Assessing Management Potential

We live in a new age of identity in which your employees, customers, investors and stakeholders care about what your company really is.

Good management always makes a difference. It can turn a company around and positively impact the entire organization.

What should you look for in younger people coming into the business world when it comes to management potential? A college degree or even an MBA in business management is really the least of the qualifications you should be looking for.

Here are 13 variables to management potential:

Personal Impact: Forcefulness. How forceful an early impression does he or she make? Consider the impression he or she made on you.

Oral Communications Skills: How effectively does the person express himself or herself? Consider ease of expression, correct use of English, vocabulary, precision in explaining views, vocal clarity and tonal quality.

Human Relations Skills: How well can this person get people to perform effectively by good human-relations techniques? Sincerity is very important.

Personal Impact and Likability: How likable an early impression does he or she make? Consider the impression he or she made on you. Did you tend to like or dislike him or her?

Behavior Flexibility: How readily can the person when motivated, modify his or her behavior to reach a goal? Consider tendencies to persevere and frequency with which he or she has adapted to change circumstances.

Need Approval of Superiors: To what extent does the person seek approval of persons in authority over him or her? Consider his or her dependence on superiors for help and guidance, as well as tendencies to solicit praise and support for them.

Tolerance of Uncertainty: To what extent will his or her work performance stand up under certain or unstructured conditions? Consider person's need for structure and the impact of lack of structure on his or her behavior.

Inner Work Standards: To what extent will he or she want to do a good job even if less is acceptable.

Primacy of Work: To what extent will he or she find satisfactions from work more important than satisfaction from other areas of life?

Energy: How continuously can he or she sustain a high level of work activity?

Goal Flexibility: To what extent will he or she be able to change his or her life goals in accordance with reality's opportunities? Consider what the person says are his or her goals and his or her commitment to them.

Other points to look for are; what is the person's need for advancement, need for security, social objectivity that is how free is the person from prejudices against racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, educational and other kinds of groups? Does the person have the ability to delay gratification?

Finally, what is the person's range of interests? To what extent is he or she interested in a variety of fields of human activity such as science, politics, sports, music, art, etc? Consider his or her leisure time activities, hobbies, reading habits and community activities.

Whether you're interviewing for a managerial job or you are the one looking for a management position, you should take note. Each of these 13 variables together is critical for great management. If just one is missing you do not have management potential.