No, to start with I am not saying you don’t need a degree at all to enter the managerial sphere. A degree is as important as a crust in a pizza and we all know you can’t make a pizza without a base. But a pizza is not only about the crust and so is the case with managerial skills. A degree cannot guarantee a successful managerial career until you have given your all heart and soul to it. And the competitive world that we live in today, nobody wants the same old quintessential pizza every time one goes out, that is not a successful business strategy. We need to understand the demands of the customers we are targeting and that is exactly how a manager should hone his/her skills.
Managing a set of people, usually with varied mindsets requires a lot of efforts and skills. Not everybody thinks, works, acts and talks the same. Getting the team to a same consensus and delivering the end product efficiently is an uphill task. And a degree doesn’t exactly teach you that. You need to feel a part of the team and not somebody just supervising. You need to be with them in their successes and failures. You need to guide them on every step of the way and at every corner they falter. You cannot simply sit and order. A good manager should be able to understand the employees high and lows, strengths and weaknesses. You cannot judge the ability of a fish on the parameter of climbing a tree. Similarly, you should be able to identify which member of your team can do a task the best. You should divide the work accordingly, which will leave less room for dissatisfaction and errors.
A good manager will back the team up when it falters, but his strength lies in making them realize how to get back up. You need to feel at home with your team. You have to pay attention to all the individuals and their progresses. It is understandable that a managerial job leaves you in a difficult situation where you might have to take some tough decisions, but you need to make sure that decisions are worth the pain. Do not make the environment around you like the one of a hell hole where you seem unavailable to your employees. Rather develop a professionally friendly space where all of you are at ease. That is the key to efficient deliveries.
So like those varieties of veggies and spices on a delicious pizza, try to add some skills more than mere supervision and a degree and you will have your employees delivering better products in the same time frame.