1. Chapter 3: Skill Approach
Leadership and Change
Chapter 3: Skill Approach
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2. Overview Skills Approach Perspective Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
Skills-Based Model (Mumford, et al, 2000)
How Does the Skills Approach Work?
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3. Skills Approach Description
Perspective
Definition
Leader-centered perspective
Emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and developed
Leadership skills - The ability to use one’s knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of goals and objectives
Personality certainly plays an important role.
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4. Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
Technical Skill
Human Skill
Conceptual Skill
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5. Technical Skill
Technical skill - having knowledge about and being proficient in a specific type of work or activity.
Specialized competencies
Analytical ability
Capability to use appropriate tools and techniques
Technical skills involve hands-on ability with a product or process
Most important at lower levels of management
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6. Human Skill
Human skill – having knowledge about and being able to work with people.
Awareness of one’s own perspective and others’ perspectives at the same time
People skills help a leader to assist group members in working cooperatively to achieve common goals
Creates an atmosphere of trust where members feel they can become involved and impact decisions in the organization
Important at all levels of the organization
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7. 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
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8. Basic Administrative Skills – Katz (1955)
Management Skills Necessary at Various Levels of an Organization
Leaders need all three skills – but, skill ability/ importance changes based on level of management

9. Skills Model (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000)
Skills-Based Model of Leadership
Perspective
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
Capability model - Examines relationship between a leader’s knowledge & skills & the leader’s performance .
Suggests many people have the potential for leadership
Skills-Based Model components
Competencies
Individual Attributes
Leadership Outcomes
Career Experiences
Environmental Influences
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10. Three Components of the Skills Model
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11. Competency Skills Competencies Problem Solving Social Judgment
Knowledge
Capacity to understand people and social systems
- Perspective taking
- Social perceptiveness
- Behavioral flexibility
- Social performance
The accumulation of information & the mental structures to organize the information
Creative ability to solve new/unusual, ill-defined organizational problems
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12. Problem Solving Skills
The skills include being able to define significant problems, gather problem information, formulate new understandings about the problem, and generate prototype plans for problem solutions. These skills do not function in a vacuum, but are carried out in an organizational context. Problem-solving skills demand that leaders understand their own leadership capacities as they apply possible solutions to the unique problems in their organization.
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly, & Marks, 2000).
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13. Problem Solving Skills Example
First, you identify the full ramifications for employees of changing their health insurance coverage. What is the impact going to be?
Second, you gather information about how benefits can be scaled back. What other companies have attempted a similar change, and what were their results?
Third, you find a way to teach and inform the employees about the needed change. How can you frame the change in such a way that it is clearly understood?
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14. Cont’d…
Fourth, you create possible scenarios for how the changes will be instituted. How will the plan be described?
Fifth, you look closely at the solution itself. How will implementing this change affect the company’s mission and your own career?
Last, are there issues in the organization (e.g., union rules) that may affect the implementation of these changes?
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15. Competency Skills Competencies Problem Solving Social Judgment
Knowledge
Capacity to understand people and social systems
- Perspective taking
- Social perceptiveness
- Behavioral flexibility
- Social performance
The accumulation of information & the mental structures to organize the information
Creative ability to solve new/unusual, ill-defined organizational problems
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16. Social Judgment Skills
Perspective taking means understanding the attitudes that others have toward a particular problem or solution. Perspective taking means being sensitive to other people’s perspec­tives and goals—being able to understand their point of view on different issues.
Social perceptiveness is insight and awareness into how others in the organization function. What is important to others? What motivates them? What problems do they face, and how do they react to change? Social perceptiveness means understanding the unique needs, goals, and demands of different organizational constituencies (Zaccaro et al., 1991).
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17. Cont’d…
Behavioral flexibility is the capacity to change and adapt one’s behavior in light of an understanding of others’ perspectives in the organization. Being flexible means one is not locked into a singular approach to a problem. As the circumstances of a situation change, a flexible leader changes to meet the new demands.
Social performance includes a wide range of leadership competencies. Skill in persuasion and communicating change is essential to do this. When there is resistance to change or interpersonal conflict about change, leaders need to function as mediators. To this end, skill in conflict resolution is an important aspect. In addition, social performance some­times requires that leaders coach subordinates, giving them direction and support as they move toward selected organizational goals.
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18. Individual Attributes
General Cognitive
Ability
Crystallized
Cognitive Ability
Motivation
Personality
Person’s intelligence
- Perceptual processing
- Information processing
- General reasoning
- Creative & divergent
thinking
- Memory
Intellectual ability learned or acquired over time
Three aspects of
motivation
- Willingness
- Dominance
- Social good
Any characteristic
that helps people
cope with complex
organizational
situations is
probably related to leader performance
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19. Leadership Outcomes Leadership Outcomes Problem Solving Performance
Criteria = originality & 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
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20. Skills Model
Skills Model of Leadership
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21. Career Experiences Career Experiences Challenging Assignments
Mentoring
Appropriate
Training
Hands-on
Experience With
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
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22. 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’
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23. How Does the Skills Approach Work?
Focus of Skills Approach
Strengths
Criticisms
Application
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24. Principal Research Perspectives
Skills Approach
Focus
Principal Research Perspectives
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 et al. (2000) suggest leadership outcomes are direct result of leader’s skilled competency in problem solving, social judgment & knowledge
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25. How does it work?
The skills approach works by providing a map for how to reach effective leadership in an organization: Leaders need to have problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge. Workers can improve their capabilities in these areas through training and experience. Although each leader’s personal attributes affect his or her skills, it is the leader’s skills themselves that are most important in addressing organizational problems.
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26. 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
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27. 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
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28. Application
The Skills Approach provides a way to outline 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
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