Skills Approach
Thomas Perkins
Pennsylvania State University
June 24, 2017
I find that one of the key weakness to the skills approach (e.g. it is constructed from data only from military personnel) to be beneficial to me personally because I am currently serving in the US Army as a noncommissioned officer in charge of a twenty-person team of military, contractors and civilians (Northouse, 2016). The foundation of the skills approach endorses the theory of a leader acting and possessing certain abilities to be able to behave and react to “certain types of situations appropriately” (PSU, 2017). I have learned and developed some skills, knowledge and abilities over the last year in this supervisory role, thru trial and error, that have been an extricate part of my ability to now lead effectively. I will use Robert Kratz (1955) research on the three basic personal skills (e.g. technical, human and conceptual) for effective leadership to describe some of my personal experience and beliefs that technical and human skills are more plausible to my supervisory management role.
According to Northouse (2016), leadership skills are the abilities to use one’s knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of goals or objectives. I am in a brigade size unit, approximately 4,000 troops, in a charge of a security section of approximately twenty people thus I can define my position as a supervisory management position. Based on Kratz (1955) research, the most effective leadership skills that must be possessed are technical and human skills. According to Northouse (2016), “technical skills is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity.” I have military intelligence background by trade but was exposed to the security side of the house a little over a year ago. It was difficult at first to lead in this position because I needed to gain the technical skills necessary to train and lead this group of subject matter experts in their field. I took a large chunk of the first 4 months learning each position and sitting with a different subordinate to learn what they did from day to day. I used this hands-on approach to develop competencies in specialized areas. Once I felt confident in my abilities and had the tools and techniques mastered, I moved onto the next technical task. Thus, by the end of the four-month integration, I became a subject matter expert in all aspect of the security. This gave me the confidence that my team and I would accomplish our timeline and objectives set forth by the unit commander.
In part, I decided to take the approach of learning everyone’s technical skills in the office because I wanted face to face time to get to know each member of the team. It was important to me to find out the motivating factor and personal needs of each person. Since I did not have the technical background coming into the role, I know I needed to lean on my interpersonal skills. In the simplices form, human skills are the “capacity to get along with others as you go about your work. (Northouse, 2016, pg. 45)” There was conflict in the office prior to my arrival. However, I think I changed the culture with my participative type leadership style. I was an active listener and often implemented ideas from each team member. Even if I knew I was going to make a change, I elicited responses from the team. I adapted my own ideas to those of others (Northouse, 2016). This built team cohesion and made the security team dynamic. Everyone was their own leader, I was just there for guidance. I encouraged autonomy, showed respect and expressed empathy. The atmosphere was infectious and my leadership valued my human skills that I brought to the security team.
The ability to work with ideas (e.g. conceptual skill) was not warranted for my position. Security is black and white and we derive our work from a set of Department of Defense policy, directive and memos. My role wasn’t high enough up in the chain of command where I needed to shape the organization or project future operations. Therefore, I rarely dealt with abstractions or hypothetical notions (Northouse, 2016). Although I had a vision for the department, it was more based on changing the culture and attitude of its employees. I was strategic in my approach (e.g. learning everyone’s job and creating a personal bond) but it didn’t have to involve the intricacies of top management. My social perceptiveness was more influential during the of office culture, more so than my conceptual skills. I found out what was important to others and what motivated them (Northouse, 2016). I had a keen sense of how followers would respond to any proposed change in the department (Northouse, 2016). For instance, the lady in charge of visitor request for the organization had an archaic way of processing these requests. I knew she would be opposed to the change because she has been doing the same way for ten years and he tendency was to lean on the motto of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” However, I knew the new way would save her time. I know she was motivated by family time and she was working long hours because she was overwhelmed with visitor requests. So, I learned the new way and taught her myself. She was resistant at first but I often alluded to how much time she would save and how much family time would be generated from this process. We finished the training and implementation of the new process in two weeks and now she is happier than I have ever seen her. She stills thanks me to this day and apologizes for her initial resistance.
