Skills Approach and Connective Leadership, Research Paper Example

Research never stops asking the questions about successful leadership. Corporations, higher education systems, administrators, and dreamers all consider the costs and benefits of working with new people and wonder whether they have what it takes to makes leadership and teamwork pay off. Katz and Mumford reduce the raw materials of leadership into simple skills, taking much of the guessing out of the formula.

Katz and Mumford

According to Katz and Mumford, effective leadership depends upon the technical, human, and conceptual skills of the person. These skills prove worthless until they are appropriately utilized and included in a meaningful way. (Katz disagrees with the “Those who can’t do, teach” model of leadership.) The inborn talents of a person can be developed into skills providing strong leadership assets or are wasted, and many of the basic personality traits of a person can be altered and converted into a leadership asset. Technical skill requires specialized study or practice in a specific career area and may utilize software, knowledge, long-term developing skills, continuing training, etc. Human skills include the interpersonal insight and the ability to reach the greatest potential for each team member as an essential human asset. People often think of amiable and inspirational abilities as the greatest human skills, but highly competitive fields also require assertiveness and emotional distance. The inspirational talents of a leader do relate directly to the conceptual skills, the conversion of ideas into a successful plan of action. Mumford’s Skills Model mirrors those of Katz but names each of these skills very specifically as competencies, individual attributes, and leadership outcomes, respectively, listing problem-solving, social judgment, knowledge, cognitive ability, and personality as specific components of leadership.

Conclusion

For the hubbub about Katz and Mumford, their leadership theories mirror each other so closely as to be difficult to separate. However, they serve unique and very separate purposes. Katz’s broader themes of successful leadership provide a general picture of better leadership attributes. Mumford provides more specific qualities- some which may be easier to interpret but harder to isolate from stronger personal and professional qualities.

All Relative: Connective Leadership

The idea of leadership and teams being connected does not shock or even surprise a reader, yet there are countless studies on this relationship, particularly with regards to how much responsibility rests with the leader and how much with those who select the team. In connective theory, the completion of shared goals happens only when the behavior and leadership types of the leader and team members flows back and forth without interruption.

Connective leadership links the leader and the project outcomes in a direct cause-and-effect relationship which makes all team members dependent on one another. The first type, direct connective leadership, requires all of the members to be open and sometimes blunt about the expectation and functions of each part of the team. Individual pressure increases with a greater feeling of personal responsibility for specific outcomes necessary to successful project completion; team members work as a unit of a larger purpose. Instrumental connective leaders effectively funnel ideas and make final judgments as the final word, the funneling point, the go-between for the everyday dilemmas of a project and the broader progress toward expected outcomes. The last type, relational leadership, shares responsibility much more evenly across the team. A leader inspires and trusts the talents and intentions of each member. One weak link proves disastrous, but one brilliant idea may turn a project in a new and better direction.

The achieving styles of connective leadership (direct, instrumental, and relational) determine specific behavior and contain nine specific styles which describe strategies of carrying out these outcomes. Direct behavior influences the team through the activation of intrinsic, competitive, and power-based motivation; instrumental behavior influences through personal, social, and entrusting motivation;  relational behavior influences with collaborative, contributory (or shared), and vicarious motivation. In this connective leadership, the motivational styles of the team directly result from the initial behavior of the leader-in-charge. Team members who work in the expected way might be valued as part of the team even higher than another person who has greater skills and assets for the successful completion of a goal.

References

Katz, R. L. (1955). Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Business Review, 33(1), 33-42.

Lipman-Blumen, J. (2000). Connective Leadership: Managing in a Changing World. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Mumford, M. D., Zaccaro, S. J., Harding, F. D., Jacobs, T. O., & Fleishman, E. A. (2000). Leadership skills for a changing world: Solving complex social problems. Leadership Quarterly, 11, 11?35.