all right in this video we're going to be taking a look at what's called a skills approach to leadership skills approach to leadership and this is another leader-centered perspective as we mentioned a few videos ago leadership has been studied through the years from the perspective of focusing on the leader it can be studied focusing on the interaction between the leader and those who are following or from the perspective of a follower the skills approach and then next video will be the final one that we'll be looking at with regards to a leader centered perspective and as a reminder we will go through what the theory is how it works and then some strengths and weaknesses that can help you adapt it into your leadership philosophy so what is a skills approach um the skills approach really emphasizes the competencies of the leader whereas in the trait it was those innate characteristics height communication skills um uh intelligence now we're going to look at some of the competencies of the leader and the early work around a skills approach was done by katz in about 1955 and he referred to what he called a three skills approach and the three skills approach says that effective leadership depends on three basic personal skills those are technical skills which is really knowledge and proficiency in a certain type of work so in our type of work in ministry it's knowledge of the bible it's the proficiency of the technical skills of preaching uh exegesis discipleship strategies those kind of things the the technical skills um that you need to be proficient in the field that you're working in um the other type of personal skills is what's called human skills these are basically interpersonal skills uh the ability to work with followers to work with peers to work with superiors and relate well with one another and then finally his third skill was what he calls conceptual and that's the ability to work not with technical skills or things or even work with people but the ability to work with ideas it's ideas its vision its ability to conceptualize maybe the future um and work through problems and things like that and really the the tier of leadership in which one finds himself is going to rely on each of these three skills a little bit differently at lower levels of leadership and lower meaning not necessarily effectiveness but lower on your organizational chart so somebody who's not at a very senior level so at the lower levels on your organizational chart you're relying more on your technical skills or more on the human skills these are most important because you're you're doing the work of ministry for example so you're you're you're you're working in the skills of discipleship you're in the skills of preaching out in the field in the skills of evangelism and then we always need to be working on those human or people skills when you're sort of at a at a middle management level on the org chart so you're not all the way at the top but you're certainly not at the bottom you've moved up to a certain extent you really utilize all three you're now for the first time just starting to think idea about the organization or what could be you maybe have or given the latitude of that for the first time or you're getting more institutional knowledge about what it is that we want to see happen but you're still kind of one foot in the idea world but you still have one foot in the technical world and then obviously the human skills and the people skills are also essential there but by the time you get up to upper leadership or kind of senior leadership the top of your org chart up in that area we're really using a lot less of the technical skills and much more of the conceptual skills so what we see up there is conceptual skills and human skills always interpersonal skills are going to be involved in a skills approach particularly with leadership so the conceptual skills the idea can i think through do i formulate and generate good ideas can i solve problems not at a technical level but maybe a bigger broader organizational level and again having the human skills and leaders are most effective when they utilize the skills for the level of leadership in which they find themselves you know it's it's one thing that's happening here in our country is a lot of people uh new into ministry uh are promoting themselves as thought leaders and we kind of want to go if you're new in ministry you should be like doing like that's we want the application more technical skills learn to preach learn to uh you know build learn to disciple rather than sitting around thinking about it that's more at the top levels where we've been in this for a little bit while we've worked our way up the organizational chart where the thought starts to happen in the bet your best contribution now starts to be ideas rather than actual technical doing so most effective leaders are those who can match their skills with their leadership level now that was the early work from cats in the 50s and katz's work got built on in the 1990s and into the 2000s and up as recently as about 2017 there's been a lot of work on skills development but kind of in that 90s to 2000s a group led by mumford and zaccaro and a couple others uh researchers started to to to build on this work and to to develop some new models and a more complex skills model got developed beyond the three skills then they started talking about five skills so they had a five components of effective leadership performance five components of effective leadership components and these were competencies individual attributes career experiences environmental influences and leadership outcomes by the way the one that's most interviewed for at least in the us and corporate america is career experiences what have you done is really what we're uh looking at tell me about your past experience and we look at resumes and things like that but there's actually five components to effective leadership again those are competencies individual attributes career experiences environmental influences and we'll explain what each of these are here in a minute and leadership outcomes when we talk about competencies what competencies does a leader need to have there's primarily three the first is problem solving skills i'm going to speak about those in just a minute but can you fix stuff can you solve problems that happen within a church happen within a ministry happen within families that you're helping happen within the organization happen throughout every nation happen on your your your your nations or your region's leadership team can you solve problems can you deal with complex