Leadership Skills and the Tribe

The leadership skills model is an approach that shows that leadership skills can be learned, and anyone can become a leader. The model focuses on five elements: individual attributes, competencies, leadership outcomes, care experiences, and environmental influences. One of the essential elements in this model is competencies which determine leadership outcomes, and at the same time, it can be affected by a leader’s attributes. Three leader competencies affect leadership outcomes. These three competencies include problem-solving, social judgment, and knowledge. Problem-solving skills involve a leader’s abilities, which help them solve organizational issues [1].

Some of the problem-solving skills leaders should possess include delineating vital issues and gathering information connected to the problem. After the problem is identified, the leader has skills that will enable him to develop new and distinctive ways of solving each problem. Leaders need to be aware of the organization’s environment and common challenges related to the problem identified to apply these skills. Therefore, this shows that leaders need to evaluate the solutions that they develop before they are implemented. For instance, they need to look at the long-term and short-term goals with the resolution achieved. They also need to consider if the goals to be completed will be organizational goals or individual goals.

The other skill in the leadership skills model is social judgment skills that allow leaders to understand people and other social structures that they work with. These skills help different groups in an organization to work together as a team. With this skill, an organization can lead change, solve problems, and apply sensemaking in the changing process. There are four different vital components in social judgment skills. They include perspectivetaking, social perceptiveness, behavioral flexibility, and social performance. Perspective-taking relates to being sensible to objectives made by others, and it involves the quest for leaders to know people, their social circles, and how those two relate.

Social perceptiveness involves finding out the possible reactions from people due to organizational change. The third component is behavioral flexibility which relates to the ability to change one’s actions. It provides many diverse ways of achieving change as well as the goals associated with that change. Behavioral flexibility demonstrated commonly is related to the knowledge gained from the first two components of social judgment skill. The fourth component is social performance which means having skills in several leadership competencies. Some examples include the ability to persuade and communicate, which helps a leader convey his vision to other organization members. Also, social performance permits the leader to be capable of arbitrating interpersonal conflicts resulting from the change. It also helps reduce resistance to change, and at the same time, leaders can coach and mentor other junior staff members towards achieving the stipulated organizational change.

Knowledge is the other competency that will help leaders in solving problems in organizations. It involves gathering information and developing mental structures, thus information organization. Leaders with more knowledge have more developed cognitive systems or schema, which helps them collect data and organize. More knowledgeable leaders can use previous incidents to construct plans which lead to changes in the future. Walmart’s success can be attributed to Sam Walton’s CEO’s key leadership competencies, which have played a significant role in problem-solving in the organization. Some of the competencies demonstrated include people skills such as communication, which help the managers guide the customers, give the required information, and motivate them.

Other people’s skills demonstrated by Walmart’s manager include motivating other team members and listening to other employees to respond to their concerns. Individual attributes that affect leader performance include general cognitive ability, which influences how we acquire knowledge and problem-solving skills. Another attribute is motivation which depends on the willingness to become a leader and hence readiness to offer solutions to help solve organizational issues. Motivation also depends on how prepared a person s to influence others and be ready to advance the social good of the organization. Finally, the personality of a leader is the other attribute related to leadership competencies, the most important ones are having tolerance for vagueness, openness, and curiosity.

Walmart’s effective leadership has led to the tremendous success of the organization. Under the skills approach, the threemodel method consists of technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills that influential leaders should possess [2]. Sam Walton had strong human skills that strengthened his leadership capability; hence the company’s success is still being seen to date. The core skills that he possessed include self-awareness, which led to his self-improvement since he learned new things. Others had relationship building, thus getting to know people well and helping motivate them. These skills enabled him to encourage others, and he was able to work with all team members and satisfy customers’ needs as he was concerned about their needs. Possession of a skills model enables leaders to adopt various components of a tribal strategy to guide tribal leadership. The features include Values, selfsacrificing, outcomes, assets, and behaviors [3].

1. Mumford MD, Zaccaro SJ, Harding FD, Jacobs TO, Fleishman EA (2000) Leadership skills for a changing world: Solving complex social problems. The Leadership Quarterly 11(1): 11-35.
2. Katz R (1955) Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Business Review, USA.
3. Logan D, King J, Fischer-Wright H (2008) Tribal leadership. Collins.