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.
The Vroom-Yetton model is designed to optimize for the current situation the leadership style for best decision-making. Its a decision model formulated with contribution from Arthur Jago on how to make group decisions. The leader must gather information from the team prior to making the decision and involves more people in the decision process.
According to the three-skill approach of Katz, the individual's leadership abilities vary depending on where leaders are in a management hierarchy. The practical implication of skills approach to leadership is that leaders can improve their capabilities in leadership skills through training and experience.
The open systems model of leadership acknowledges the influence of the environment on organizations. An open system regularly exchanges feedback with its external environment. The environment also provides key resources that are necessary to sustain and lead to change and survival. Leadership in an open system should focus on influence, open communication, and patterns to control expanding the number of variables created by external dynamics.
Social learning theory is a theory of learning process that states that most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling. Behavior change can occur in response to leader modeling and learning occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments. The focus of this approach has been teaching leadership across formal and informal settings.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory that explains that people are motivated by five basic categories of human needs. These needs are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. There is a little scientific basis for this concept of a hierarchy of needs.
Substitutes for leadership theory is based on understanding the context within which leadership occurs. Different situational factors can enhance, neutralize, or substitute for leader behaviors like under certain circumstances, situational factors may substitute for leadership. These substitutes are of two types - substitutes and neutralizers. Substitutes take away from the leader's power and help group members increase their performance. Neutralizers only remove influence from the leader.
Theory Z also called the "Japanese Management" style is a leadership theory of human motivation focused on organizational behavior, communication, and development. It assumes that employees want to enter into long term partnerships with their employers and peers. Offering stable jobs with an associated focus on the well-being of employees results in increased employee loyalty to the company.
Neo-Emergent Leadership theory supports that leadership is created through the emergence of information. Leaders can only be recognized after a goal is met. Follower’s perception of leaders is influenced by the ways these goals were accomplished.
In emergent leadership, the leader is not appointed or elected to the leadership role but emerges as the leader as he is perceived by others over time as a result of the group's interaction. A person steps up as the leader over time by taking on tasks voluntarily, helping others complete their tasks better, and building consensus among groups.
Functional leadership theory addresses specific leader behaviors that are expected to contribute most to the organizational effectiveness by focusing on how the leadership process occurs. The leader should ensure that all needs of the group get addressed.
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