challenges that happen when the world shuts down to due to war due to covet or due to whatever is coming next can you figure out what to do can you solve problems that's a huge competency that we have to have the second competency is social judgment skills and social judgment skills uh are really do do you understand people and do you understand social systems do you have insight about people do you have awareness about others are you perceptive to what others might be thinking or desiring even if they're not saying so again in our upcoming intensive we're gonna have an incredible opportunity for us to in real time develop social judgment skills with people from cultures uh different than ourselves and that'll be that'll be amazing and then the last of the competencies is knowledge and knowledge is different than intelligence intelligence is the ability to think but knowledge is do you just do you have information and do you have sort of the mental structures necessary to be competent at what you do in in our field do do you know the bible right do you uh know discipleship strategies do you know how the church works in the field in which you're being entrusted to lead is there a a knowledge base to where you would be able to say i have some expertise do i know i i don't have to know random facts to win a game show i have to know the field in which i'm operating so we have competencies and these competencies these three competencies are directly affected now by individual attributes all right so we have five components of leadership one is competencies and there's three of those and those competencies are now affected by the second of the components individual attributes and these individual attributes that directly affect competencies would be uh general cognitive ability which is basically intelligence and and that comes to us by biology god has given us a brain that has so much capacity or not as much capacity we are intelligent and we're as intelligent typically as biology allows there's another type of knowledge or cognitive ability called crystallized cognitive ability that is also a individual attribute crystallized cognability is knowledge and while um in while uh general cognitive ability or intelligence comes from biology crystallized cognitive ability or knowledge that comes through experience that do you study do you show yourself approved are you rightly handling the word do you do are you learning are you growing clearly you're here in ens so you're you're gaining crystallized cognitive ability and through the ministry experiences you have as you apply them back in your in your context you're gaining knowledge and experience which is crystallized cognitive ability also one of our individual attributes would be motivation are you willing to take on the task are you willing to exert your influence there were some leaders among us that um for whatever reason maybe they lack the courage or the faith or whatever they just don't engage and bring they're not motivated to take on the task and bring uh their influence to bear on seeing a situation and last of the uh individual attributes would be your personality we spent a lot of first year discussing your personality so we have these individual attributes and they directly affect the competencies additionally the competencies are also impacted by our career experiences some of you have led in various situations and contexts and all the things that you've learned by what you've gone through the valuable things that god has led you through the incredible situations that he's put you in where you've utilized your faith or maybe it's sometimes shrunk back i don't know but those are all valuable lessons that we sort of keep in the memory bank and we can access that help us and impact our competencies our competencies are also impacted by our environmental influences environmental influences are are the things that are around us and those can be both internal and external to our organization an internal environmental uh factor in an environmental um influence might be like the size of your facility that you meet in you know how many of our churches had an internal uh during covid particularly in the u.s i'm not sure how it works you know across the the globe but in the u.s a lot of our churches and church plants in particular met in schools and when schools got closed or movie theaters got closed or halls and venues that they had rented for sunday morning services when those closed their ability to gather was immediately eliminated that's an environmental factor an environmental influence it's ex internal to who the church is the type of facility that they meet in it's influenced also by an external we had a global pandemic but there are external things around you and around your your organization or internal that are part of the culture of your organization that can uh they can influences um what what is your community like is your community growing is your community changing is the demographic makeup of where you're doing your ministry changing is a new university opening is that is enrollment going up is enrollment going down those are factors in the environment in the ecosystem in which your ministry is placed that will help determine or impact to a quite a quite a large extent how the competencies you have get exerted so let's kind of back this up and take a look at how this five works performance and leadership outcomes are influenced by the leader's basic competencies and these basic competencies are influenced by the leader's attributes his experience or her experience and the environment in which that leader is working that is essentially what a skills approach is these are competencies of the leader that they have now how does it work well all the research that's been done from mid 50s to mid 2015 2017 so 62 years we've been looking at this attribute of leadership and really what we've boiled it down to honestly is it's descriptive uh we haven't figured out how to based on what we know and models that we built how to predict whether a leader is going to be effective it really more describes we find effective leaders and these are things that they all are sort of doing these are skills that they have and when you take the totality of research and you boil it down to what skills does a leader have to have it really comes down to three problem solving skills which i had mentioned before we're going to address and we're just about to here in a minute so problem-solving skills social judgment skills you heard in each model and each frame there's something about a human element do you understand