Robert Katz identified three leadership skills called - technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills as the basic personal skills essential for leadership. Leaders must possess these three skills that assist them in optimizing a leader's performance. Technical skills are related to the field, human skills are related to communicating with people and conceptual skills related to setting the vision.
The skills theory of leadership emerged as a prominent theory in 1955 when Robert Katz published his paper "Skills of an Effective Administrator" in the "Harvard Business Review." The research was based on Katz’s own first-hand observations of executives in the workplace and on field research in administration. He suggested in the paper that effective administration or leadership depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human, and conceptual. He identified these three skill areas as the most important skills that the executives had in common and used on a regular basis.
Katz identified three skills; technical, human, and conceptual as the basic personal skills essential for leadership. Technical skills related to the field, human skills related to communicating with people, and conceptual skills related to setting the vision.
As defined by Katz in 1955, ‘Technical skill is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity. It includes competencies in a specialized area, analytical ability, and the ability to use appropriate tools and techniques’. Technical skills play an essential role in producing the actual products a company is designed to produce. Having appropriate technical skills signifies that the person is competent and knowledgeable with respect to the activities specific to an organization, the organization’s rules and standard operating procedures, and the organization’s products and services.
Examples of Technical Skills:
For a Software Company the following skills or knowledge areas can be considered as technical skills; Knowledge of Unix/Linux Operating System, Java/C++/Perl Programming Language, MySQL/Oracle Database Management, XML - Extensible Markup Language, HTML Skills, etc.
In an accounting firm, the technical skills might include an understanding of generally accepted accounting principles, accounting principles, knowledge of commercial laws, knowledge of tax laws, etc.
Attributes of Technical Skills:
As technical skills relate to the ability to working with things, similarly human skills relate to the ability to work with people. Human skills are people skills that enable the leader to work effectively with subordinates, peers, and superiors. It is the leader's expertise in interacting with others in a way that will enhance the successful completion of the task at hand. Consequently, leaders with higher levels of interpersonal skills are better able to adapt their own ideas to other people’s ideas, especially when this will aid in achieving organizational goals more quickly and efficiently. These leaders are more sensitive and empathetic to what motivates others, create an atmosphere of trust for their followers, and take others’ needs and motivations into account when deciding what to do to achieve organizational goals.
Examples of Human Skills:
Some human skills that are generally considered important are effective communication (both verbal and written), motivating others, and creation a positive attitude, development of cooperation and team spirit, etc.
As a leader grows higher in the organizational ladder, the expectations from him are to provide strategic direction, create the vision, and motivate the folks to dedicatedly pursue the organizational goals. These are Conceptual skills that allow the leader to think through and work with ideas. Leaders with higher levels of conceptual skills are good at thinking through the ideas that form an organization and its vision for the future.
Examples of Conceptual Skills:
Some conceptual skills that are generally considered important are creativity, decision making, wing to wing interconnectedness, thinking as a whole, strategic thinking, problem-solving, etc.
One of the major benefits of a skills-based theory of leadership is that it acknowledges that anyone can become a leader. Individuals only need to find relevant resources and work hard to develop the skills of a good leader. This is encouraging for people who are interested in gaining leadership effectiveness but do not possess the traits as proposed in other trait-based leadership theories. A skills-based leadership theory also provides a competency-based toolkit to organizations to recruit, train, and grow leaders in their organization by taking inventory of each potential leader's skills in the important areas.
Like other leadership models, The Skills Model also has its inherent limitations because the development of many of the skills might be dependent on personal traits, and based on individual personalities it might be easier or difficult for a person to develop certain skills. This model also focuses on identifying the skills rather than clarifying why some skills influence the leadership process.
Team leadership theory is a recent leadership theory that does not discriminate between the leader and the other team members. The approach considers contributions from each team member to be critical for organizational success. This approach focused on the overall team effectiveness and team problems are diagnosed and action is taken to remediate weakness. This approach provides for taking corrective action when the leader deems necessary.
The psychodynamic approach to leadership has its roots in the work done by Sigmund Freud. These involved psychological theories of personality development and explaining leadership using psychoanalytic concepts. It tries to define a person is in terms of personality traits. Personality structured into three parts (i.e., tripartite) - the id, ego, and superego.
The ten most important qualities that define a good leader are self-awareness, interpersonal and communication skills, ethical values, organizational consciousness, self-confidence, adaptability and flexibility, imagination and creativity, focus & result-orientation, continuous self-development and accountability and ownership for his actions. These ten qualities of leadership every good leader should possess to a certain extent and must continually strive to develop them.
Communication has as its central objective the transmission of meaning. The process of communication is successful only when the receiver understands an idea as the sender intended it. How does a message or an idea travel from one person to another? To transmit our message, we engage in a sensitive and complex process of communication, with different elements like sender, message, channels, receiver, noise, and feedback.
Authentic leadership is a new approach to leadership in which leaders are genuine, self-aware, transparent, build honest relationships, and work on an ethical foundation. Authenticity is one of the core values of leadership. Authentic leaders have truthful self-concepts and they inspire by promoting openness by acting in a real, genuine, and sincere way. Authenticity requires self-awareness and the ability to act in accordance with one's true self.
Process & Stages of Creativity
Creative ideas do not come just like that. There is a process to it. There are a number of techniques of creativity to support the generation of ideas but the widely practiced ones are brainstorming and lateral thinking. Most innovations are not so much the product of sudden insights as they are the result of a conscious process that often goes through multiple stages. The creative process can be divided into four stages of preparation, incubation, evaluation, and implementation.
Leader-Participation Model provides a set of rules to determine the form and amount of participative decision making. It helps identifies different ways a decision can be made based on the degree of follower participation. It proposes a method for leaders to involve all members of the organization work together to make decisions.
Management theories are the recommended management strategies that enable us to better understand and approach management. Many management frameworks and guidelines were developed during the last four decades.
Leadership Participation Inventory (LPI)
Kouzes and Posner introduced the Leadership Participation Inventory model of Transformational leadership. This model is also known as Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Challenge Model. They identified five practices of exemplary leadership - Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enabling Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
McClelland's Theory of Needs is a human motivation theory which states that an individual's specific needs are acquired over time through our culture and life experiences. As per the three needs theory, these acquired needs significantly influence the behavior of an individual. The three main driving motivators are the needs for achievement, affiliation, and power.
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