Chapter 3
Skills
Approach
Course Code: BUS304 Instructor: IM Phallyka
➢ Skills Approach Perspective
OVERVIEW ➢ Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
➢ Skills-Based Model (Mumford et al.,
2000)
➢ How Does the Skills Approach Work?
Skills Approach Description
• Perspective:
• Leader-centered perspective
• Emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and
developed
• Definition:
• Leadership Skills: The ability to use one’s knowledge and
competencies to accomplish a set of goals and objectives.
Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
• Technical Skill
• Human Skill
• Conceptual Skill
Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
• 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.
Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
• Human Skill
• Having knowledge about and being able to work with people.
▪ Being aware of one’s won 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.
Three-Skill Approach (Katz, 1955)
• 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 ad strategic plan for an
organization
▪ Most important at top management levels.
Basic Administrative Skills – Katz (1955)
• Leaders need all
three skills – but
relative importance
changes based on
level of management.
Basic Administrative Skills – Katz (1955)
Skills Model Description
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs & Fleishman, 2000)
• 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.
• Skills-Based Model of Leadership
• Capability model – examines relationship between a leader’s
knowledge & skills & that leader’s performance.
• Suggests many people have the potential for leadership.
Skills-Based Model
• Components of Skills Model Perspective:
oCompetencies
oIndividual Attributes
oLeadership Outcomes
oCareer Experiences
oEnvironmental Influences
Skills-Based Model
Competencies Skills
Problem Solving Social Judgment Knowledge
Creative ability to Capacity to understand The accumulation of
solve new/unusual, people and social systems. information and the
ill-defined mental structures to
organizational It is about being sensitive organize the
problems to how your ideas information
fit in with others.
Skills-Based Model
• Nine Key Problem Solving Skills
(Mumford, Todd, Higgs, and Mclntosh, 2017)
1. Problem definition
2. Cause/Goal analysis
3. Constraint analysis
Problem Solving 4. Planning
5. Forecasting
6. Creative thinking
7. Idea evaluation
8. Wisdom
9. Sense making/visioning
Skills-Based Model
➢ Perspective taking
• Being sensitive to other people’s perspectives and goals-being able
to understand their point of view on different issues.
➢ Social Perceptiveness
• Understanding the unique needs, goals, and demands of different
organizational constituencies.
Social Judgment • A keen sense of how followers will respond to any proposed change
in the organization.
➢ Behavioral Flexibility
• The capacity to change and adapt one’s behavior in light of an
understanding of others’ perspectives in the organization.
➢ Social Performance
• Skill in persuasion and communicating change is essential to do this.
Skills-Based Model
Individual Attributes
General Cognitive Crystallized
Motivation Personality
Ability Cognitive Ability
Person’s intelligence Intellectual Three aspects of Any characteristic
Linked to biology, not ability learned motivation that helps people
to experience or acquired over cope with complex
time. Willingness organizational
Positive related to
Knowledge we situations is
Leader’s Complex Dominance
acquire through probably related to
problem solving skills
experience. Social good leader performance
and the leader’s
knowledge
Skills-Based Model
Leadership Outcomes
Problem Solving Performance
Criteria = originality and quality of solutions • Degree to which a leader has successfully
to problem situations.
performed his/her assigned duties
Good problem-solving involves creating • Receive good annual performance reviews
solutions that are:
Logical • Get merit raises
Effective • Recognized by superiors and followers
Unique
Go beyond given information
Skills-Based Model
Career Experiences
Challenging Appropriate Hands-on
Mentoring Experience with
Assignments Training
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
Skills-Based Model
Environmental Influences
Internal External
For Example: For Example:
- Outdated technology - Economic
- Skill level of employees - Political
- Social Issues
- Natural disasters
How Does the Trait Approach Work?
• Focus of trait approach
• Strengths
• Criticisms
• Application
Focus of Trait Approach
❖Focuses
• Focus is primarily descriptive - it describes leadership from skills perspective
• Provides structure for understanding the nature of effective leadership
❖Principal Research Perspectives
• 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
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
❖The theories are very broad, making it very general and not
very precise.
❖The difference between individual attributes (trait) and skills
is not always clear.
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.
The End