The Role of Soft Skills of Managers in Ensuring Group Dynamics, Maintaining Productivity and Team Cohesion of Staff in Organisations in Ukraine

The article investigates the role of soft skills of managers in ensuring group dynamics, maintaining productivity, and team cohesion of personnel within organizations in Ukraine. The article demonstrates that, in the context of war, a pressing issue in Ukraine is ensuring team cohesion, maintaining productivity, and fostering group dynamics as critically important aspects of the sustainable development and success of Ukrainian business organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies operating under the stressful and dangerous conditions of martial law, amidst numerous restrictions, risks, and competitive pressure. It is proven that the effectiveness of group interaction results from a complex, systemic interplay of numerous factors, not merely the sum of individual elements. The research findings indicate that the key factors in ensuring effective teamwork are the development of soft skills and a high level of emotional intelligence in both managers and employees. Conversely, the destructive impact of a toxic atmosphere and professional burnout can negate positive joint efforts to ensure effective group interaction, motivation, and cohesion among team members. These conclusions are based on the established pivotal role of managers in creating conditions for psychological safety within the team and fostering a healthy atmosphere of trust. It is further demonstrated that such favourable conditions are provided not only through managers' developed hard skills, which enable them to possess the necessary professional competencies for team management, but also through their existing soft skills, whose role in successful work continues to grow annually. The scientific novelty of this article lies in providing recommendations on the use of self-management and psychological techniques to develop the necessary skills for managers at various hierarchical levels of management. This aims to ensure group dynamics, maintain productivity, and foster team cohesion of organizational personnel under the particularly challenging conditions of martial law in Ukraine. Practical recommendations are provided taking into account the Ukrainian realities of developing the necessary soft skills of managers and employees to prevent destructive phenomena in teamwork.