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Dear Colleagues,

Thanks to you all for an extraordinarily interesting thread.
Beginning with leadership skills terms, we have segued into some deep
and important issues. I may have something useful to add before long.
Until I do, I want to thank you all for useful reflections.

I am posting a brief note to follow up on the vocabulary of
leadership constructs with which the thread began.

Travis Bradberry's latest note triggered a thought.

The metaphors we have been using distinguish between "hard" skills
and "soft," or between "soft" and "technical." What if we were simply
to distinguish among different kinds of skills in relation to the
fields of engagement?

We would discuss the different kinds of managerial skills and
leadership skills in terms of the subjects those skills address.

Without suggesting this as a genuine list - much less a taxonomy -
the kinds of rubrics we consider might look involve such headings as:

- Emotional-behavioral skills,
- Human skills,
- Administrative skills,
- Logistical skills,
- Financial skills,
- Technical skills.

Depending on your view, some of these may be subsets of other skills
in the same lists. It may also be that we need more headers.

There are more ways to look at this list, or other ways. The main
issue is developing a set of terms that help us to address issues.

The list would be richer than the "hard" and "soft" labels. What we
lose in brevity, we would gain in a vocabulary of clear distinctions.

Best regards,

Ken

--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University

Ken--

I am assuming that you are not suggesting that the hard/soft dichotomy
should be ignored, but rather invesigated to reveal the several
important dimensions which can bring up so much emotion in academic
debates.

For example:

-- "hard" may be the label we give to choosing a direction or making a
decision, "soft" the far more difficult skills of invoking the
followership of others to get them aligned with that.

-- "hard" may be used for processes we can externalize, where we can get
the benefit from some algorithm or artifact, without needing the
underlying knowledge. I do not need to know how to design a television
to operate one. "Soft" may be the domains where I actually need the
deeper knowledge and the ability to apply it anew to every situation,
like much of management knowledge, especially in a cross functional,
multi-cultural organization.

-- "hard" may be for problems we think are amenable to clear definition
and measurement of explicit dimensions and causality, "soft" for
problems which have multiple levels and confusing/conflicting dimensions

Almost any problem worth a manager's attention has both sides of each of
these dimensions -- what does that suggest about our educational
approaches?


--
Christopher M. Barlow, PhD
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
Stuart Graduate School of Business
Illinois Institute of Technology
565 West Adams Street
Chicago, Illinois 60661
Voice: (630) 221-9456
Fax: (312) 906-6549
mailto://barlow@stuart.iit.edu
http://www.stuart.iit.edu/faculty/barlow