Savage possesses 3 kind of skills of critical managerial skills: interpersonal skill, conceptual skill

and diagnostic skill.

Interpersonal skill: Interpersonal skills are the ability to communicate with, understand, and
motivate individuals and groups.

Situation: Tammy performed her interpersonal skills in two cases:

Firstly, with her communication and persuasion skill, she succeeded in putting across her idea of
developing a new generation of Microsoft Internet software to Jim Allchin, VP of
MicrosoftGroup.
Secondly, this skill expressed through her motivation to employees. She used a participate and
achievement-oriented approach, which emphasizes the cooperation among team members. She
encouraged her team to work together so as to achieve the best performance. She made it clear to
them that their efforts would be recognized right away by this way, which strongly motivated the
team members to push their cooperation.
Conceptual skill: Conceptual skills are the ability to think in the abstract. A leader with strong
conceptual skills is able to see the “big picture”, in which opportunities are discovered instead of
problems.

Situation: In this case, Tammy reevaluated the whole of Microsoft’s business and found out that
Microsoft was missing the boat and risked losing the NetGens to its competitors, which hardly
anyone could recognize. This was the “big picture” that the manager and leader needed to be
aware of. Then, she used her conceptual skills to identify the principle need -the need for online
companionship and socialization. She knew that if they want to overcome the rivals, Microsoft
needed to satisfy that need.

Diagnostic skill: Diagnostic skills are skills that allow managers to better understand cause-and-
effect relationships and to recognize the optimal solutions to problems.

Tammy expressed high diagnostic skill in this situation:

 First of all, she saw the cause-and-effect relationships in Microsoft’s problem. Her job was to
seek for what NetGens need and develop software to meet those needs, so she went to figure out
why Microsoft failed and how to solve it. She found out that Microsoft is at the risk of losing
NetGen customers because Microsoft did not satisfy their “needs for online companionship and
socialization”. That is the perfect answer for the situation and her diagnostic skill to find out that
cause is considered brilliant.
 She thought of the networking software for young people as the optimal solution. After getting
approval from her bosses, she went on finding a team with whom she worked and developed that
software. Later on, her team’s result was the 3-degrees Window peer-to-peer networking
application that allowed users to listen to a shared playlist, send digital photos, and initiate group
chat with MSN messenger. The outcome was dynamic, as “it is proved to be highly popular”.
Many people got into the game and Microsoft even incorporated the software onto its online
offerings. It showed that Tammy’s optimal decision was right, and once again proved Tammy’s
incredible diagnostic skill.