The Importance of Clarifying Leadership Competencies and Skills

• Are you a great communicator? 

• Do your employees trust you? 

• Are you able to inspire people to do more than they themselves thought they could? 

These are all behaviors of a leader - yet most interviews for senior leaders never screen for these qualities. 

In this issue of Succession Planning Tips we are going to focus on the critical differences between behavioral competencies and skills - because without understanding the difference, you cannot hire leaders who gel with your organization.

Why is it important to define the competencies and skills of a leader? 
Differentiating between competencies and skills is important because a lot of organizations are finding themselves having to hire senior leaders from outside their organizations. The current senior leaders have been on the job for decades and companies have not had the foresight to prepare younger generations to step into senior roles. If you are looking to fill senior leadership (aka C-suite roles) roles you need to know what you're looking for in terms of cultural fit with the organization and its values - and 99% of that fit has nothing to do with what the potential new leader knows but rather with how they behave. 

What’s the difference between competency and skills? 
A competency encompasses various skills; skills that put a finer point on defining a leader. 

For instance, one of the competencies you might want your senior leaders to possess is “excellent communication skills.” Who among us has not seen that on a job posting, right? But what does that look like in terms of actual behavior? Is “excellent communicator” one thing or many things? It might mean:

• “In this organization, we speak respectfully to one another.” 

• “We welcome feedback and we act on it.” 

• “It's okay to speak truth to power in this organization.”

Here's a different way of looking at it: Say you have a child who needs a bit of behavior modification.  Saying, “You need to be a good boy,” isn't very specific is it? But breaking down what “good boy” means in terms of skills or behaviors is something you can identify, he or she can comprehend, and you can recognize and reward in practice.

Back to the world of work:
A good rule of thumb is to identify 6-8 competencies and beneath them, 5 to 6 skills/behaviors that further define what that competency looks like in practice. So you might have potential competencies such as:

• critical thinker

•  excellent communicator

•  thinks strategically

•  works collaboratively

•  team-first attitude

•  ethical

Then you’ll need to define the skills/behaviors that demonstrate those competencies - as the “excellent communicator” example does, above. 

When you are interviewing for senior leadership roles your questions should be more about how the person fits within your definition of your company’s critical competencies and not about what they’ve accomplished in their previous roles (we can presume that if they made it to a senior executive interview they have conquered the requisite performance). Rather, ask clarifying and probing questions to determine if someone will be a fit with your organization and continue to promote the values and goals your company and your people work toward. 

Get help crafting questions that get at behaviors and fit. 

Defining competencies and the skills that make up those competencies puts a finer point on what you expect of a senior leader in your organization - both those who are already with you and those you are inviting to join the organization. 

This article was originally published on LinkedIn

Gearing Up for Leadership Development

Things sure are different, aren't they?

- working from home is no longer a “perk”

- companies are truly embracing “our employees are our greatest asset”

- 2 million more boomers retired in 2020 than predicted or expected

- HR has found its seat at the table

There is no such thing as “average” or “normal” or “trivial” these days.

Which means….

The way you approach leadership development in your organization is in flux as well.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies and business leaders are avoiding having this conversation.

 Why?

- they believe it is cumbersome to undertake 

- they believe it is a financial sink-hold

- they are too focused on “todays’ crisis” to worry about the one barreling towards them tomorrow

 Does this resonate with you? You're not alone.

👏 THE GOOD NEWS IS - we have a 3-day challenge this month that can help you get started.

Join us for the three-day (30 minutes each day) Gearing Up For Leadership Development Challenge - September 21, 22, & 23 at 3:00pm EST.

💡 Just imagine the peace and confidence you’ll have knowing your future leaders… 

- can problem solve

- make critical decisions

- are adaptable to change

- communicate clearly and with purpose

- have self-management skills

and more….

❔ (BTW, why do we call these “leadership skills?” why wouldn’t we want everyone to have these skills?)

Would it benefit YOUR organization to have future-leaders with these skills?

What about ALL your employees? After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.

When you join us for just 30-minutes a day, September 21, 22 and 23, we’ll cover:

Day 1 - Who will be your future leaders - GenX? Millennials? GenZ?

Each generation has a different leadership style - and will shape your culture differently - who is right for your organization?

Day 2 - What skills do your future leaders need?

According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report (October 2020) more than ¾’s of the skills employees need by 2025 will be soft skills – not technical skills! 

