Extensive research has been conducted on the leadership skills that are required
to improve a team’s performance. However, theories have not managed to explain
conclusively how certain leadership skills are able to improve a team's performance
over others. Recent studies, have shifted the focus from trying to single out
leadership skills that improve a team’s performance to identifying categories of
skills - like ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills - that improve a team's performance. This study
develops and explains how the categories of meta skills and technical skills provide
a more comprehensive explanation of leadership skills than the categories of ‘soft’
and ‘hard’ skills. This study explores the relationship between a leader’s meta skills
and technical skills on a team’s performance. A case study method within an
interpretive paradigm was used to assess the way in which meta and technical
skills were perceived to improve a team’s performance. The study drew from the
rich insights of leaders and team members within four programmes located in the
Graduate School of Public and Development Management. Open-ended and
closed-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews gathered data to
assess the perceived skills required in an ideal leader to improve team
performance. The study revealed that a team’s performance improves when a
leader emphasises the exercise of meta skills above the exercise of technical skills.
However, an over-emphasis of either meta skills or technical skills results in the
demoralisation of a team which eventually leads to the reduction of a team’s
performance. The notion of meta skills and technical skills should therefore not be
regarded as discrete factors that impact on a team’s performance in a linear causeeffect
relationship. Instead, a team’s performance is affected by the interaction of
factors within the individual, organisational and global context, as well as by the
exercise of meta and technical skills in a dynamic and inter-connected process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14635 |
| Date | 30 April 2014 |
| Creators | Law, Penny |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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