In the absence of clear guidelines and expectations, leaders lead based on diverse factors: personality traits, their experience of past leaders, perception of what’s expected of them and what they believe will deliver results.
This means that a range of leadership approaches naturally evolve, including those that can be damaging to employee wellness. And yet, many don’t realise the impact of their behaviour on others, believing that a particular style of leadership is not only expected of them but is also the style that will deliver the best results.
A clearly defined, measurable competency framework aligned to the desired culture of organisation or site, sets minimum expectations of what good leadership looks like, spelling out behavioural standards or what is required from a role-modelling perspective and will ideally be targeted to leaders at a range of levels, for example:
Aspiring leader
New leader/team leader/supervisor
Middle Manager
Senior Leader
Executive Leader
So, investing in the development of a leadership competency framework directly addresses factors that diminish wellness such as poor support, poor workplace relationships, a lack of influence and a perceived lack of development.
Let’s see how:
By setting a benchmark for performance and offering a platform for measurement, conversation and development planning
By providing one-up-leaders with clarity of what’s required of their direct reports, taking away any guesswork and reducing inconsistencies in expectations
By informing the writing of job descriptions and shaping recruitment decisions so incoming leaders naturally demonstrate productive styles of leadership
By showing clear pathways of development, and providing opportunity for advancement based on building depth in required competency areas
By providing a basis to identify and design programs specifically to address auditable capability gaps.
A Competency Based Framework serves as a valuable tool to effectively identify, develop and manage work performance.
It can be used for:
Recruitment and selection of new employees by using assessments and other selection procedures that measure the competencies (Bartram)
Training of employees by creating courses aimed at the development of certain competencies (Schippmann et al.)
Evaluation of the performance of employees by structuring the appraisal instrument around the competencies (Posthuma& Campion)
Promotion of employees by using the competencies to establish promotion criteria (Morgeson, Campion, & Levashina)
Development of employee careers by using the competency models to guide the choice of job assignments and make other career choices (Groves)
Management of employee information by using the competency models to record and archive employee skill, training, and job experience information. (Campion et al.)
Review and rewrite in ‘Evidence’ language [1]
To be effective, your competency framework must reflect where you are heading strategically, what you do in the business and the culture you wish to create. Baseline competencies for finding this balance include:
Leadership capabilities which must be consistent across functions - including:
Emotional Intelligence
Inspirational leadership
Coaching and communication skills
Participative leadership (how to build trust by encouraging engagement and participation, and the ability to lead others through change).
Technical capabilities which may vary across functions - to allow the business to achieve its strategy (such as Project Management).
Once you have a robust competency framework, the next most important thing is to ensure it is integrated into processes so it becomes an embedded way of operating in the business, it provides a consistent language and people know what they can expect, and what they are being assessed against.
This means reviewing important processes such as Induction and Performance Development Documents as well as ensuring that there are high quality development opportunities for leaders to build strength and ability in the key identified areas.
Call To Action
Rory Vaden, author of Procrastinate with Purpose, suggests you need to ‘spend time to make time’ and whilst building a competency framework and aligning processes and documents may feel like a complex and time consuming task, the rewards will be well invested.
Use a competency framework or audit your existing one to create a solid core for delivery of your strategy, consistent performance and improved wellness by providing clarity, certainty and a pathway for growth.
Taking it Further
Not all of us are cut out to be leaders. When promotion has often historically occurred based on technical competency (which is often easier to measure), we don’t always get the best leaders actually leading.
A competency framework provides more balanced assessment of capabilities and a mechanism to have conversations about behaviours that will no longer be tolerated because they are counter to the culture that is desired.
This is an opportunity to actively set standards for leadership capability and to have the courageous conversations about where leadership capability needs to be ‘topped up’, or to move those leaders with the potential to negatively impact the self-worth of employees into technical positions where their strengths can be optimised without harm.
These types of conversations do require that leaders are able to access well developed emotional intelligence, coaching and communication capabilities. If you recognised a gap in this area, putting support in place to build leadership capability in your organisation is crucial.
Where to Now?
Sources
The Competency Framework: A guide for IAEA managers and staff, IAEA, date accessed: 4/03/21, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/18/03/competency-framework.pdf