Management, Human Resources and Team Building
What a candidate must understand
Management involves planning, organising, leading and controlling resources to achieve goals. Know the levels (top, middle, first-line) and the skills mix (conceptual, human, technical). Leadership differs from management: leadership sets direction and inspires, management maintains order and efficiency. Familiarity with autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire styles, and with situational leadership, is expected.
In human resources, understand recruitment and selection, induction, training and development, performance appraisal, motivation and reward, and employee relations. Know Maslow's hierarchy and Herzberg's two-factor theory (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction; motivators drive satisfaction)-a common exam contrast.
Team building covers forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (Tuckman), plus roles (Belbin's team roles), conflict (functional versus dysfunctional), and the founder's challenge of moving from doing everything to delegating. For a start-up, the founding team's complementary skills-commercial, technical and financial-matter more than friendship.
Traps in questions
- Treating leadership and management as synonyms; both are needed.
- Confusing Herzberg's hygiene factors with motivators; pay is typically a hygiene factor.
- Assuming teams perform best without conflict; constructive conflict can improve decisions.
- Ignoring that delegation requires clear authority and accountability.
Worked example / rule of thumb
A three-person start-up has two technical founders and no sales capability. Adding a third technical partner deepens a strength but leaves a gap; adding a commercial co-founder covers the missing function. Rule of thumb: hire for the gap, not the comfort-map the team against required functions before recruiting.