and techniques of managing (such as preparing a budget or a pro forma, planning a new process, or reorganizing a workgroup). Technical skills tend to decrease in importance as managers become more senior.
• Conceptual skills are the mental ability to see how various factors in a given situation fit together and interact. Seeing second- and third-order consequences of decisions and nondecisions is especially important. The need to use conceptual skills increases significantly as managers become more senior.
• Human/interpersonal skills include cooperating with others, understanding them, and motivating and leading them in the workplace. Human relations skills tend to become less important as managers become more senior.
Roles Managers engage in a wide variety of roles as they do their work.
• The interpersonal roles of figurehead, leader, and liaison derive from the formal authority of the manager.
• The informational roles include monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson. The informational roles have special significance in organizations in the health field, which are more complex and require effective communication. Access to information is a measure of power. Less secure and capable managers tend to hoard information or provide it only reluctantly, thus rein- forcing their importance.
• As noted, decision making is integral to the management functions. There are various types of decisional roles, including entrepreneur, resource allocator, and negotiator. In this group, negotiation may be the most important and is an almost daily activity of managers.
• The designer role is similar to that of the management function of organizing. Managers at different levels will design various components of the organization.
• The strategist role is not unlike the manager’s planning function. It suggests a specific focus on how to adapt their organizational domains to external challenges and opportunities.The leader role is affected by how well the roles of designer and strategist are performed. The leader role is more difficult because of the dynamism