Final answer:
The main critique of the skills model of leadership training is that its effectiveness remains unproven, despite significant investments. Transformational leadership is found to be more effective, and the strengths-based management approach needs more empirical study to validate its impact on performance.
Step-by-step explanation:
The critique often launched at the skills model of leadership training is that its effectiveness has not been fully substantiated or proven. This critique points to the gap between the substantial financial investments in leadership development and the measurable improvements in leadership performance. Researchers like Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen have found that transformational leadership approaches are usually more effective than transactional ones, which suggests a need for developing leadership training that incorporates both transformational and transactional elements.
Additionally, Donald Clifton's research on strengths-based management emphasizes the importance of building on a leader's inherent strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses. This approach is popular but, like the skills model, has been critiqued for not being well-studied in terms of its impact on organizational performance. Kaiser & Overfield highlight a potential problem with this approach, where managers might neglect their weaknesses or overuse their strengths, leading to decreased performance.
Furthermore, education experts have raised concerns that despite increased investments, financial resources alone have not yielded greater gains in outcomes, suggesting that the structure of training programs and their content may be as significant as the investment made in them.