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Developing a competency framework for leaders and managers

Defining what your organisation expects from its leaders and managers can be the difference between success and failure in today’s world.

Building on the Standard, Profile looks for a clear definition of the capabilities of leaders and managers, and the practice of how individuals are reviewed against it and supported to meet the criteria. As with any technique, Profile does not require you to take a particular approach. Some organisations develop formal competency frameworks in order to document their definition of the capabilities - but you don’t need to have a written policy or a formal framework in order to meet Profile’s requirements. What matters is that the capabilities defined reflect the needs of the organisation and provide a fair and valid tool for monitoring and improving performance.

In essence, a competency framework is just a crystallisation of good practice amongst leaders and managers. A review by Bolden, an academic, of such frameworks in 2003 concluded that ‘the map is not the terrain’ and that frameworks can sometimes focus too much on the aptitudes of an individual leader in isolation. This risks creating an impossible goal for any one person to achieve and overlooks the important emotional role good leaders have in facilitating and catalysing the development of others in real-world situations. So in short, they are a useful yardstick for measuring and improving performance, but need to be treated with caution to avoid making potentially unrealistic demands on individuals.

Developing a competency framework typically involves three steps: 

1. Establish the context - the organisation’s aims, objectives and desired culture
2. Confirm the levels at which requirements need to be set, for different tiers of management or individual managers in the organisation, bearing in mind the challenge of effectively demonstrating so many skills
3. Identify the requirements for each level.
   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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