Robert Katz identifies three critical skill sets for successful leaders: technical skills, interpersonal (or human) skills, and conceptual skills. Leaders must possess certain technical skills that assist them in optimizing managerial performance. While these three broad skill categories encompass a wide spectrum of capabilities, each category describes the way in which these skills interact with management at various levels.
Skills of Successful Leaders
Defining Technical Skills
Of the three skill sets identified by Katz, technical skills are the broadest, most easily defined category. A technical skill is defined as a learned capacity in just about any given field of work, study, or even play. For example, the quarterback of a football team must know how to plant his feet and how to position his arm for accuracy and distance—both technical skills. A mechanic needs to be able to deconstruct and reconstruct an engine, to employ various machinery (lifts, computer scanning equipment, etc.), and to install a muffler.
Leaders also need a broad range of technical know-how. All industries need management, and management must exist at various organizational levels. A technical skill for a leader might include a working understanding of a piece of equipment: the ability to coach the employee on its operation, as well as communicate to people the basic functions of the machinery.
Leaders in other corporate roles and at higher levels require critical technical skills. These can include office-based competencies such as typing, programming, website maintenance, writing, giving presentations, and using software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe. Office environments require a complex set of communicative, technological, and data-organization skills in order to optimize managerial performance.
Successful leaders in an organization must learn to use the technological assets at their disposal, collecting critical information and data to communicate upward for strategic planning. An example of information management is a mid-level manager in the automotive industry who is responsible for recognizing global marketing potential. This individual must be capable of realizing the legal, demographic, social, technological, and economic considerations of entering a market; the manager will use effective research and delegation skills and also consolidate the information into a useful presentation using technological and communicative skills.
Katz postulates that the higher up in the organization an individual rises, the more conceptual skills (and fewer technical skills) are necessary. Senior managers need fewer technical skills because strategic decision-making is inherently more conceptual; mid- and lower-level skills such as data collection, assessment, and discussion are all more technical. Even so, all disciplines of management require a broad range of skill sets for effective business processes to occur.
Conceptual Skills
Conceptual skills revolve around generating ideas through creative intuitions and a comprehensive understanding of a given context.
Conceptual skills represent one of the three skill sets identified by Robert Katz as critical to leader’s success in an organization. While each skill set is useful in different circumstances, conceptual skills tend to be most relevant in upper-level thinking and broad strategic situations (as opposed to lower-level and line management). As a result, conceptual skills are often viewed as critical success factors of leadership.
Conceptual thinking is difficult to define but can generally be considered as the ability to formulate ideas or mental abstractions in the mind. Conceptual skills primarily revolve around generating ideas, utilizing a combination of creative intuitions and a comprehensive understanding of a given context (i.e., incumbent ‘s industry, organizational mission and objectives, competitive dynamics, etc.). When combined with a variety of information, as well as a degree of creativity, conceptual thinking results in new ideas, unique strategies, and differentiation.
While all levels of leaders benefit from conceptual thinking, upper leadership spends the most time within this frame of mind (as opposed to thinking more technically—looking at and working with the detailed elements of a given operation or business process). Leaders are largely tasked with identifying and drafting a strategy for the broader operational and competitive approach of an organization.This strategic planning includes generating organizational values, policies, mission statements, ethics, procedures, and objectives. Creating this complex mix of concepts to use as an organizational foundation requires a great number of conceptual skills—formulating concepts and predicting their effects in an organizational setting.
While upper level leaders may use conceptual skills the most, all leaders must both understand and participate in the generation of company objectives and values. Of particular importance are the abilities to communicate these critical concepts to subordinates and the ability to gather useful information to convey to upper management so that the concepts can evolve. Collecting the results of conceptual thinking represent a feedback loop. Conceptual skills are important in empowering leaders in all levels of an organization to observe the operations of an organization and frame them conceptually as an aspect of that organization’s strategy, objectives, and policies. Conceptual thinking allows for accurate and timely feedback and organizational adaptability.
Interpersonal Skills
Over the years, the common definition of management has become less specific, as managerial functions can include staffing, directing, and reporting. Modern companies have fewer layers of management, as these companies instead rely on the delegation of responsibilities and authority to achieve goals. As a result, businesses often speak of leading or guiding, people rather than giving instructions for every action. Leading people represents a central component of human skills. Interpersonal skills differentiate a manager from a leader. A manager is simply manipulating resources to achieve a given objective, while a leader appeals to the human side of employees to generate creativity and motivation.These concepts of “manager” and “leader” can be distinguished within a team setting. A team leader who is unconcerned with team members’ needs or who has a personal agenda that is perceived to be more important than the team’s goals is more of a manager than a leader and may alienate team members. Conversely, team leaders who are admired and loyally followed are those who show concern for the team members as individuals with real needs and who place their team above their own personal agendas.
Realistically, most organizations need leaders who can view their teams analytically and objectively, evaluating inefficiencies and making unpopular choices. However, it is misleading to think that a manager has to be distant from or disliked by subordinates to execute these responsibilities. Creating a healthy environment conducive to development, criticism, and higher degrees of achievement simply requires strong human skills, particularly in the realm of communication.
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