people do you understand how groups of people work do you have social judgment skills and then knowledge is there a cognitive understanding of what is needed to accomplish the task okay are we growing in knowledge are we developing our social skills and then problem solving skills so problem solving skills social judgment skills and knowledge let's talk for just a minute about problem-solving skills because we keep seeing it pop up as a as a key skill that leaders need to have in 2017 uh mumford todd higgs and mcintosh and other researchers and by the way there's no exam coming up where you have to know everybody's name i just want to make sure i credit uh the thinkers whose information i'm passing along but they developed nine key problem-solving skills that leaders employ to address problems and again these are descriptive they didn't say this is how to solve a problem they watched leaders work through problems and retrofitted back and said these are the skills that they're employing and here's what here's what they are number one is problem definition they have the ability to define the main issues the significant problems that are affecting the organization they can go this is and they're accurate actually the problem at hand so problem definition number two is a cause goal analysis it's the ability to analyze the causes and the goals that are relevant to addressing the problem so we've defined the problem we now know what's causing the problem and we know the goals that are going to be relevant if we can hit this this and this it can start to alleviate the problem number three is what they call constraint analysis and that's the ability to identify the constraints or the the limiting factors that are influencing a problem solution do we have what we need or what do we need to develop in order to start to overcome this problems where are our limitations not every organization can solve every problem with what it already has sometimes we need to upgrade or we need to beef up we need to retrofit our facility we need to upgrade some musicians whatever it might be we need to add and build more capacity because we have constraints and a leader an effective problem-solving leader can identify and analyze where the constraints are the fourth thing they do is they plan planning planning is the ability to formulate plans to formulate sort of mental simulations to kind of run down the road if i applied this idea what would happen if we tried this solution where would it take us and they can see beyond the next step and think logically out a little bit further and almost almost build like mental simulations in their head they can kind of sit in a simulator i was just watching uh the it's a little bit old now but the older tom hanks movie uh apollo 13 last night my wife and i were sitting down and it was on and it was fascinating because it was already most of the way through and apollo 13 the space capsule had already had all of its problems and the the one guy was sitting in the simulator back in houston trying to figure out what they needed to do up in space to be able to re-enter and it was literally this he's he's sitting in a simulator trying things to see what would happen and when we're solving problems when we're building plans we need to kind of go into sort of the mental simulator you can't start executing stuff and see what happens because it might lead to disaster it might not work it might you know use vital resources but an effective problem-solving leader can sort of sit in the mental simulator and walk through it this way then walk through it that way then walk through it that way and help determine what's going to be the best way forward the fifth skill with regards to problem solving skills is forecasting and forecasting is the ability to implic to anticipate the implications of executing the plans so i can develop the plans in the simulator and now i can anticipate you know gosh how many of us have have launched and sometimes a problem by the way is not problematic sometimes we we just want to launch a new initiative and some of the problem might be getting people motivated getting people to increase their generosity getting people to stretch their faith and we can get the greatest plans but forecasting has helped me look and say if we launch this plan if we try to execute it what are what what can i anticipate maybe being some of the roadblocks what can i anticipate being some of the multipliers that'll help it move faster right so we need to be able to forecast the sixth thing we need to do sixth is creative thinking and that's the ability to develop alternative approaches and new ideas for addressing potential pitfalls in a plan that are identified in forecasting so we kind of work backward a little bit when i forecast and go okay if we do this there might be a a a snag out here there might be some resistance over here and as i think through the resistance now i can creatively think ways around the resistance or ways to neutralize the resistance or ways to raise the organization up that that resistance doesn't become a problem that we see in the plan through forecasting so creative thinking number seven is going to be idea evaluation and that's the ability to evaluate these alternative approaches that we just came up with so what is the viability of this new plan right what is the viability if we execute this thing is this idea really a good idea essentially is what it's looking at there uh number eight is something we all have access to as followers of jesus and leaders in the kingdom and it's wisdom wisdom is the ability to evaluate the appropriateness of these alternative approaches within the context or the setting that the leader acts so i know both i'm looking at the idea but now i'm starting to also look at the situation in the local context i'll never forget having a conversation with the great uh american church plant guru ed stetzer and uh he was talking about he lived in buffalo new york which to those of you outside of north america uh what's the closest thing think siberia maybe very very very very cold very very very snowy and he was in his first church plant and he went to a conference with a pastor named rick warren who's in southern california uh think you know palm trees and sunshine and beautiful weather pretty much weather-wise and also the temperament of the people the exact opposite of buffalo new york and ed stutzer was saying that he went to the to this conference where rick warren was teaching about church planting and rick warren for the first time ed stetzer in a more conservative baptist at least in the