Effective management is essential to the success of any organisation just as ineffective management can create a vacuum for corporations to fail and fall. The infamous bursting of the Dotcom bubble, followed by a number of recent high profile corporate disasters, highlight the devastating impact of ‘management behaving badly’.

Effective management is not the result of one special ingredient but the legacy of well-rounded professionals who have a well-developed suite of complementary skills. These start with strong competency in communication, innovation, strategy, negotiation, budget control, leadership, motivation, teambuilding, and finally the ability to evaluate, reflect and learn from both failure and success.

The results from our last Beilby Rewards national survey show that Australian managers have difficulty agreeing which management skills they consider to be most important. Just under half (47%) of all respondents said strategy and leadership were the most valuable. This was closely followed by 38% who viewed effective communication most highly, and 14% who prioritised motivation and teambuilding. Only 1% said they believed that budget control was the most important management skill.

Management effectiveness also plays a key role in job satisfaction with 44% of Rewards members claiming that they would leave an ideal job if management were ineffective. Only 22% said they would continue to stay despite an ineffective management base.

Performance reviews were also seen as essential, even for senior management personnel, with 97% of respondents saying they believed regular reviews were important and 90% reporting that they were already being appraised by either senior management or other employees.

Of all respondents 66% had their performance reviewed by senior mangers, 1% were reviewed by only junior employees and subordinates and 23% were reviewed by both senior managers, employees and subordinates. The remaining 10% of respondents did not have their performance reviewed.