And in a December 2020 publication from Deloitte, titled Diving Deeper, Five Workforce Trends to Watch in 2021, the senior executives polled said employees “doing new work” and “increasing capacity” are at the top of their list of immediate concerns. 

 Less and less we need people who “can do,” and more and more people who “can think.” 

Day 3 – Three Keys to Designing the Perfect Leadership Development Process 

One of the things (perhaps THE thing) that stops most business owners and leaders from beginning leadership in their own organization is the belief that this is a BIG endeavor. 

 It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, organic development that is integrated with people’s real-world work responsibilities is 1000X’s more effective and economical (because people actually “get it”) AND it returns immediate ROI so there’s no “hoping this pays off in the long run.”

All you have to do to join the challenge is follow us on Facebook OR LinkedIn and join-in on September 21, 22, & 23 at 3pm EST every day.

See you there!

Why We Have to Start Leadership Development at Day One

“The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations.” 

This statement was uttered by a financial planner who was counseling customers to understand what the fundamentals of their stock purchase were – what attracted them to the company… were they in it for the long term or short term…. at what price point would they believe it was wise to sell the stock….

Here’s how we relate the quote: “The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations” to leadership…

In today’s business environment, we are under the gun all the time. Things are in constant flux … and we can never count on tomorrow being the same as today. Therefore a lot of decisions are made on the fly. Which may not be based on your company’s values or principles – and which may actually hurt your business or your reputation.

Look at what happened at Wells Fargo. Somewhere along the line, someone in a leadership position decided it was OK to commit fraud in order to make sales quotas. To hell with ethics. To hell with serving the customer responsibly.

What if – long before that high-stress situation in which they made that decision – they already had a fundamental belief or value, that ethical behavior was of utmost importance?

How or when would they have had to develop that belief system?

Early on in their career – when they were not in a high-stress situation and when they were not in a position of authority. If they had that fundamental belief system early on – it would simply carry with them – through their career.

Here are two analogies to further make our point:

The “first job” analogy.  Many of us continue to practice behaviors or hold fundamental beliefs that we learned through our first jobs. Think about that for a minute.

What was your first job and do you find yourself operating today – in a way that you learned decades ago from a manager or a leader who said “this is how we do things.” We might dress a certain way, address customers a certain way, define “quality,” a certain way… all based on learning those principles in our first jobs.

So – why don’t we teach leadership skills and behaviors to your employees at the START of their careers? Why do we wait decades and then have to undo basic principles or value systems that they hold? Teach them what your company values and what is acceptable leadership behavior – from the get-go; even before they become leaders.

And even if they don’t become leaders – you still have a BUNCH of people who are operating under the same principles and with the same understanding of your business values and how they should conduct themselves accordingly.

Which brings us to our 2nd analogy: Baby manners.

Right around the same time that your baby learns to talk – you start teaching manners. Do they know what manners are? No. Are you going to wait until they UNDERSTAND what manners are before you teach them? No. Do you have to EXPLAIN why what you are telling them is appropriate behavior? No.

You say: Say goodbye to Grandma! And you say it over and over until, as the child gets older, they are able to independently say “hello” and “goodbye” to people they encounter.

Which is good manners.

You say: Don’t hit the dog! Don’t hit your sibling! And you say it for 7, 8, 10 years! until eventually, as your child gets older, they recognize that that is not an appropriate behavior; and most of us grow up to be people who don’t smack the crap out of one another.

You teach your children to speak politely, to share with others, to be cognizant of other’s feelings and many, many more fundamental principles of being a responsible human. And you start teaching those principles even before they know what they mean or why they should or should not behave that way.

You start to teach those things even before they are verbal.

So why are we not teaching leadership skills to everyone who walks in our doors? Why are we reserving that knowledge for a ‘select few’ … and why are we waiting so late to start?

This is the foundation of Leadership From Day One.

If you teach EVERYONE to be a better communicator, to work cooperatively with others, to understand that they contribute to the greater good of the organization – and at some level are fundamentally responsible for it – to behave in an ethical manner…. The list goes on and on of things that we consider “leadership skills,” which really aren’t.

They are the basic, fundamental manners of being a worker in a business and YOU – as their leader – business owner, director of operations, GM, department head… are responsible for teaching them that.

Think of how differently your company would be operating – and how confident you would be in your employees and your organizational capabilities – if you knew that everyone operated in the same way and embraced the same principles and values.

Help them to make the right decisions, early in their career.

