Leadership

Chapter 3 - Skills Approach

Northouse, 5th edition

 Overview
❖ Skills Approach Perspective
❖ Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
❖ Skills-Based Model (Mumford, et al, 2000)
❖ How Does the Skills Approach Work?
Skills Approach Description

Perspective Definition

❖Leader-centered Leadership skills -

perspective The ability to use
❖Emphasis on skills one’s knowledge
and abilities that and competencies to
can be learned accomplish a set of
and developed goals and objectives
Three-Skill Approach
(Katz, 1955)

❖ Technical Skill
❖ Human Skill
❖ Conceptual Skill
Basic Administrative Skills – Katz (1955)
Management Skills Necessary at Various
Levels of an Organization

❖ Leaders
need all three
skills – but,
skill
importance
changes
based on
level of
management
 Technical Skill
❖Technical skill - having knowledge about and
being proficient in a specific type of work or
activity.
– Specialized competencies
– Analytical ability
– Use of appropriate tools and techniques

❖Technical skills involve hands-on ability with a

product or process
❖Most important at lower levels of management
 Human Skill
❖Human skill – having knowledge about and
being able to work with people.
– Being aware of one’s own perspective and others’
perspectives at the same time
– Assisting group members in working cooperatively to
achieve common goals
– Creating an atmosphere of trust and empowerment of
members
– Important at all levels of the organization
 Conceptual Skill
❖Conceptual skill - the ability to do the mental
work of shaping meaning of organizational policy
or issues (what company stands for and where it’s
going)
– Works easily with abstraction and
hypothetical notions
– Central to creating and articulating a vision and
strategic plan for an organization
– Most important at top management levels
 Skills-Based Model
❖ Skills Model Perspective
❖ Skills-Based Model
– Competencies
– Individual Attributes
– Leadership Outcomes
– Career Experiences
– Environmental Influences
 Skills Model Description
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000)

Perspective Skills-Based Model

of Leadership
❖ Research studies (1990s)
goal: to identify the Capability model -
leadership factors that Examines relationship
create exemplary job
between a leader’s
performance in an
organization knowledge & skills & the
leader’s performance
❖ Emphasizes the
Suggests many people
capabilities that make
effective leadership have the potential for
possible rather than what leadership
leaders do
 Skills Model
Three Components of the Skills Model
 Competency Skills
Competencies

Problem Solving Social Judgment Knowledge

• Leader’s creative • Capacity to • The accumulation

ability to solve understand people of information & the
new/unusual, ill- and social systems mental structures to
defined - Perspective taking organize the
organizational - Social perceptiveness information
problems - Behavioral flexibility
- Social performance
 Social Judgement
Perspective taking understanding the attitudes that
others have toward a particular problem or solution

Social perceptiveness understanding the unique

needs, goals, and demands of different organizational
constituencies.

Behavioral flexibility the capacity to change and adapt

one’s behavior in light of an understanding of others’
perspectives in the organization.

Social performance Based on an understanding of

employees’ perspectives, leaders need to be able to
communicate their own vision to others
 Individual Attributes
Individual
Attributes

General Cognitive Crystallized

Motivation Personality
Ability Cognitive Ability
• Person’s intelligence • Intellectual • Three aspects of • Any
- Perceptual processing ability learned motivation characteristic
- Information processing or acquired - Willingness that helps people
over time - Dominance cope with
- General reasoning
complex
- Creative & divergent - Social good organizational
thinking situations is
probably related
- Memory
to leader
performance
 Leadership Outcomes
Leadership
Outcomes

Problem Solving Performance

• Criteria = originality & quality of • Degree to which a
solutions to problem situations – good leader has successfully
problem solving involves creating performed his/her
solutions that are: assigned duties
- Logical
- Effective
- Unique
- Go beyond given information
 Skills Model
Skills Model of Leadership
 Career Experiences
Career
Experiences

Challenging Appropriate Hands-on

Mentoring Experience with
Assignments Training
Novelty
❖ Experience gained during career influences
leader’s knowledge & skills to solve complex
problems
❖ Leaders learn and develop higher levels of
conceptual capacity if they progressively confront
more complex and long-term problems as they
ascend the organizational hierarchy
 Environmental Influences
Environmental
Influences

Factors
Outside of Leader’s
Control

❖ Factors in a leader’s situation that lie outside of

the leader’s competencies, characteristics, and
experiences
– Outdated technology
– Subordinates’ skill levels
How Does the Skills
Approach Work?

❖ Focus of Skills Approach

❖ Strengths
❖ Criticisms
❖ Application
 Skills Approach
Principal Research
Focus
Perspectives
❖Focus is primarily ❖ Katz (1955) suggests
importance of particular
descriptive – it leadership skills varies
describes depending where leaders
leadership from reside in management
skills perspective hierarchy
❖ Mumford et al. (2000)
❖Provides structure suggest leadership
for understanding outcomes are direct result
the nature of of leader’s skilled
competency in problem
effective leadership solving, social judgment &
knowledge
 Strengths
❖First approach to conceptualize and create a
structure of the process of leadership around
skills
❖Describing leadership in terms of skills makes
leadership available to everyone
❖Provides an expansive view of leadership that
incorporates wide variety of components (i.e.,
problem-solving skills, social judgment skills)
❖Provides a structure consistent with leadership
education programs
 Criticisms
❖Breadth of the skills approach appears
to extend beyond the boundaries of
leadership, making it more general,less
precise
❖Weak in predictive value; does not
explain how skills lead to effective
leadership performance
❖Skills model includes individual
attributes that are trait-like
 Application
❖The Skills Approach provides a way to
delineate the skills of a leader
❖It is applicable to leaders at all levels within
the organization
❖The skills inventory can provide insights into
the individual’s leadership competencies
❖Test scores allow leaders to learn about
areas in which they may wish to seek further
training