Essay Example on Samaritan's Purse: Effective Leadership Skill for Organization Administration

Introduction

Most of the organizations tend to rely on practical leadership skill to help in administration purposes within the organization. Based on the research carried out on the Samaritan's Purse organization, it was evident that the organization significantly relies on the three-skill approach to leadership to enhance its effective control and administration. The Samaritan's purse applies the technical skill, conceptual skill, and the human skill to promote efficient executive purposes of the organization.

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Description of an Organization (Samaritan's Purse) That Utilizes the Three-Skill Approach to Leadership

The Samaritan's purse being an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that offers an individual with their physical needs tend to find the leadership skills critical in their operations. The organization is relatively large and conducting its activities in over 100 countries with its field offices situated in twenty nations across the globe. An organization that is as big as Samaritan's purse has regularly applied some level of practical leadership approach that initiates the three skills of leadership (Ogbonna and Katz, 1955). The organization has a hierarchical command and management structure that ranges from the board of directors, management, supervisors, and employees. The administration has consistently applied the three skills of leadership to help in the coordination and creating a good relationship among the management and the employees as well.

Synthesizes of the Skill Mixes Exhibited at Each Level of Samaritan's Purse Organization with the Model's Suggestion for the Skill Mix

Like any other organization, the Samaritan's purse has a set of professional employees such as accountants, medical practitioners and other professionals who are to be hired based on their competencies and other casual workers and a team of volunteers (Odusami, 2002). The individuals within the organization are categorized based on their expertise and technical skill to form team or departments that deal with various issues. The departments are designed in such a way that they have their own leaders that oversee the operations. The leaders seem to acquire specific abilities and skills that make them to better serve as leaders. According to Robert Katz, the Three Skills Model encompasses Technical, Human, and Conceptual. Based on his argument, Technical skills are as a result of knowledge and proficiency that an individual possesses in a specific area of profession; Human skill is the capacity and ability to be able to work with, and associate to others within a social context; and finally, the Conceptual skills are the ability to operate based on the set concepts, principles, ideas, and opinions (Pavett & Lau, 1983).

Based on the kind of management level that an individual is in, various skills are required as compared to others. For instances, a supervisor will require both Human and Technical skills to be able to carry out his or her duties effectively and at the same time, maintain effective relations with the employees. On the other hand, Middle management needs all of the three skills, that is, Human, Technical, and Conceptual. Moreover, Top-level management, such as the board of directors requires Human and Conceptual skills. It is suggested that the leaders find it essential to possess all three skills; based on whether they are within the management structure, nonetheless, some skills seem to be more critical as compared to the other.

The model of the skills tends to bring out the picture of the Samaritan's purse since the organization has a vivid leadership structure which includes Supervisors, a board of Director, President, and CEO. The supervisors tend to associate and interacts with employees almost on a daily basis; thus ensuring that the organization's system is operating efficiently and in the process addressing any issues that may emerge (technical skill). The supervisor also would directly contact the beneficiaries of the Samaritan's purse, especially if a problem seems to arise about and will attempt to address or resolve it (human skill) immediately. However, the supervisors are not needed to do much beyond just trying to solve the problems as they emerge in their jurisdictions.

Within the Samaritan's purse, the directors have the responsibility to oversee the operations of the entire organization and provide executive orders as well. The directors have the duty of ensuring that that the systems are updated and are current and efficiently working. They also address any problem that rises and may require a certain level of expertise and professionalism (technical skill). Sometimes, the directors also find the opportunities to directly contact the beneficiaries of the various services provided by the organization, in case an issue is escalated to his or her position and again are in a place to control and manage employees from different locations globally in over 100 counties (human skill).

Moreover, at the administrative level that comprises of the CEO and the president of the organization, the CEO is expected to go to the field and link with people and well-wishers to help generate fund for the organization; this is more of a liaison responsibility (human skill). The president and the CEO again have to interact with the board members to ensure that they have the approval of the running of the entire organization and give their opinions whether they are pleased or not and even may provide some of their suggestions (human skill). The administration again must ensure that the Samaritan's purse organization has manageable and obtainable goals and strategies to attain the planned objectives. However, a feasibility survey of the goals need requires conceptual skill from the leaders.

The said example tends to differ in a manner of which the entire coordination is maintained; provided that the organization is extensive. The coordination is effectively and carefully laid out. The supervisors and team leaders are required to be having the skills in their leadership role since they seem to be interacting with most of the employees and volunteers and even the beneficiaries (Parent & Seguin, 2008). They need to be in a position to handle some of the problems that arise without necessarily reporting to the directors unless the issue is extreme.

What Can Be Done To Change The Skills?

Generally, the leadership skill employed by the leaders of Samaritan's purse is relatively practical; however, some adjustment may be made to change or even improve the capabilities of the leadership that are applied. For instance, most leaders tend only to designate or assign the employees the tasks that they believe they can handle; but on the other hand, suppressing the learning competencies. So the leaders need to assign more work to the workers to enable their learning capacity and ability since this would enable others to be in a position to take up the role of leadership at the organization when needed. The motivational technique seems to be lacking throughout the leadership role within the organization; thus there is a need for the leaders to start on motivation some of the workers who may get bored of conducting the same activity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the three leadership skills by Kartz have been proven to be of more considerable significance to most teams and even organizations like the Samaritan's purse in enhancing effective operation and relations. Leaders are obliged to conduct their duty with a certain level of skills such as human skills, technical skills, and conceptual skills to be able to effectively operate for the benefit of teamwork and realization of the organization's goals.

References

Odusami, K. T. (2002). Perceptions of construction professionals concerning important skills of effective project leaders. Journal of Management in Engineering, 18(2), 61-67.

Ogbonna, O. Katz's (1955) Three-Skill Approach.

Parent, M. M., & Seguin, B. (2008). Toward a model of brand creation for international large-scale sporting events: The impact of leadership, context, and nature of the event. Journal of Sport Management, 22(5), 526-549.

Pavett, C. M., & Lau, A. W. (1983). Managerial work: The influence of hierarchical level and functional specialty. Academy of Management journal, 26(1), 170-177.