Importance Of Skills Approach

SKILLS OF AN EFFECTIVE LEADER: THE SKILLS APPROACH

What is the skills approach?

Like the trait approach, this too takes a leader-centred perspective. But the focus shifts from fixed personality characteristics to skills and abilities that can be learned and developed .

Why is this important?

This is the first approach that was developed to structure the process of leadership around skills that can be learned and developed- suggesting that leadership is not an innate ability but can be nurtured and developed. It incorporates a wide variety of components that capture many of the intricacies and complexities of leadership not found in other models .

What is the theory?

There are two major models in the skills approach, the Three-Skill Approach

These consist of:

• General cognitive ability – also called “fluid intelligence”, this can be thought of as innate intelligence conferred biologically, that usually grows and expands up through early childhood and then declines with age

• Crystallised cognitive ability – also called “acquired intelligence”, it is intellectual ability learned over time through experience and generally continuously grows through life without ‘falling off’ in adulthood

• Motivation – this attribute has three aspects essential to developing leadership skills:

­ Leaders must be willing to tackle complex organisational problems

­ Leaders must be willing to express dominance (exert

It can be applied in a wide variety of organisational contexts. Recent research suggests that adaptive leadership can improve the practice of medicine (pp 278 PGN). The research posits that healthcare professionals approaching leadership from an adaptive perspective, view patients as complex adaptive systems who face both technical and adaptive challenges. Some of the problems are technical and the solutions lie with the professional (i.e. acute asthma attack – type 1 situation), while others are adaptive and the solutions are less defined and lie with both the patient and the professional (i.e. heart diseases – type 2 situation; chronic illness, end of life care and death – type 3 situations).This makes healthcare more efficient, patient centred and