u.s conservative baptist setting where you would always wear a suit and a tie and have your hair parted and carry a big giant bible he saw rick warren teaching in a hawaiian shirt laid back wearing sandals and like just some slacks and ed stetzer's takeaway from everything that was talked about of how to plant a church he's looking at all that rick warren had done and his big takeaway was he went back to buffalo new york where the snow was piled up higher than his car and he started preaching in hawaiian shirts and sandals and needless to say people were like dude what are you doing like you've got the wrong idea that worked for rick warren in his context in southern california which has surfers and people who are laid back and they're like hey what's up bro people that talk like that wearing a hawaiian shirt was a perfectly wise move to match his culture it didn't have wisdom as ed likes to say back in buffalo now you and i can develop uh models we can learn from what one another are doing we're going to have incredible opportunity for peer learning all throughout ens particularly in our upcoming intensive where we'll get the opportunity what are you doing and develop best practices and learn and that builds knowledge but then the step in problem solving of wisdom is can i take this knowledge and translate it into my context and is it appropriate for where i'm going to be just because a model works in one place doesn't mean it works everywhere now biblical principles absolutely we apply biblical principles across the board but wisdom takes those and contextualizes them to our local setting now we have the the beauty of james writing that if any of you lacks wisdom we just simply need to ask god now wisdom without the first seven steps of being able to rightly conceptualize the problem right and being able to generate ideas and be able to think through and forecast if we don't have any sort of raw material to put into the wisdom hopper we're still not going to be super wise but if we don't have the spiritual element of wisdom with all the information in the whole wide world we're not going to be as effective leaders and problem solvers as we need to be so we marry this idea of gathering the information thinking through it planning contingencies etc etc and then god give me wisdom how do we contextualize this to exactly where we are to these people that you've given us to shepherd or these people you've given us to reach with the gospel where's the redemptive window here that may not be over there as i'm learning from one another how do we bring the gospel to our people all right that's wisdom and last would be nine uh sense making or or visioning and this is also in many ways to me a people skill but it's the ability to articulate a vision that will help the followers understand make sense of and act on the problem can i make sense and then articulate the vision in such a way that people understand it grab hold of it internalize it make it their own and now can act upon it that is a huge step because you can have the greatest plans in the whole wide world but if we can't have those that we've been given influence we can't communicate to those that we have a responsibility with to help lead what the plan is going to be in such a way that they can activate it then we're going to be less effective in our leadership all right so let's um that's how it works it's descriptive so i don't say here apply a skills approach what i would say is there are skills that every leader needs to have and we need to have problem solving skills those nine steps we need to have social judgment skills do we understand people and we need to have knowledge if we have those we got a chance to be effective in our leadership what are some of the strengths of the skills approach we'll just very quickly hit strengths and weaknesses and we'll wrap up this video there's at least three main strengths that i would like to identify for you first one is it starts to stress the importance of the leader's abilities and these are learned skills traits which we talked about in the last video are kind of hardwired things that god has put in there but skills are are they're focused on the leader but their abilities and these can be developed these can be learned which leads to our second strength it makes leadership now available to everyone because these competencies can be developed and by the way no matter your level of leadership all of these competitors can can not just be developed from nothing but they can be improved upon and sharpened and then third is it gives leaders and and wherever it is that you're leading it it gives us a way to sort of systematically help other leaders grow right if it was just a trait i can't help another leader develop a personality trait that they don't have but i can help leaders develop their problem-solving skills nine steps to solving problems if i see you getting snagged on one maybe i've watched you cast vision and it just lacked something that was compelling we can work on that we can develop that if you don't know how to analyze a problem we can work on that particular skill so it gives us as leaders the ability to now in a framework to start help helping other leaders grow it's a structure for leadership education um you know gosh leadership schools and books are writing about problem solving they're writing about conflict resolution they're writing about listening and teamwork which are you know human skills and then also it gives us the the technical skills that we learned about the ability to work on those if i'm going to be more effective leaders a leader if i'm going to move from a kind of a lower level of leadership up to the middle part of that is the development of the technical skills then it matters if we're teaching people to preach better to handle the bible better to disciple better to carry themselves better like it gives us something that we know if you will improve this your leadership will improve now what is the main weakness it doesn't tell us how someone improves by having these skills it just tells us that they improve by having these skills so it doesn't explain this theory doesn't explain how a person's competencies lead to effective leadership performance but it clearly tells us that a person's competencies lead to leadership performance so we haven't unlocked how these work is it part of the interaction is it part of some attributes of the followers uh we don't totally know but we do know that there are skills that are definitely uh essential for you and i as leaders and that is the skills approach to leadership [Music] you