Leaders credibility, organisation and capability: leadership skills as a mediator

Abstract

Experts and renowned leadership institutions asserted that leadership skill is a key tool to develop leadership capability. This research pioneered in testing whether this is valid or not by isolating and testing the function of leadership skill on the relationship between leaders' credibility, organisation domain and leadership capability. A total of 248 construction industry team leaders in Malaysia participated in the research. Woodworth's (1928) S-O-R model was used as the theoretic frame in determining the role of mediator (leadership skill) on the relationship between the independent variables (leaders' credibility and organisation domain) and dependent variable (leadership capability). The SEM in AMOS version 18 was used to test whether leadership skill is full or partial mediator. Mediation analysis results revealed that leadership skill partially mediated the relationship between the leader's credibility and organisation domain, and leadership capability (i.e., personal integrity, working within industry, being customer-focused and quality, working as a team, communication and interpersonal skills, and empowering people). Malaysia construction industry team leaders' leadership skills (coaching, problem solving, decision making, performance management, motivation, innovation, proactive, mentoring, and project planning) therefore should be enhanced in order to effectively develop their leadership capability.