Leadership Skills
OLS 57900: Emerging World-Class Leadership Strategies
Spring 2024
Key Takeaway 1: The Skills approach states that effective leadership depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human, and conceptual. You need to be proficient in a specific type of work or activity. You need to be able to work with people. You need to do the mental work of shaping meaning of organizational policy or issues (i.e., vision and strategy) (Northouse, 2019). ​
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Key Takeaway 2: The Skills-based Model of Leadership suggests many people have the potential for leadership by emphasizing the capabilities that make effective leaders rather than focusing on what leaders do (Northouse, 2019). Individual attributes shape competencies, which directly impact leadership outcomes. Thus, working on individual attributes and competencies will have direct benefit to leadership effectiveness and performance.
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​Key Takeaway 3: As leaders, we're naturally pushed out of our comfort zone. When we move out of our comfort zone, our ego kicks in. Your ego can sabotage you. This can be in the form of procrastination, insecurity, comparison, imposter syndrome, and a host of other tactics. Sabotage stems from self-limiting beliefs that are rooted in intergenerational, cultural, racial, geographic, gender, religious, and other situational influences. These self-limiting beliefs often surface in common misperceptions like work equals success; perfection equals success; success means tradeoffs. These misperceptions lead to a feeling of unworthiness. We must release ourselves from our self-limiting beliefs (Anderson, 2023).
Exhibit 1: Management Skills
Exhibit 2: Skills Model
Exhibit 3: Effects of Self Limitation
Analysis: The three basic personal skills of technical, human, and conceptual align to the Skills-based Model of Leadership. The individual attributes, shaped by career experiences and environmental influences develops the technical skills. How those individual attributes are applied to develop competencies around problem solving, social judgement, and knowledge impacts humans skills and the ability to work with people. The resulting leadership outcomes determines the ability to think conceptually to solve problems and improve performance.
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While the Skills-based Model of Leadership suggests many people have the potential for leadership because they can improve their individual attributes and competencies over time, it is important to note that they are both influenced by career experiences and environmental influences. If not handled appropriately, your leadership potential can be limited.
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Career experiences are heavily dependent on available opportunities. You always hear that "success requires a little bit of luck." This perspective creates frustration, sense of helpless, and allows excuses. I take on the perspective what you have to create your own luck. What this translates to is: look for new opportunities and don't be afraid to take on calculated risks. Calculated in the sense that you want to take on new responsibilities that you may not be familiar with, but only if it (1) progresses your career forward and (2) is still grounded in your core competencies. The other aspect to creating your own luck is to make sure you are prepared to capitalize on the opportunities presented to you by continuously working and improving upon your individual attributes and core competencies. Thus, I always clarify that "luck" lives at the intersection of opportunity and preparation. This mindset gives you a sense of control over your success and a direction toward your goal that creates inertia with each milestone achieved on your path to success.
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Environmental influences are even harder to control. While you can work on your skills to improve the career experiences presented to you, to overcome environmental influences you need to work on your relationship with yourself. Environmental influences can be intergenerational, cultural, geographic, etc. that ties in with Anderson (2023) and this causes the effects of self-limiting beliefs. These environmental influences can deeply affect how we see ourselves and how we interact with the world. The way to gain control over environmental influences is in shaping how we perceive them and perceive ourselves by releasing negative perception and enforcing with affirmations, discussed in the following weeks.
References
Anderson, R. M. (2023). Leadership Mindset 2.0. Columbia: Executive Joy! https://rmichaelanderson.com/leadership-mindset-2-0/
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and Practice 8th Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.