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Skills Approach

Chapter 3

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Overview

Skills Approach Perspective

Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)

Skills-Based Model (Mumford et al., 2000)

How Does the Skills Approach Work?

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Skills Approach Description

Leader-centered perspective

Emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and developed

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Leadership skills: The ability to use one’s knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of goals and objectives

Perspective

Definition

Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)

Technical Skill

Human Skill

Conceptual Skill

Basic Administrative Skills--Katz (1955)

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Leaders need all three skills-- but relative importance changes based on level of management

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

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

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

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

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

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Skills-Based Model

Skills Model Perspective

Competencies

Individual Attributes

Leadership Outcomes

Career Experiences

Environmental Influences

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Skills Model Description (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000)

Research studies (1990s) goal: to identify the leadership factors that create exemplary job performance in an organization

Emphasizes the capabilities that make effective leadership possible rather than what leaders do

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Capability model-- Examines relationship between a leader’s knowledge & skills & the leader’s performance.

Suggests many people have the potential for leadership

Perspective

Skills-Based Model of Leadership

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Competencies Skills

Problem Solving

Social Judgment

Knowledge

Creative ability to solve new/unusual, ill-defined organizational problems

Capacity to understand people and social systems

- Perspective taking

- Social perceptiveness

- Behavioral flexibility

- Social performance

The accumulation of information and the mental structures to organize the information

Nine Key Problem Solving Skills - Mumford, Todd, Higgs, and McIntosh, 2017

1. Problem definition

2. Cause/goal analysis

3. Constraint analysis

4. Planning

5. Forecasting

6. Creative thinking

7. Idea evaluation

8. Wisdom

9. Sense making/visioning

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Hypothetical Relationships of Problem-Solving Skills

Northouse, Leadership 8e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.

Individual Attributes

General Cognitive

Ability

Person’s intelligence

Perceptual processing

Information processing

General reasoning

Creative & divergent thinking

Memory

Intellectual ability learned or acquired over time

Crystallized

Cognitive Ability

Motivation

Personality

Three aspects of motivation

Willingness

Dominance

Social good

Any characteristic

that helps people

cope with complex

organizational

situations is

probably related to leader performance

Leadership Outcomes

Problem Solving

Performance

Criteria = originality and quality of solutions to problem situations--good problem-solving involves creating solutions that are:

Logical

Effective

Unique

Go beyond given information

Degree to which a leader has successfully performed his/her assigned duties

Career Experiences

Challenging

Assignments

Mentoring

Appropriate

Training

Hands-on

Experience with

Novelty

Experience gained during career influences leader’s knowledge and 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

Factors in a leader’s situation that lie outside of his or her competencies, characteristics, and experiences

Internal environmental influences--For example, Outdated technology, skill level of employees

External environmental influences--For example, Economic, political, or social issues; natural disasters

How Does the Skills Approach Work?

Focus of skills approach

Strengths

Criticisms

Application

Skills Approach

Focus is primarily descriptive--it describes leadership from skills perspective

Provides structure for understanding the nature of effective leadership

Katz (1955) suggests importance of particular leadership skills varies depending where leaders reside in management hierarchy

Mumford, Campion, and Morgeson (2007) suggest higher levels of all skills needed at higher levels of hierarchy

Mumford, Zaccaro, and Harding et al. (2000) suggest leadership outcomes are direct result of leader’s skilled competency in problem-solving, social judgment, and knowledge

Focus

Principal Research Perspectives

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.