The Skills Approach to Leadership

Описание: Effective administration (i.e., leadership) depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human, and conceptual. These skills are quite different from traits or qualities of leaders. Skills are what leaders can accomplish, whereas traits are who leaders are (i.e., their innate characteristics).

Leadership skills are defined in this course as the ability to use one’s knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of goals or objectives. This course shows that these leadership skills can be acquired and leaders can be trained to develop them. Technical skills are knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity. They include competencies in a specialized area, analytical ability, and the ability to use appropriate tools and techniques

Technical skills are most important at lower and middle levels of management and less important in upper management. For leaders at the highest level, such as CEOs, presidents, and senior officers, technical competencies are not as essential. Individuals at the top level depend on skilled followers to handle technical issues of the physical operation.

Human skills are knowledge about and ability to work with people. They are quite different from technical skills, which have to do with working with things. Human skills are “people skills.” They are the abilities that help a leader to work effectively with followers, peers, and superiors to accomplish the organization’s goals. Human skills allow a leader to assist group members in working cooperatively as a group to achieve common goals.

Leaders with human skills adapt their own ideas to those of others. Furthermore, they create an atmosphere of trust where employees can feel comfortable and secure and where they can feel encouraged to become involved in the planning of things that will affect them. Being a leader with human skills means being sensitive to the needs and motivations of others and taking into account others’ needs in one’s decision making. In short, human skills are the capacity to get along with others as you go about your work.

Broadly speaking, conceptual skills are the ability to work with ideas and concepts. Whereas technical skills deal with things and human skills deal with people, conceptual skills involve the ability to work with ideas. A leader with conceptual skills is comfortable talking about the ideas that shape an organization and the intricacies involved. He or she is good at putting the company’s goals into words and can understand and express the economic principles that affect the company. A leader with conceptual skills works easily with abstractions and hypothetical notions. Conceptual skills are central to creating a vision and strategic plan for an organization.

To summarize, the three-skill approach includes technical, human, and conceptual skills. It is important for leaders to have all three skills; depending on where they are in the management structure, however, some skills are more important than others are.