The Skills Approach is the belief that people aren’t born to be leaders, which means that people become leaders by learning and changing their behavior in ways that the person will benefit their group and make sure the group achieves their goal (Northouse, 2013). This approach also presents that in order for someone to be a leader, the person needs to have a positive impact on their followers so that he or she can help each follower with their responsibilities and ensure that each of them get their job done. This approach contradicts the traits approach, which states that people are born as leaders, people can’t and don’t learn to behave in ways that leaders do, and those who are leaders naturally have what it takes to be a leader (Northouse, 2013). From my previous experience working in various restaurants and being involved in many organizations, I have been surrounded by people who strongly believe in the Skills Approach, and I know others that solely abide by the Trait Approach. A particular example of when I’ve been involved in an organization where the leaders didn’t believe that people could learn and become leaders was a student-ran club called The Nittany Consulting Group. When I wanted to be a leader, they didn’t allow me to be one because of their ridiculous mentality that I didn’t have what it takes, when they never gave me the chance to learn or give my input. Ironically, my involvement in the organization only benefitted The Nittany Consulting Group and various members in this organization praised me for my contributions to the organization. Therefore, if the executive board changed their mentality and went with the Skills Approach, I could’ve made even more of a beneficial impact while I was a member of the group. Therefore, an author by the name of Peter Northouse would probably consider this scenario to be a very limited “social performance”, which is being able to persuade others, discuss changes to be made, and eventually make changes (Northouse, 2013, p. 50). Hence, this is an example of a group of people that strongly believe in the Trait Approach, which they clearly expressed to me and they experienced a downfall in their organization due to their unwillingness in giving me an opportunity to be more of a leader of the group.
Northouse would also likely view this as the executive board being unable to address “Behavioral Flexibility” due to the following reasons: One of the executive board members of this group was successful in running another organization and the rest of the executive board members would agree with everything she would say to do. The executive board members gave her too much power and she wouldn’t bother listening to others since she would never consider anyone else’s perspective. In relation to this example, “Behavior Flexibility is “the capacity to change and adapt one’s behavior in the light of an understanding of others’ perspectives in the organization” (Northouse, 2013, p. 50). Therefore, this particular member of the executive board was definitely unable to express “Behavior Flexibility” and this had a tremendously harmful impact on the amount this group could have received in donations and fundraising.
An additional opinion that Northouse would have of this scenario would be that this is an example of a bias in “social perceptiveness” since he’s stated that “social perceptiveness” is the “insight and awareness into how others in the organization function” (Northouse, 2013, p. 50). He would consider my experience to be a bias in “social perceptiveness” since this particular executive board member never thought about how my contributions and my committee’s contributions on fundraising efforts would benefit the organization. She denied every idea that I had and that my committee members had in order for us to spend our own time trying to raise money for our organization so we could have raised a lot more money than we did. Not only did she deny every idea that we had, she didn’t provide any ideas of her own. That being said, she didn’t give us any ideas of how she wanted us to plan events to receive donations. Therefore, this is an example that clearly represents how this particular executive board member, who is considered as a “great leader of the organization” has a lack of “social perceptiveness”.
Reference
- Northouse, P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.