In conclusion, skills approach is very plausible in my line of work. I used my human and technical skills to effectively lead my team the last year. While my conceptual skills didn’t come in handy for a supervisory management position, I used my social perceptiveness to influence change at my level. My skills were enhanced by my abilities and knowledge to properly diagnose the problem with the culture and attitude of those in my office. Individually learning the technical skill of each team member gave me the best opportunity to fuse my human (e.g. interpersonal) skills into my initial assessment. Recognition from upper leadership was not my intent but I am happy they see the progress of my team and skills approach I utilized.
References
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2017). PSYCH 485 Lesson 4: Skills Approach. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1848444/modules/items/22449125.
czm95 says
I’m always intrigued by military personnel and their technical skill, yet often wonder if these people are simply machines at work. In the news, we see soldiers charging into broken cities with body armor and unfamiliar weapons to help civilians, but do they feel for these people or are they simply working? To hear your account of the organizational aspects and how you applied certain skill sets to your work (especially pertaining to the social domain of your job) was really enlightening. Although I realize that you are not on the front-line of combat, your perspective spoke to the complexity of skill-based requirements of not only top ranking officials, but also mid and lower supervisors in this highly complex organization. Katz’s three skill approach certainly does apply here, at least pertaining to the technical and human aspects (Katz, 1955) but did you realize that you touched on almost all of the components from Mumford et al. skills model as well?
When referring to your background of military intelligence by trade, you allude to what Northouse explains as crystallized cognitive ability, general cognitive ability, and motivation all found within the attribute set of skills. (Northouse, 2016). Your motivation was simple, your were driven to learn new skill sets because you were launched into a new position of leadership and knowledge was required in order to solve the problems of inner conflict as well as gain applicable skill within your department. The practical intelligence that you acquired through your trade was of value due to another aspect not included within the three component model but also important; career experience and environment. You were able to assess problems and creatively develop solutions because of your intelligence background which presumably required a fair amount of research, and development itself in concocting solutions to an array of mysterious issues that the lay-person would not understand (Nothhouse, 2016). Along with that knowledge and problem-solving ability, you were able to implement skills pertaining to social judgement which (Northouse, 2016) also values in the domain of competencies. Evaluating what made your subordinates tick, how they interacted and what they needed to succeed seemed natural. Your strategy in using face to face teaching regarding the technical skills that you needed, but also in teaching your scheduling person was very effective. As you mentioned, the fact that your subordinates became more engaged and team-oriented, creating a more positive work environment, shows the effectiveness of your strategy. Further, finding the necessary motivation of your scheduling person to change, showed considerable problem solving capacity. The technique that you showed her served the dual purposes of creating more family-time for her as well as creating a more productive process for the organization. The leadership outcomes of effective problem solving and performance exhibited here were a direct reflection of how Northouse (2016) would evaluate the two ways of assessing effective leadership.
Reference
Katz, R. L. (1955). Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Business Review, 33(1), 33–42.
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
bxk46 says
This was an excellent representation of the skills approach from a military perspective. Your description of how conceptual skills relate to your personal career were particularly interesting. Northouse (2016) describes conceptual skills as the ability to work with ideas. In a military career, where the decisions are made at an extremely high level, there appears to be less of a requirement for conceptual skills. However, for high ranking members of the military of government I can certainly see why they require excellent conceptual skills. Perhaps the military does in fact rely more on human and technical skills. We learned that human skills relate to the ability to work with people, whereas technical skills require the individual to be extremely analytical (Northouse, 2016). These skills appear to be extremely important to military members based on the information that you provided.
Your perspective on the skills required for your current position relate very well to the information provided by R.L Katz. Katz (1995) detailed the skills needed for the three most important levels of management. For a supervisory management position, he feels that individuals need to rate high in technical and human skills (Katz, 1955). This seems to coincide with the description of that you provided. However, as one moves up into middle management, suddenly they are required to take on the conceptual skills of a top level executive (Katz, 1995). I would be interested if you feel that this is appropriate for middle level servicemen and women in the military. Based on your perspective, you felt that the highest level officials are involved in the future vision of the military. After reading through the lesson material, I felt that the information provided by Katz is difficult to generalize across many different occupations. Office environments with more flexibility appear more likely align with Katz’s diagram, as opposed to military professions.
Works Cited
Katz, R.L. (1995). Skills of an Effective Administrator. Harvard Business Review. 33(1), pp. 33-42.
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.