Management development programs

Providing recommendations based on scientific evidence

Presented to Altria

October 2, 2014

Questions of interest

• What management skills are most valuable?

• Can management skills be trained? If so, how effective are training programs?

Summary of group presentations

Identified key management skills:

• Time management• Leadership• Communication• Strategic thinking & planning

Examining the best scientific evidence

We’ll examine two studies:

• Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

• Collins & Holton (2004) - The effectiveness of managerial leadership development programs: A meta-analysis of studies from 1982 to 2001

Examining the best scientific evidence

Why did I pick these studies?

• Tonidandel et al. (2012) – Study focused on our question and had multiple sources of data (Level 4)

• Collins & Holton (2004) – A meta-analysis, which is an accumulation of the evidence (Level 1)

What management skills are most valuable?

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

Study details• 733 managers• Ratings of their managerial skills rated by peers• Ratings of managerial effectiveness rated by their

supervisor

Managerial skills• Human skills (e.g., interaction, collaboration)• Administrative skills (e.g., organizing, delegating)• Technical skills (e.g., technical knowledge)• Citizenship behaviors (e.g., helping employees)

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

Study findings• All management skills had a statistically significant

positive correlation with managerial effectiveness (range from 0.26 to 0.36)

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

0.26 looks like:

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/correlation/

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

0.36 looks like:

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/correlation/

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

0.26 vs. 0.36

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/correlation/

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

So not a huge difference between the skills with the largest and smallest correlations.

But…

Then they asked what management skills explained supervisor-rated effectiveness more.

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

And found that:• Administrative skill explained almost 39% of

managerial effectiveness• Human skills explained a little more than 32% of

managerial effectiveness

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

Overall: Administrative & human skills most important

Administrative skills• Delegating• Organizing• Setting goals for others• Attracting and hiring

the best people

Human skills• Motivating employees• Communicating with

others• Showing interest in

employee needs

From Scullen et al. (2003) - Evidence of the construct validity of developmental ratings of managerial performance

Tonidandel et al. (2012) - Relative importance of managerial skills for predicting effectiveness

Overall: Administrative & human skills most important.

This overlaps with our overall findings:

• Time management (Administrative skill)• Leadership (Human skill)• Communication (Human skill)• Strategic thinking & planning (Administrative skill)

Can these skills be trained?

Collins & Holton (2004) - The effectiveness of managerial leadership development programs: A meta-analysis of studies from 1982 to 2001

Study details• Statistically combined 83 studies• All 83 studies had a formal training intervention

aimed at improving managerial skills

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings• Objective managerial knowledge

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings• In comparison to a control group (group with no

training) – managers that went through formal training program had an almost 1 standard deviation increase in objective managerial knowledge

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings

• 84% of the treatment group will be above the mean of the control group, 62% of the two groups will overlap

• There is a 76 % chance that a person picked at random from the treatment group will have a higher score than a person picked at random from the control group

• If 100 people go through the treatment, 34 more people will have a favorable outcome compared to if they had received the control treatment

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings• Objective (other-rated) & subjective (self-rated)

gain in managerial expertise

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings• In comparison to a control group (group with no

training) – managers that went through formal training program had about a 0.4 standard deviation increase in managerial expertise from the pre-test and post-test

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Collins & Holton (2004)

Key findings

• 66% of the treatment group will be above the mean of the control group, 84 % of the two groups will overlap

• There is a 61 % chance that a person picked at random from the treatment group will have a higher score than a person picked at random from the control group

• If 100 people go through the treatment, 15 more people will have a favorable outcome compared to if they had received the control treatment

From http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Conclusions

• What management skills are most valuable?o Administrative skillso Human skills

• Can management skills be trained? If so, how effective are training programs?

o Yeso Compared to those who didn’t have any

training, there’s a large increase in knowledgeo Compared to before training, there’s a

moderate increase in managerial expertise