The third approach in the Leadership studies is the Leadership Skill Approach.

While the Traits Approach took into account the personality of the leader and the Style Approach the behaviour of the leader, the Leadership skills approach takes into account the knowledge and abilities that the leader has. A leader can learn certain skills and turn himself into a remarkable one. Although different in the focus, the Traits Approach and the Skills Approach, both center their attention in the leader, as its main purpose. Researchers have studied leadership skills and abilities for a number of years. However, there are two influential models. The first one is a model proposed by Robert Katz in 1955. The second approach is proposed by Michael Mumford and colleagues in the year 2000. These models can be seen as complimentary to each other, since they offer different views on leadership from the skills point of view. In the model proposed by Katz in the Harvard Bussiness Review, titled "Skills of an Effective Administrator" from 1955, he recognizes three different abilities that a leader should have. These are:

Technical Skills Human Skills Conceptual Skills

Katz argued that these skills are quite different from traits or qualities of leaders. Skills are what leaders can accomplish, whereas traits are who leaders are (Northouse, 2007, p.40). A technical skill is knowledge about and competency and proficiency in a specific work or activity. For example, to use certain computer software packages (for example, MS Excel or Access) is an advanced technical skill. A human skill is one that enables to work with people. It is different from technical skills which has to do with working with things. These abilities help us to get along with people and to communicate and work within teams. A conceptual skill are abilities to work with ideas and concepts. These skills enable us to understand and better decide the actions and measures that has to be taken in a particular field of work. Based on his observations Katz stated that the level of importance of each set of skills (technical, human and conceptual) was directly correlated with the level that the person has in the organization.

. BPO Means-Business Process Outsourcing

BPO Meaning : BPO means Business Process Outsourcing. Its the process of hiring a company which is capable of doing tasks on your behalf at much lesser cost and better expertise so that you can focus on your main job. Based on who does the outsourced work, BPOs are categorized as Captive and Non Captive (or Third party BPO).

Captive
When a subsidiary of parent company runs operations of the outsourced work then the BPO is known as captive. For example: Dell decided to open its own call centers in India so that it can handle or make calls for Dell products. In this case Dell International services is a captive BPO.

Non Captive
When the outsourced work is being handled by a third party which is being paid for its services then that third party company is a non captive unit. For example: Wipro handles projects of various ISPs,banks, computer manufacturers etc.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

Cost Cost of outsourcing to a captive BPO is higher than the non captive BPO. Third party BPOs win contracts through competitive bidding process and have to cut down on non essential costs in order to be priced competitively. Captive BPOs dont have that pressure and can get relaxed on the cost part. Outsourcing to captive unit located offshore is better than no outsourcing because costs of running support functions are higher in countires like US and UK compared to offshore locations like India and Philippines. Best practice sharing Non Captive BPOs can implement best practices and lessons learnt from other projects being handled by the organization. On the other hand Captive BPOs do not have projects of other companies so they have to rely on the experience gained through self learning. Control Captive BPOs have better control over their employees and any process changes are easier to implement compared to a non captive unit. In addition they have more flexibility to increase or reduce the headcount depending on the future requirements.
A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving or transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centers are operated for telemarketing, solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection and market research. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letter, fax, live support software,social media and e-mail at one location is known as a contact centre. A call centre is operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, atelephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

A contact centre, also known as customer interaction centre is a central point of any organization from which all customer contacts are managed. Through contact centres, valuable information about company are routed to appropriate people, contacts to be tracked and data to be gathered. It is generally a part of companys customer relationship management (CRM). Today, customers contact companies by telephone, email, online chat, fax, and instant message.