Q What qualities should be looked for in selecting trainee managers and can these qualities be taught?
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AThe following five factors are considered
important: integrity, intelligence, ability to control people, job knowledge and application. Of these, job knowledge can be taught, but the ability to handle people and situations depends as much on innate natural gifts and personality as on training.
Research suggests that relatively few unsuccessful managers fail on the score of inadequate job knowledge. Lack of motivation or application is a much more common source of failure.
This suggests that the problem of selecting managers is much more serious than the problem of choosing the right course for trainee managers to take. Some people with experience of residential management training courses say frankly that many candidates on courses were sent for "corrective treatment" in the hope that they would be better and more efficient managers when they returned to work.
Summing up, subjects such as logic, mathematics or accounting can be taught but the ability to analyse problems and to assess factors governing management decision-making can, at best, only be developed. Intelligence, integrity and application must be possessed by management trainees otherwise no amount of expensive management training will help.