Management Skills at Senior Level
Seven That Directors Are Judged On, and the First Fix for Each

The key insight:

A first-line manager is judged on whether the work gets done. A director is judged on whether the managers beneath them can get it done without them.

Most lists of management skills are written for someone running a team of six. They cover delegating, giving feedback, running one-to-ones and keeping people motivated. Those still matter. They are not what gets a director promoted, or removed. At senior level the team you manage is a team of managers, and the skills that decide your results are different.

This guide sets out seven management skills that are judged at director level and above, as distinct from the first-line list. For each, it describes what good looks like, the common gap and the first fix. It then shows how to find which of the seven is your weakest. If you want to start with the diagnosis, you can take the free Leadership Psychometric.

What changes at senior level

Two public sources show the shift from different directions. Skills England publishes the occupational standard for the Level 7 senior leader apprenticeship, a standard for people with senior management responsibility. This first version has been retired in favour of a later one, but its structure is still instructive. Its duties cover decisions on budgets, people and technology, talent management and succession planning, and its skills include overseeing financial strategies and organisational budgets and setting goals and accountabilities for teams. A standard for senior managers is mostly about resources, people systems and direction, and less about supervising individual work.

Google's published research on managers, Following the data, takes the view from inside one company. Its multi-year study of over 10,000 data points identified ten behaviours of effective managers, including coaching, empowering the team without micromanaging, supporting career development, setting a clear vision and strategy, and making strong decisions. It is one company's research on managers generally, not a study of directors, so treat it as supporting evidence. It is consistent with the point that the behaviours move from supervising to enabling as scope grows.

Our guide to leadership versus management covers the distinction between the two. This page is the senior management skill set.

Seven management skills judged at director level

1. Prioritising across teams

What good looks like. You can say what the three things are that the function must deliver this year, and what it will stop doing to deliver them. Teams know the order of priority when work conflicts.

The common gap. Everything is a priority, so the team with the loudest manager wins.

First fix. Write the ranked list of priorities with a visible cut line, share it with your managers and refuse to add to it without removing something.

2. Allocating budget and resource

What good looks like. Spend follows strategy. You can show how a pound or dirham moves to the highest-return use and why a lower-priority area got less.

The common gap. Allocation follows history. Last year's budget, plus or minus a small amount, is rolled forward.

First fix. Once a year, rebuild one budget line from zero against the strategy and compare it with the rolled-forward version. The difference is your reallocation decision.

3. Managing the performance of managers

What good looks like. You hold managers to account for the results of their teams and for how they manage them: the quality of their feedback, their hiring and how many of their people grow.

The common gap. You manage the work of the team through the manager, going round them when something is wrong.

First fix. When a problem comes up in a team, ask the manager first and require a plan from them before you step in. Review managers on people outcomes, not only delivery.

4. Running an operating rhythm

What good looks like. There is a predictable cycle of reviews, planning and decisions that surfaces problems early. Managers know what is expected of them each week and month, and meetings have an owner and a decision.

The common gap. The rhythm is a calendar of status meetings that report what already happened.

First fix. Remove one standing meeting and replace it with a short, decision-led one. Every meeting should end with who will do what by when.

5. Hiring and building a leadership team

What good looks like. Your direct reports cover each other's weaknesses. You hire to the gap in the team, not to the person who looks like the existing team.

The common gap. The team is a group of people who think alike, or a long-serving bench you hesitate to change.

First fix. Map each direct report against the skills the function needs in the next two years. Name the one gap that would hurt most and plan a hire or development move for it. The Skills England standard above includes succession planning among its duties for a reason.

6. Managing through other managers

What good looks like. You influence the people two levels down without bypassing the manager between. You know what they think and what they need through structured skip-level contact, and your managers know you do it.

The common gap. Either you stay too far away to know what is happening, or you reach down and undermine your managers.

First fix. Introduce a regular skip-level conversation, told openly to your managers and focused on listening. Our guide to skip-level meetings covers the format.

7. Communicating upward and sideways

What good looks like. Your chief executive or board hears about problems from you first, with an option attached. Peers know what you need from them and what you will do for them.

The common gap. Bad news travels late, or your peers hear about your decisions after they are made.

First fix. Send a short monthly note upward with three items: what is on track, what is at risk and what decision you need. Our guides to managing up and stakeholder management skills cover the practice, and delegation is the skill that frees the time for all seven.

Which of the seven is your weakest

A list of skills is easy to agree with and hard to apply to yourself. Most leaders overrate the skills they like and underrate the ones they avoid. A structured profile removes some of that bias. The Leadership Psychometric is a 50-question leadership profile that scores five dimensions: Vision Thinking, Execution Drive, Influencing Power, People Intelligence and Composure. Each of the seven skills leans on some of them more than others. Prioritising and allocating lean on Vision Thinking and Execution Drive. Managing managers and building the team lean on People Intelligence and Influencing Power. Communicating upward under pressure leans on Composure. Where your scores are lowest, expect the matching skills to take deliberate effort. You can see what the profile covers on the public Leadership Psychometric page.

Turning the diagnosis into a plan

Pick one skill, not seven. Choose the one that is both weakest and most relevant to the next level, apply its first fix for a quarter and measure the change in results. Our guides to the leadership development plan and to the competencies senior roles are assessed against show how to build the plan, and our leadership strengths guide helps you evidence what you already do well. The wider Leadership collection covers the rest, and if you are mapping the route to a bigger seat, see our overview of career progression.

Key takeaways

• At director level you manage managers, so the skills that decide results shift from supervising work to designing the system around it.
• Seven skills are judged: prioritising across teams, allocating budget and resource, managing the performance of managers, running an operating rhythm, building a leadership team, managing through other managers and communicating upward.
• Each skill has a typical gap. The most common are priorities without a cut line, budgets rolled forward from history and managing the work instead of the manager.
• Pick one skill for a quarter, apply its first fix and measure the result.
• A 50-question leadership profile shows where your natural range is thinnest, which tells you which skills will need the most deliberate effort.

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