Hi everyone,

I would like to discuss the differences in leadership approach between top executives and first-level supervisors based on Katz’s Three-Skill Approach. According to Katz (1995, p.34), effective Leadership depends on three personal skills: Technical Skills, Human Skills, and Conceptual Skills. We can see from Northouse (2021, p.50) Figure 3.1 Management Skills Necessary at Various Levels of an Organization, that Human Skills are essential in all levels of management, cause no matter what level of management you are, the manager must work with people, and Human Skills are the abilities that help leader effectively work with others. However, from the Figure, we can see that top managers require strong Conceptual Skills and less Technical Skills; on the other hand, the first-level supervisors require the opposite.

“Conceptual skills are central to creating a vision and strategic plan for an organization.” (Northhouse, 2021, p.50). In terms of the organizational structure of most companies today, a top manager, such as the CEO, is responsible for controlling and overseeing the entire organization. They spend most of the time developing the organization’s goals, strategic plans, and company policies and making decisions on the business’s current and future direction. Thus Conceptual skills are most important at the top management levels. The first-level supervisors are usually responsible for assigning, guiding, and overseeing the employees’ work. Having strong Technical Skills in the specialized area helps the first-level supervisors to communicate with the employees and the stakeholders effectively and solve the problems that happen during the work. The top-level managers depend on skilled followers to deal with technical issues (Northhouse, 2021)

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and practice. SAGE Publications, Inc.

2nd discussion post from peers

Hello all,

After reading about the different theories of leadership in the textbook, I find The Path-Goal Theory encompasses multiple leadership behaviors simultaneously.  Individually, each position has its own leadership behavior and characteristics.  Top-level executives such as CEO’s, Presidents, Vice-Presidents tend to have directive leadership behavior as they provide structure and have high directive traits and low supportive traits (Northouse, 2021). However, CEO’s support the business as a whole and provide conceptual skills as well.  Your rank in the organizational chart depends on how supportive you are in the company. I also find Vice-Presidents to be achievement-oriented as they challenge followers to complete work at high levels (Northouse, 2021).  As we look more into first-level superiors such as managers and middle managers, I find there to be a lot of support behavior, participative behavior, and technical skills present.  Many managers support executive ideas and goals by keeping track of all the work being completed. The managers execute the participative leadership behavior traits because they invite followers to share ideas in decision-making on how to accomplish goals (Northouse, 2021).  At the end of the day, each position supports each other, even the executive.  It is a team effort for a business to become successful and if you want to take your company to that “next level” it is recommended you have support from a team who you can trust. Particular leadership behaviors will be needed to lead different employees and sometimes there are multiple behaviors a leader can carry out.

Reference:

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and practice. SAGE Publications, Inc.