We can help you do that.

The Biggest Mistake in Leadership Development is...

The biggest mistake in leadership development is waiting to do it.

Too may (all?) organizations wait until they promote someone to a leadership position and then start to apply leadership development.  And that’s for the lucky folks. Most organizations don’t offer any kind of development to their new leaders and instead let them struggle to figure it out all on their own. I know that’s what happened to me the first time I was promoted to a managerial role. I was flattered that the organization thought I had the potential to lead a department of eight at the tender age of 25, but then I panicked because the only “training” I had was modeling the good leaders I had had in my life and anti-modeling (yep, I made up a new word) the bad ones. I was flying by the seat of my pants. This was especially terrifying because at least two of my employees were old enough to be my mother.

This approach is really unfair to the individual and detrimental to the organization.

There are plenty of things we learn through the school of hard knocks – not to speed through a yellow light, not to cheat on an exam, not to lie on our resume… and most of the time the only person we hurt is ourselves.

Often, in the midst of the pain, we’ll think, “If only someone had warned me…” But in the workplace, there are other individuals that are impacted when a new leader is rattling around trying to find their footing. And without good guidance, new, unskilled managers can really do damage.

Don’t know the difference between constructive and critical feedback? Perhaps you’ll figure it out when your employees start to defect. Don’t recognize your personal bias in a performance review? The HR department can bring you up to speed when one of your employees lodges a complaint. Think it’s OK to hang with the boys (but not the women) after hours? Lesson learned. Lesson learned. Lesson learned.

What’s truly unfair to the new leader is that the organization is expecting him/her to also take on new functional responsibilities like scheduling, project planning, budgeting, and more. This is too much to ask of a new leader all at once – to be functionally responsible for a department and to change their behavior at the same time. As a training and development professional for decades, I know that the hardest thing to “train” someone to do is to change their behavior. Yet organizations consistently drop the ball on shaping individuals’ leadership behaviors early on.

This is detrimental to the organization as well because when push comes to shove, the new manager will need to focus on their functional responsibilities – it is what they will be judged on after all; and in all likelihood, it is what got them promoted in the first place. So without a focus on leadership and interpersonal skills early in one’s career, there is a lot of heavy lifting that is required of a new leader – and any failings impact both the individual and the organization.  

The Solution is Early Leadership Development

In a perfect world, leadership development would begin the moment a new employee walks in the company’s door. They would be handed their HR paperwork and a development plan for the next 3 to 5 years. Not  only would this approach benefit the organization by ensuring everyone has “baseline skills” (of your choosing) such as business writing, giving and receiving feedback, understanding how the company makes (and keeps) money, and more, but think of the impression made on the new hire! “Wow. This company is investing in me from day one? Amazing!” 

In today’s business environment, a need for and a confidence in employee’s self-leadership skills is critical. I’ve seen a number of articles lately that discuss company’s monitoring their employees while they are working at home. This seems perfectly reasonable if your company has not set and trained for a certain standard of behavior. It’s like trusting your child to stay home alone for the first time. The parent who hasn’t trained for good decision making and responsibility is a lot more worried than the parent who has.

In the long-term, the company that has trained for leadership skills at the start of their employees’ careers will have a ready and capable pipeline of leaders who can fully focus on their functional responsibilities because their leadership abilities are standard-operating-procedure by the time they are promoted.

At The Training Doctor we specialize in preparing your employees for future leadership roles. Apply early and often, for best results. Give us a call to discuss your needs. It never hurts to ask… is another truism my mother taught me.

Three Keys to Develop Leadership Skills - for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Developing leadership skills is often an afterthought at small and medium-sized companies.

When companies start-up, and then launch into growth, there is little time to think about how the company will sustain itself long-term – survival is the immediate focus. Once things are humming along smoothly, many company founders begin to relax their control and would like to enjoy the fruits of their labor but then realize there are few other leaders in the organization because they haven’t thought to groom them.

Thus begins a period of attempting to promote leaders from within or hiring potential leaders from outside the organization; rarely does either approach work well.  When potential leaders – who have not been groomed to ascend in the organization – are promoted, they often lack the full complement of skills needed to lead because the owner / founder has been filling the decision-making role(s) for so long.  As a point of pride, rarely does a newly appointed leader admit they are in over their head or ask for more support from the owner / founder. Instead, these leaders often leave within the first year of their appointment.

