HROB 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Divergent Thinking, Fluid And Crystallized Intelligence, Job Performance

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour
• Course: HROB 2010
• Professor: Casey Cosgrove

Document Summary

Like the trait approach we discussed in unit 2, the sills approach takes a leader centered perspective on leadership. However, in the skills approach we shift our thinking from a focus on personality characteristics, which are unusually viewed as innate and largely fixed, to an emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and developed. Katz (1955) suggested that effective administration or leadership depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human and conceptual. Katz argued that skills are what leaders can accomplish and traits are who leaders are. Technical skill is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity. Technical skills play an essential role in producing the actual products a company is designed to produce. Technical skills are most important at lower and middle levels of management and less important in upper management since individuals at the top depend on skilled followers to handle technical issues.