Give you an opportunity to evaluate the five components related to management competency. Complete the information in the tables and consider your ability in these five areas. This is not a psychological test but an opportunity to give you some idea of what you need to do to fill the gap between what’s required and what you bring to the managing table. After filling in the data, take a simple average of each of the five components in each category that is of importance to your managing position and plot the results on the spider diagram template. For comparison, the completed spider diagram graphically where one manager stands on each of the components and their relation to each other. You will probably not rate a (5) on any of the five components but you should be able to appraise yourself honestly.
The spider diagram gives you an opportunity to consider the five components and decide whether you can make tradeoffs. If you’re low on experience but high on the other four components you have a good probability of success. If you’re high in knowledge, skills, and experience but low in attitude and personal characteristics you have some work to do if you’re going to be successful. If you have good communication, leadership, and thinking skills, demonstrate a moderately good attitude with good personal characteristics, but you’re low in knowledge and experience, you can still be a successful candidate for managing. Your skills, attitudes, and personal characteristics would indicate you have the ability to learn.
You may argue that the averaging process can be misleading. True. This is neither a scientifically developed nor a psychological test of your ability to manage. This exercise allows you to determine if you should attempt to climb the management ladder. Its purpose is to give you some idea of the expectations from managing and your ability to fulfill them.
A word of caution: as you rate yourself, you should also describe what allows you to rate yourself at a particular level. Think of what you’d say if someone asked you some basic questions about managing and what you bring to the table. Have you made decisions and how did you make them? If you consider yourself an innovator, identify the actions you’ve taken during your lifetime that qualifies you as an innovator. If you consider yourself as a leader, can you identify when and where you demonstrated leadership skills? Do you really have communication skills? When was the last time you identified a problem and proposed a solution? Ask yourself the same sort of questions to address your attitudes, personal characteristics, and experience.