Much has been written about competencies and especially in the management environment. For some authors, the so-called Management Skills must, to the extent that managers incorporate it and manifest it in their performance, allow the organizations they lead to achieve the expected results.
For M. Irigoin, competencies are defined as “ The ability to put knowledge, abilities, skills and attitudes into action, as well as fragments of each other, generating a combination of all ”. This reinforces the idea that it is in performance that the manager can and should show the level at which the skills are incorporated.
In a recent action-research process carried out in a company, we were able to define and level the system of competencies that would make up the desired profile for its managers in the strategic period 2005-2015. In total, there were 15 competencies that initially would function provisionally and experimentally as specific competencies for management positions at different levels. The system in question was made up of the following powers:
• Ability to communicate:
• Ability to Manage Conflicts.
• Ability to work in a group.
• Ability to lead and motivate.
• Ability to optimize the use of time.
• Ability to delegate.
• Ability to identify problems.
• Ability to solve problems.
• Ability to make decisions.
• Ability to manage change processes.
• Ability to strategically manage.
• Ability to negotiate.
• Ability to manage quality-oriented.
• Ability to manage by values.
• Ability to use Emotional Intelligence.
The experience was aimed at achieving, through training and consultative actions, that the management teams of the selected pilot units could achieve effective management, understood as: “ The art of scientifically applying the principles of management and the system of managerial competencies to processes that determine the fulfillment of the objectives of the organization, achieving the conscious participation of the collaborators and the correct use of the material and financial resources in obtaining products or services of great value to the system of publics involved ”.
But the practice and the diagnoses made on the progress of the experience were showing that it was not enough for the managers to incorporate these 15 competences at the different levels (entry, development, advanced and expert) but also that it was necessary to integrate this knowledge in a coherent way and cohesive to achieve Organizational Communication, defined by I. Trelles as:
"A set of processes of construction of shared meanings between the publics of the organization, both internal and external, otherwise, it is necessary to understand communication as a process of involvement based on the construction of shared meanings and the achievement of a qualitatively higher level in the participation and interaction of workers in production and service companies ”.
What Manucci ratifies when he gives us his opinion on communication in the organizational framework. "From the perspectives of organizations, communication takes on another role. Communication ceases to be an instrument of transmission to become a tool for the design and management of meanings. A tool that allows the synchrony of shared realities between different social sectors ”.
With these elements, we believed it prudent to take the steps to build a new competencies that, once incorporated by managers and their management teams, would support the expected performance, a new attitude to the processes and communication problems faced by organizations, and especially companies in their systematic work by interacting with their audiences by exchanging values in an increasingly uncertain and complex environment.
We call this new competence Communication Capacity and in this first phase it was defined as: “The ability of the manager and his management team to build and share with the publics of the organization the meanings and attributes of corporate identity as a result of managerial effectiveness, which is manifested in a coherent and cohesive performance that is the basis for achieving the desired corporate image ”. Which has as indicators or dimensions the following:
• Ability to identify and define communication needs about the organization of the public.
• Ability to creatively design solutions to communication problems about the organization of the public.
• Ability to achieve cohesion among all the publics involved with the organization based on the meanings and attributes of Identity.
• Ability to achieve consistent management among all audiences involved with the organization.
• Ability to create organizational meanings in a participatory manner and to shape the organization's culture with its management.
• Ability to achieve successful performance both individually and collectively.
• Ability to achieve the desired corporate image in the public of the organization.
Otherwise, the "communication capacity" would be the integrating competence that the managers and management teams of the organizations have to achieve coherent and cohesive management that allows the organization to create high-value meanings shared with and for their audiences, promoting a harmonious system between the Identity and the Image of the organization.
The continuity of the experience should allow validating this competence and its dimensions and trying to fill the gap between the need and requirements of organizational communication and the role of managers.
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1. SENCE, Technical note, Chile, October 24, 2003
2. Sierra Q. Carlos E. Diploma internal consultants, CETED, UH, Cuba, 2010
3. Sierra Quesada Carlos E. II GECYT Symposium, Cuba, 2009
4. Trelles Rodríguez Irene. Thesis of option to the degree of doctor in communication sciences. UH, Cuba, 2002,
5. Manucci Marcelo. Digital contratext. Year 4, No 5.
6. Sierra Quesada Carlos E. Research project, doctorate in communication science, UH, Cuba 2010.
