This is the book of a conference held at Leuven, Belgium from June 5-9 1979 under the same title. The conference was sponsored by the Scientific Affairs Division of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Brussels. We would like to thank Dr. Bayraktar of NATO for his part in facilitating the organisation and support of the conference. We are also indebted to the authorities of the University of Leuven who provided excellent facilities and particularly to Professor Verhaegen of the Department of Psychology who acted as academic host to our conference. The aim of the conference was to bring together two groups of psychologists who have been developing in parallel their particular methods of studying and describing human behaviour. The skill psychologists began with the study of motor skills which are relatively easily observable in real jobs and recordable in the laboratory. More recently interests have shifted from motor skills through perceptual skills to the process skills where the operator is attending to many sources of information in the form of dials, charts and computer outputs and adjusting some process to maintain its stability and maximise the yield. Currently problems are arising of how to analyse situations in which several skilled individuals work closely together in small team performance. The social psychologists have followed an analogous but different path of progress.

The Analysis of Social Skill (Nato Conference Series)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

W.T. Singleton

Psychology & Counseling

Springer

W. T. SINGLETON THE CONCEPT This is the fourth in a series of books devoted to the study of real skills. A skilled person is one who achieves his objectives effectively, that is by an optimal expenditure of effort, attention and other resources working within his native capacities of strength, vision, intelligence, sensitivity and so forth. It is difficult if not impossible to measure in a quantitative sense. There is, however, no question about its presence or absence. The differences between a highly skilled performer and a mediocre one are so readily manifest that there is no ambiguity. The student of skill is a person interested in what these differences are and how they originate. The importance and the difficulty of skill study is that the concept is a univ~rsal one for human activity. The movement of one limb can be skilled or unskilled within the context of a task, so also can the way a leader addresses a large meeting of his followers. For these and other equally disparate activities there are certain descriptive terms which always seem to be applicable: continuity, sequencing, timing, together with a subtle combination of sensi tivity, adaptability and imperturbability. What happens at any instant is set precisely with the flow from what has already happened to what is going to happen. The order of events has a determinate logic which may not be obvious to the observer except with the benefit of hindsight.

Social Skills

MacMillan Technical Publishing

w. T. SINGLETON THE CONCEPT This is the third in a series of books devoted to the study of real skills. The topic is management. A book on social skills is still to come and it might seem that the sequence should be reversed on the grounds that social skills are obviously one element in management skills but it is appropriate to deal with management first on the criterion of increasing complexity. Management skills are easier to understand than general social skills. This is because the defining characteristic of a skill is a purpose. The purpose of organizations in which managers operate and the tasks in which they are engaged are not easy to define but they are certainly less obscure than are the more general purposes of communities and people interactions in which the complete range of social skills is practised. Skills, like purposes, are inherently to do with people. It follows that the 'skills view' of management will be as a people-based activity. Individuals carry out management tasks and these tasks always involve other individuals, of whom some are subordinate, some superior and some equivalent within the hierarchy of the particular management organization. The concept of a hierarchy is as central to management as it is to skills. The alternative to hier­ archy is anarchy. Management is not solely concerned with people.

Management Skills

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Books by W.T. Singleton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by W.T. Singleton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Analysis of Social Skill (Nato Conference Series)

Social Skills

Management Skills