Leadership Models Behavioral and Skills Approach

Leadership Models: Skills and Behavioral Approach

The skills approach to leadership states that a leader must own a certain set of skills, such as technical, human, and conceptual, for his leadership to be effective in meeting goals (Conlin, 2016, p. 9). Similarly, the behavioral approach to leadership emphasizes that leaders should do and act the same way they want their followers to operate (Northouse, 2018, p. 71). This paper aims at elaborating on the skills and behavioral approaches to leadership and how they can be used effectively so that the leaders are considered successful.

The three basic types of skills approaches are technical, conceptual, and human skills. Technical skills are the knowledge about a particular work or task (Future Learn, n.a.). The processes and procedures accompanied by the activity, such as software and hardware, should be possessed by the leader to train the employees for productive outcomes in the respective area. Conceptual skills enable a leader to think and hypothesize about the ideas and concepts of a task or activity. Leaders who are good with conceptual skills can think strategically and put creativity into the notions on which work has to be done. Their problem-solving is strong, and their decision-making abilities are acclaimed. Human skills are the most complex ones since managing a diverse set of humans with differing abilities is hard. The leader must have powerful communication and motivational skills to inspire followers to work by developing progressive team spirit.

When a leader adopts task-oriented behavior, he emphasizes plans and schedules to develop a structure to have things done. This type of leadership includes a step-by-step approach towards completing certain processes of the entire task, continuously upgrading the goals according to the need of the time and complexities that occur at each step, setting priorities according to the successful outcomes, sticking strictly to the planned schedules for meeting the goals on time, and demanding the employees to set process-oriented aims and articulate plans for accomplishing them (STU Online, 2018). Likewise, relationship-oriented leaders are focused on the emotional needs of their followers and have an honest interest in listening and helping them (Sandling, n.a.). When a leader focuses on his follower’s emotional needs, the workforce becomes driven and is encouraged to work harder for their leader as the leader depicts attentiveness in their well-being. They feel esteemed and appreciated and are further encouraged to produce positive results.

The most critical of the above approaches are the behavioral and the relationship-oriented approaches. A person has all the essential skills mentioned in his curriculum vitae suitable for a job description, but human skills are not cited. Human skills are imperative for a leader to mobilize his people in the right direction, and that too, with the zeal needed for achieving the set targets. He can solve personal conflicts as he would be more concerned about their feelings and sentiments. He would eliminate boredom from the assigned tasks and instill a natural sense of productivity within the employees. The staff would feel stimulated and inspirited they would know that they are valued. The team’s well-being would be the priority of people-oriented leaders, and the followers feel active and respected just being around them. The two strongest examples of such leaders are Nelson Mandela and Richard Branson. Though Nelson Mandela did not inherit all the required traits of a leader, he had the quality of engaging people with his objectives and had the charisma to support them. He had the perseverance and was brave enough to look deeper into their problems, which is an evident example of human skills. Additionally, Richard Branson, being the greatest business tycoon and owning several companies under the name of Virgin Group, believes that maintaining a healthy leader-employee relation is the key to success as treating them equally boosts the continuous process of advancement (Domanska, 2020).