Competency Development

Competency Development is the systematic collection and analysis of data to determine what personal characteristics differentiate outstanding from average aperformers in an organizational job or role.  We use a variety of methods—ranging from conducting behavior interviews, focus groups, expert panels, questionnaire surveys and analyses of existing competency dictionaries to tapping into our own extensive inventory of organizational job competencies—to identify or validate the key competencies associated with superior performance in organizational jobs or roles, including leadership roles.

Executive leaders can play key roles in generating compelling shared visions for their organizations, but such enrollment actions are effective only when they engage the aspirations and energies of all employees. Thus we view leadership competencies as distributed and situational capabilities which are required at all organizational levels and reflect the particular attitudes, approaches and behaviors comprising leadership in a given organization’s culture.

Embedding this distributed and situational concept of organizational leadership in all of our competency development work requires that we give attention to four interdependent organizational processes and their related leadership competencies—engaging, listening to, negotiating with and facilitating expressions of individual and collective employee voices at multiple organizational levels—and to ensuring that employees at every organizational level have genuine opportunities to develop these facilitative leadership competencies as well as other leadership competencies.

Our competency development approach emphasizes the collaborative development of competency models or profiles.  An important (optional) feature of our approach is the direct involvement of key people inside the client organization in all phases of the competency development work—to the extent that their time and inclinations permit— so that they have the opportunity to acquire hands-on working knowledge of the resulting competency profile and build confidence in their ability to use the profile effectively. 

Our competency development approach typically includes some combination of the following activities:  

• gathering job information from group interviews
• selecting and studying superior and average performers in the job
• developing a behaviorally anchored competency profile for the job
• creating customized applications of the resulting competency profile to unify and integrate the organization’s human capital management and leadership development systems

Gathering Job Information from Group Interviews. Each focus group or expert panel consists of individuals who are particularly knowledgeable about the job (either top-performing incumbents or their supervisors).  In response to our questions, the interviewees define the measures or indicators of effectiveness that reflect the most important results top performing individuals in the job produce, describe the job tasks or activities that contribute to achieving these results, develop a list of the personal characteristics and on-the-job behaviors that distinguish superior from average job performers, and help us identify top and average performing incumbents of the job.

Selecting Superior and Average Performers in the Job. When possible, we supplement interviewees’ opinions of who the superior and average performers in the job are with “hard” performance measures. When appropriate, we also ask individuals currently in the job to nominate peers they view as superior or average performers. Using panel and peer nominations and quantitative performance measures, we select a sample of top performing incumbents along with a contrasting sample of average or more typical performers.  Comparing the superior and average performers reveals the competencies and behaviors that differentiate “the best from the rest.”

 Studying Superior and Average Performers in the Job. When there is a pre-existing competency model or profile for the job or job series in question, we typically use it as a point of departure in focus groups with top performers and/or with others knowledgeable about the job—to validate, revise, refine or update the model or profile and to stratify it by proficiency level for the job.  When there is no pre-existing model or profile and time and resources permit, we conduct individual behavior interviews with superior and average performers in which we ask each respondent to identify past job-related situations and then to describe those situations in detail.  During the behavior interview, we use the critical-incident technique to reconstruct the respondent’s job experiences efficiently, obtain information on thought and dialogue as well as action, and get beneath the respondent’s theories about what it takes to do a job by finding out what the respondent actually thought, said and did in particularly critical job situations.

Developing a Behaviorally Anchored Competency Profile for the Job. When we use the behavior interview approach, first we analyze the situations recalled by the superior performers in the job and note which patterns of behavior occur most often. Second we examine the behavior patterns in the interviews with the average performers, note the key differences, and thereby identify the critical behaviors. Third we refine the competency profile by using the information gathered from one or more focus group(s) or expert panel(s) to adjust as necessary the behaviors in the profile and the language used to describe them.

Developing Customized Applications of the Competency Profile. We frequently use the data from our competency profile development work to design, revise or integrate competency based employee selection systems, placement methods, development programs, training evaluations, utilization procedures, succession planning, performance standards and assessment centers.

In competency based training and development programs, for example, we may use competency profile development data as the basis for one or more of the following deliverables:  

• construct an assessment survey questionnaire and performance coaching process built around the competencies and behaviors in the competency profile

• administer the assessment survey questionnaire to the target-job incumbents and some combination of their managers, subordinates, peers and customers

• analyze the resulting 360 assessment feedback to highlight the competencies and related behaviors most in need of upgrading or reinforcement within the target-job incumbent population

• analyze these competencies to determine which can be most readily acquired or strengthened through selection, which through training, which through coaching and which through other on-the-job developmental activities

• conceptualize training, coaching and other development activity objectives in terms of the behavioral statements in the competency profile

• categorize existing in-house and external training and coaching programs in terms of their competency related, behaviorally targeted development objectives

• evaluate the likely results of existing training and coaching programs in terms of how well they meet those development objectives

• prepare a resource guide of developmental trainings and on-the-job activities keyed to the competencies and behaviors in the organization’s research-based competency profile

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