Obviously, leaders need skills. When I think about my own job, and the jobs of others that I know well; who do they go to when they need specific help about their job? The boss! I know my boss at work gets hammered with questions all day.
With the three-skill approach, it covers technical, human, and conceptual skill (Northouse, 2013). Which one is the most important for a leader? All of them! Technical skill covers knowledge about a specific job. As I stated in my previous blog, I am an EMT. If I have a technical question about how to do a run report in the Department of Health’s website, I go to my boss (who is an awesome leader), and he is able to help me with the technical problems of this website.
A leader must also have good human skills; or rather “people” skills. They must be understanding, helpful, work efficiently with others, and work with others towards goals.
Conceptual skills are very important as well. A leader in a job setting needs to think about how to accomplish things, how to make ideas happen, and plan for the future. I ran into an issue with this skill at a part-time job that I work at. I file patient records for an in-home nursing company. Last week, I literally ran out of filing room. All of the filing cabinets were completely stuffed. I went to her to ask her if she had any idea on what I should do. She went into the filing room, looked around, put her hands in the air, and said “I have no idea, I guess you’ll have to figure it out!” Well… that was helpful! She had neither any ideas or a plan. Patient records is a huge part of my employers workplace. They are vital to the patient, and the state’s health department can come in and charge us fees if things are not filled, or filled correctly. I saw this as a flaw in her leadership skills.
As you can see, the three-skill approach is very important; especially in workplaces.
Reference:
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadeship: Theory and Practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Interesting that you referenced the skills approach to discuss leadership in your career field. As an EMT, this approach makes the most sense as it is more action oriented than personality or trait focused.
I would imagine that with a career that focuses on saving on lives a leader would excel at the human, technical and even conceptual skills.
I wonder though if you broke down your boss, would how woulod he stack up using perhaps the trait approach? Is he outgoing, goal oriented, agreeable?