Support A good manager must understand people and be able to defuse tense situations. But Support anyone who is able to defuse tense situations must understand people. Since Support Ishiko is able to defuse tense situations, Conclusion she must be a good manager.
The author concludes that Ishiko is a good manager. This is based on the following:
Being a good manager requires understanding people and being able to defuse tense situations.
Defusing tense situations requires understanding people.
Ishiko is able to defuse tense situations.
The author confuses necessary conditions for being a good manager with sufficient conditions. The premises establish that Ishiko has satisfied two necessary conditions for being a good manager. She can defuse tense situations, and she must be able to understand people. But this doesn’t guarantee that she is a good manager. (There might be other necessary conditions that we don’t know about; so we can’t conclude that Ishiko is a good manager.)
The reasoning in the argument is flawed in that it
confuses a quality that shows an understanding of people with a quality that is necessary for understanding people
The author accurately uses the premise stating that ability to defuse is sufficient for understanding people. So the author doesn’t confuse the conditional “able to defuse → understand people.”
confuses a quality that usually correlates with being a good manager with a quality that results from being a good manager
This argument doesn’t involve cause and effect. The author doesn’t conclude or assume that anything cause something else. Rather, the reasoning involves an attempted use of conditional statements.
confuses qualities necessary for being a good manager with qualities that guarantee being a good manager
Understanding and defusing are necessary for being a good manager. But this doesn’t imply that they are sufficient for someone to be a good manager. So Ishiko’s possession of those qualities does not prove that she’s a good manager.
overlooks the possibility that different managers defuse tense situations in different ways
This possibility doesn’t undermine the argument’s reasoning. We know from a premise that Ishiko can defuse tense situations. How she does it, and how others defuse such situations has no impact.
takes for granted that because all good managers have a certain quality, Ishiko must have that quality
The argument doesn’t conclude that Ishiko must have a certain quality because all managers have that quality. The conclusion is that Ishiko is a good manager.
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