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What is the Leadership Competency Model?
A leadership competency model outlines the desired skills, abilities, and behaviours a leader should possess for effective performance and leadership. The leadership competency model ensures that an organization is preparing its employees to be great leaders who are well-aligned with organizational goals.
Leaders are the organization’s future, and they play an essential role in motivating and driving the team to success. Competent leaders are integral to organizational success, and that’s precisely what a leadership competency model aims to achieve. The leadership competency model assesses and measures competencies like decision making, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and behavioural attributes.
Building A Leadership Competency Model
Now that we know what a leadership competency model is, the question is, how do we build one? Here is a step-by-step process for building an effective leadership competency model.
1
Analyze Organizational Needs
When developing a leadership competency model, you need to know the current state of your organization and its leaders. You need to ask yourself what you need from your leadership team. It’s important to look at the skills and capabilities of your previous leadership to determine if any gaps were roadblocking your team from growing successfully.
Here are some questions you should consider when building your leadership competency model:
- What should your business look like in the near and long-term future?
- How is your current leadership contributing towards those goals?
- Do you need to hire someone in your organization for a leadership role? If so, why?
- What are the leadership skills your current leaders are missing?
- What competencies in leadership in the past have positively contributed to your organization?
- What will be the different competency levels for each soft and technical skill?
- Are your leaders promoting a healthy and positive work culture?
- Can your leaders manage both in-person and remote teams?
- Can your leaders identify and evaluate employee performance based on required competencies?
2
Evaluate Current Resources
Once you know what your organization should look like in the near and long-term future, you need to analyze what resources you currently have to achieve your organizational goals. Ask yourself if you have enough technological and human resources to facilitate your objectives.
For example, do you have the right tools to support effective performance and appraisal tracking? Can your systems track competencies and provide analysis? Are there other potential leaders in your organization? Knowing what you lack in your processes makes it easier to plan and leverage resources.
3
Involve Stakeholders
Planning and building a leadership competency model is not a one-department role; it involves input and planning from various stakeholders to ensure the model benefits everyone and is consistent across the organization. Stakeholders should be involved in the early stages of planning to avoid disputes and changes to a finished model.
4
Define Essential Leadership Competencies
You need to list the essential leadership competencies and qualities your employees should possess to qualify for a leadership role and help your organization succeed. Here are some of the most critical competencies to look for in a potential leader:
- Emotional Intelligence
- Empathy
- Strategic Thinking
- Decision-Making Power
- Communication
- Team-management
- Talent Development
- Competency-based Evaluation
The exact and specific competencies depend on each organization’s needs and industry. For example, consulting firms need people who have strong analytical, problem-solving, and project management skills to excel and be competent leaders.
5
Design Competency Model
When you have chosen your essential competencies, it’s important to consider the following factors:
- Categorizing Competency Levels: Each competency should be tier-structured to reflect the skill level and track progression. The tiered approach helps leaders clearly understand expectations at each career stage within the organization. For example, you can have a tier structure as below to measure competencies:
- Beginner
- Intermediate
- Executive
- Mid-Senior
- Senior
- Leader
- Drafting Competency Descriptions: It is very crucial that you clearly define what each competency and competency level mean for your organization.
For example, what does an intermediate level mean for communication? You need to write competency descriptions that are specific and actionable so employees know exactly what is expected of them. - Creating Measurable Indicators: Competencies should have qualitative, measurable characteristics to help track how a leader performs in specific competencies for performance tracking and evaluation. Measurable indicators will help you know if your leaders are progressing in the right direction.
6
Implementation
Once you have nailed down the required competencies and formed a tracking model, it’s time to implement it and start seeing positive results. Here’s how you can effectively roll out your strategy.
- Early Stakeholder Input: Share the final draft of your leadership competency model with your stakeholders so they know how the model is formed and the competencies required, measured, and tracked for improving leadership effectiveness. Gather feedback from the stakeholders and make final adjustments before rolling it out in the organization.
- Communication Rollout: Inform your organization of the model rollout through different channels and mediums. Include announcements, presentations, and optional meetings with HR to understand the leadership competency model, how it will be used, and what outcomes it will entail.
- Training: Organizations tailor the leadership competency model based on what works best for them. Hence, HR leaders need to educate everyone on how the model was built and how to use it effectively for recruiting, coaching, and development. Documenting the process and clearly outlining what should be measured and how is crucial for success.
7
Tracking Progress
You can only know if your leadership competency model works when you monitor and track the progress. Organizations need to consistently analyse the changes after implementation to track what works and how to improve their existing structure.
Here are some questions to ask to track progress:
- Are competency-based evaluations happening consistently?
- Are leaders improving and showing evidence of required competencies?
- What is the feedback of employees?
- How easy is it to follow the competency model?
- Is the leadership competency model making a positive impact on existing leadership?
- Are you getting measurable results to make data-driven decisions?
Why Leadership Competency Models Matter
Every organization’s success depends on how well its leaders are trained to manage teams and lead by example. It is crucial that the leaders have the right skills to make sure they are taking the organization to new heights.
A leadership competency model is the right way to assess an individual’s capabilities to determine if they can be a leader and to align them with organizational objectives.