TOPIC: There is a school of thought that says that the most experienced workers should be promoted to management. However, some businesses prefer to select manages based on their perceived leadership skills, regardless of how much experience they have.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
This topic raises the controversial issue of whether experience should be considered solely when choosing a manager in an institution. Indisputably, an employee can adopt new skills through his experience regarding his job, however, when choosing a manager, his leadership skills should be taken into account the most.
Managing employees requires additional skills like communication or leadership skills. Unlike technical skills to get a job done, they are unlikely to be taught but be born with. An employee can be taught how to use Excel to create statistics and through his experience with it, he can be the best employee who can do it. However, when it comes to whether he can make a successful manager, skills required for the job are linked mostly to the person’s characteristics. Some people are good at math and some people are good at convincing the others or solving disputes between people. Although, especially in the United States, for a long time, there are seminars given to employees that focus on improving their social skills in almost every institution. However, whether turning an employee with temperament issues to patient one is about the question if a characteristic of a person can be altered through education or experience. Today, most of the experts on the issue say that there is room for slight improvement but altering the characteristic of a person all together is almost impossible. Therefore, a person who has no leadership skills will unlikely to make a good manager harming the institution.
Besides, we have experienced what a young manager can achieve in the United States. If we look at the CEOs of the most profitable and successful businesses including Facebook and Twitter, their founders and CEOs started their managing job at their 20s and today they are both no older than 40. Despite their lack of experience compared to a 60 year in the management business, both companies are known for their success of handling crisis in both the institution and outside of the institution. When it came into light that Facebook negligently leaked its users’ data to third parties, people were outraged. It also created uncomfort among the employee against the management. However, Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, came to public apologizing but also promising that it will not happen again. Experts wrote that Facebook users will quit using Facebook and the company will go bankrupt. Today, Facebook doing better than ever economically, and it did not lose a major number of users. Zuckerberg managed such crisis and re-gained public trust despite his young age.
Besides, the most experienced never been appointed automatically in other institutions rather than business. While deciding who should manage running a state, we go to vote. We look at the candidates’ communication skills as well as leadership skills rather than how much experience he has working for the state because we know that running a state includes having good relationships with other states and handling disputes that arise among state officials before it turns to a public crisis. In the United States, Nixon was known for his poor leadership skills. Not long into he started his job as a president, it became public that even his employee did not enjoy working for him and was willing to leak information about how things are in the White House.
In addition, when choosing a principal to a school, the most experienced teacher does not get the job. Instead, the most important skills a principal can have is his leadership skills; if she can handle disputes among teachers or respond to demands of parents.
