ADM 612 - Leadership
Lecture 3 – Skills Theory
Description
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The skills approach takes a leadercentered perspective on leadership.
Shift from personality characteristics
(innate and relatively fixed) to an
emphasis on skills and abilities that
can be learned and developed.
Description
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Katz (1955).
Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, &
Fleishman (2000).
Three-Skill Approach
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Katz (1955) suggested that effective
administration (i.e., leadership)
depends on three basic personal
skills: technical, human, and
conceptual.
Three-Skill Approach
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Leadership skills are defined as the ability
to use one’s knowledge and competencies
to accomplish a set of goals.
Skills are what a leader can accomplish,
whereas traits are who leaders are (innate
characteristics).
Three-Skill Approach:
Technical Skill
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Technical skill is having knowledge about
and being proficient in a specific type of
work or activity.
Technical skills requires competencies in a
specialized area, analytical ability, and the
ability to use appropriate tools and
techniques.
Three-Skill Approach:
Human Skill
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Human skill is having knowledge about and
being able to work with people.
Human skills are the abilities that help a
leader to work effectively with subordinates,
peers, and superiors to successfully
accomplish the organization’s goals.
Three-Skill Approach:
Human Skill
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Characteristic behaviors:
– Sensitivity to other’s ideas, needs, and
motivations.
– Adaptability of one’s own ideas.
– Creation of an atmosphere of trust.
Three-Skill Approach:
Conceptual Skill
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Conceptual skills are abilities to work
with ideas and concepts.
Whereas technical skills deal with
things and human skills deal with
people, conceptual skills deal with
ideas.
Three-Skill Approach:
Conceptual Skill
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Conceptual skills are central to
creating a vision and strategic plan for
an organization.
Three Skills Model: Summary
Skills Model
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Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000.
A capability model because it examines the
relationship between a leader’s knowledge
and skills (i.e., capabilities) and the leader’s
performance.
The capabilities that make effective
leadership possible.
Skills Model
Competencies
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Problem-solving skills.
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A leader’s creative ability to solve new and
unusual, ill-defined organizational problems.
Skills:
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Define significant problems.
Gather problem information.
Formulate new understandings about the problem.
Generate prototype plans for problem solutions.
Competencies
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Social judgment skills.
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The capacity to understand people and social systems.
Skills:
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Perspective taking – understanding of the attitudes that others have
toward a particular problem or solution.
Social perceptiveness – insight and awareness into how other within
the organization function.
Behavioral flexibility – the capacity to change and adapt one’s
behavior in a light of an understanding of other’s perspectives in the
organization.
Social performance – the capacity to effectively communicate their
vision to others based on their understanding of the others’
perspectives.
Competencies
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Knowledge.
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The accumulation of information and the mental
structures (schema) used to organize that
information.
Knowledge and expertise make it possible for
people to think about complex systems issues
and identify possible strategies for appropriate
change.
Individual Attributes
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General cognitive ability.
– Intelligence: perceptual processing,
information processing, general
reasoning skills, creative and divergent
thinking capacities, and memory skills.
– Related to biology, not experience.
Individual Attributes
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Crystallized cognitive ability.
– Intellectual ability learned or acquired
over time.
– Store of knowledge gained through
experience.
– Acquired intelligence.
Individual Attributes
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Motivation.
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Three aspects of motivation essential to
developing leadership skills.
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Willingness and motivation to tackle complex
organizational problems (willingness to lead).
Willingness to express dominance.
Commitment to the social good of the organization.
Individual Attributes
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Personality.
– Any personality characteristic that helps
people cope with complex organizational
situations is most likely related to
leadership performance.
Leadership Outcomes
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Effective problem-solving.
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Good problem solving involves creating
solutions that are logical, effective, and unique
and that go beyond given information.
Performance.
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The degree to which a leader has successfully
performed the duties to which he or she has
been assigned.
Career Experiences
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Challenging job assignments.
Mentoring.
Appropriate training.
Hands-on experience in solving new
unusual problems.
Environmental Influences
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Factors in a leader’s situation that lie
outside the leader’s competencies,
characteristics, and experiences.
Examples.
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Available technology.
Subordinates competencies’.
Task complexity.
Communication quality.
Skills Model: Summary
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Five components of leader
performance.
Three competencies at core: problemsolving skills, social judgment skills,
and knowledge.
Skills Model: Summary
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These competencies are the central determinants
of effective problem solving and performance,
although individual attributes, career experience,
and environmental influences all have an impact on
leader competence.
Through job experience and training, leaders can
improve their abilities to become better problems
solvers and more effective leaders.
How Does the Skills Model Work?
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Model is descriptive.
Provides a structure for understanding
the nature of effective leadership.
How Does the Skills Model Work?
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The three-skills approach suggests that the
importance of certain skills varies by level of
organization.
The skills model argues that leadership
outcomes are the direct result of
competencies as influenced by individual
attributes, career experiences, and
environmental influences.
Strengths
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Leader-centered model that stresses
the importance of developing certain
leadership skills.
The skills approach is intuitively
appealing.
Strengths
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The skills approach is expansive
incorporating problem solving skills, social
judgment skills, knowledge, individual
attributes, career experiences and
environmental influences.
Provides a structure that is very consistent
with the curricula of most leadership
education programs.
Criticisms
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The breadth of the skills approach
seems to extend beyond leadership.
Weak in predictive value.
Criticisms
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Claims not to be trait model, but
includes individual attributes.
May not be applicable to other
leadership populations than the
military populations from which it was
developed.
Application
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Currently no training packages for the skills
approach.
However, the approach provides a way to delineate
the skills of a leader, and leaders at all levels within
an organization can use it.
Identify strengths and weaknesses with regard to
technical, human, and conceptual skills.