Leadership skills: a study in Hochiminh City, Vietnam

Leadership skills have long been a topic of interest in the leadership literature (Mumford et al., 2007), leadership skills are essential for the survival and development of businesses, impact leaders’ behaviors, effectiveness and performance (Connelly et al. 2000; Marcy and Mumford 2010). This article focuses on (1) assessing leadership skills at Vietnam enterprises and (2) studying the differences in genders, position, and experience about leadership skills of companies in Vietnam. In order to clarify the above research issues, this paper uses analysis, synthesis, critical thinking methods combined with Cronbach's Alpha, EFA, CFA, MANCOVA analysis through SPSS and AMOS statistics. The results show that leadership skills at enterprises in Vietnam can be measured through cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, business skills and strategic skills. In general, leadership skills are above average, and Cognitive skills are assessed best, followed by strategic skills and business skills, and the worst assessed skill is human skill. In terms of gender, male leaders have higher cognitive skills than female leaders, but female leaders, on the other hand, outperform male leaders in human skills. About position, the higher the leadership levels are, the higher leadership skills are, there is no significant difference in human skills at level. In experience, leaders who have more experience get higher leadership skills, especially strategic skills and business skills.