen

and most importantly, to generate best ways to maximise the outcomes with lower work load. It can

also help to gain trust between workers and manager by practising “two-way communication”

(Chalmers, n.d.). It is clearly showed that human skills are very important to a manager.

Besides, conceptual skills are also an important part of managerial skills for a top level

manager. According Robbins and Coulter (2014), conceptual skills are usually defined as the ability to

consider and to conceptualize about complex situations. By practising conceptual skills, managers are

more able to see the organisation as a whole and visualise how the establishment fits into its wider

environment (Robbins & Coulter, 2014). Mr. X stated that every time before a decision is made, the

work load, resources, human resources and financial status are always the considerations to start a new

project. In this way, it can reduce unnecessary waste of time and energy during the work progress.

After a decision has been made, Mr. X will start to make planning and arrangement to the workers for

a smooth work flow to ensure the organisation is working efficiently at any time. Besides, Mr. X also

set short-term goals for the organisation, and also long-term goals. With the goals set, the organisation

members will begin to self-manage; peer pressure will help to reduce absenteeism and poor

performance (Chalmers, n.d.). This shows that an individual is required to have high conceptual skills

to work as a manager.

During the interview, Mr. X shares one of the examples of the way he lead his team

towards project success. Mr. X gives motivations to the team members, and working together with the

members as a team. When the members are working overtime, work together with them. It can build

confidence among the team members when working together because Mr. X believes that more human

resources can make the work progress become more efficient and happier. This can strongly related to

what have stated in the Katz’s managerial skills, mentioning that a top level manager who has

conceptual skills is able to lead a team towards their goal and seeing the team as a whole. Furthermore,

Mr. X also believes that give good encouragement to the employees, provide friendly working

environment and reward the employees for hard work do help to motivate the employees. According

to Kelchner (n.d.), giving employees a supportive working environment can motivate the members of

a team. This shows that motivations given from the manager are useful for the employees to work

effectively and efficiently.

On the other hand, Mr. X also claims that technical skills are not so important to a top

level manager. It is because top level managers are not required to perform tasks that need specific

skills for example, documentation, data bases and programming (Peterson, 2004). This shows that a

top level manager are not required to perform tasks stated above but he or she will only assign the

tasks to the employees in the organisation. According to Boundless (2014), to successfully operate at

the top level management, a manager should have the knowledge of how competitions, economies,

politics and social trends affect the organisational effectiveness. It obviously shows that how important

conceptual skills are to a top level manager.

Nevertheless, Mr. X claims that customers are also an important aspect to an

organisation. Mr. X also stated that communications are very important in his organisation in order to

ensure that they can produce the best outcomes to their customers. He believes that effective

communication can help employees to understand the problems that the customers face. By using this

ability, employees are able to apply effective ways to solve most problems faced in the workplace

(Walker, 2011). In the other words, effective communications do help to build trust and

understandings between organisations and its customers. Furthermore, Mr. X also claims that an

organisation’s goal is meeting customer’s expectation. A top level manager identifies customers’

expectation and makes planning to provide the best service performance to the customers to meet

customers’ satisfaction (Estepon, 2011). It shows that a manager’s roles are making plans and

assigning tasks to his employees in the organisation after identifying customers’ expectation in order

to meet the expectations.

Moreover, Mr. X mentions that the managing internal communication is very important

to an organisation. In this globalisation world, communications between one and other are mainly

through social media. Traditional ways of communication may fail to deliver positive outcomes, while

the social media are playing an important role in current generation, especially to the young employees

(Justinek, 2014). So, in Mr. X’s organisation, communications through social media are taken place in

order to produce expected outcomes. On the other hand, Mr. X also claims that social media have

bring a lot of conveniences to his organisation such as better way of communication with the

customers and targeting new market through the social media. According to Davis (2014), social

media is a good tool to connect with the customers because the presence of a social media shows the

personalities of an organisation that will impress the customers to head their arrows to the

organisation. Besides, social media like LinkedIn is the good place to target the new market, which the

information shown are always up-to-date and relevant (Nash, 2014). These evidences are strongly

showed that social media are very important to a manager as they can help to reduce the work load and

maximise the outcomes of an organisation.

From the interview analysis, Katz’s human skills are observed strongly related to Mr. X’s

role as a top level manager in his company. From the observations assembled, Mr. X claims that a top

level manager requires highest conceptual skills, followed by human skills and technical skills are the

least important compared to the other skills. Furthermore, it is also proved that customers and social

media bring strong impact to Mr. X. Based on the results analysed, customers are an important aspect

to an organisation and social media do help an organisation to ease the work flow, and indirectly

assisting an organisation to achieve the goals set.