When more fully capable leaders are brought in from outside the organization, they may find they are butting heads with the owner / founder because they are introducing new ways of working – informed from their external experience. Leaders brought in from outside the organization often fail faster than internal candidates, frequently leaving organizations in a matter of months. A 2019 study conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers found that successors to long-serving CEOs have short tenures and are often forced out of office. (Here is a recent example from AutoNation who replaced an “outsider” CEO after only four months.)

Every small or medium-sized business owner / founder should have a needlepoint sampler in their office that reads “The true mark of my success is to be able to walk away from this business and for it to continue to thrive.”  Adopting that mindset early on enables future leaders to be brought up from within the organization. This is the best scenario because they have organizational knowledge and relationships with others in the organization.

If you hope to exit your business without having to sell or close it, here are three ways to ensure you build a capable leadership pipeline.

First, begin leadership development earlier rather than later. Think of youngsters who begin T-ball at age five. There is no telling who among them will be a star athlete come high school or who will go on to a college or professional career; but rarely will one begin softball / baseball as a high schooler and go on to great success. When the skills and responsibilities are taught early and practiced for a decade or more, it is more apparent who is capable of further success.

Second, include everyone in leadership development opportunities. Don’t presume to know who among your workers will be a future leader – assume everyone will be. This will ensure you are more egalitarian about leadership development and, in the long run, will help your organization the most. Central to this approach is ensuring that there is a mix of learners in every offering. For example, a course on feedback skills should include individuals from all departments and all levels within the organization. This comingling nurtures relationships among everyone in the organization (a key capability of a leader) and enables every one – in every role – to be capable of giving back to the organization. Continuing with the sports analogy, when every new player is nurtured with the assumption that they are capable of becoming a stellar athlete, some will demonstrate a natural talent or drive to move to the “senior-leader team,” but everyone on the team will have increased their capabilities.

As an example, consider Tom Brady’s career vs. Johnny Manziel’s. One was a ninth-round draft pick and the other a Heisman Trophy winner. One went on to a stellar career and one flamed out after two seasons in the NFL.  Presuming who will be a leader is often a losing proposition – in sports and in business. 

Finally, don’t make the development of leadership skills another “thing” people have to do. Integrate skills development with real-world responsibilities. For instance, if a department holds weekly meetings, rotate the responsibility for facilitating the meeting. Why must the leader of the meeting always be the manager? Everyone should be able to follow an agenda, keep conversations on-topic, summarize decisions, and make sure action items are claimed.  This type of development ensures that when one does become a leader, they already possess the ability to manage a meeting.  There are a myriad of other skills which can be developed in this way, without an onerous (and often contrived) training process.  

In order to develop the skills of your organization’s future leaders, make a list of the ten skills you feel are critical to success, such as communication, an understanding of financials, customer service, etc., and identify ways to work the development of these skills into everyday work responsibilities. Assume everyone has the ability to lead, start early in people’s careers, and do formal training in mixed groups so that people can build relationships throughout the organization. These simple but important steps will help to ensure a ready and capable leadership pipeline for any organization.

Note: This article was previously published by Forbes.com.

How to Build a Better Leader

While we often repeat Malcolm Gladwell's premise, in Outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something, we rarely apply that idea to soft skills - like leadership. And that is quite possibly why we have such a tough time cultivating leaders in our organizations.

Joshua Spodek, author of the bestselling Leadership Step by Step: Become the Person Others Follow likens leadership skills to athletic or acting skills. You must participate, you must start small and perfect different aspects of the craft, you must put yourself in situations beyond your comfort zone to really explore and understand your capabilities. You aren't simply "gifted" the title (or skill) of leader.

Tom Brady recently led his team to a 5th Super Bowl win. But he didn't join the Patriots as a leader. In fact, he was a sixth-round draft pick (the 199th player to be picked!) and, when he joined the team, he was one of four quarterbacks (that's two too many by most NFL team standards). Luckily, Brady was able to hone his skills (both athletic and leadership) while out of the spotlight - the rest is history.

Jennifer Lawrence is the highest paid female actress. It seems as though she just exploded on the scene but in fact she started her "career" in school musicals and church plays. Her first time onscreen was in a supporting role 10 years ago. She's acted in dramas, comedies and sci-fi movies. She has been the lead...and part of an ensemble. She has honed her craft and is viewed as a bankable star in Hollywood. 

How Can We Create Our Own Bankable Stars?

According to Spodek, the first crucial skill to master is self-management. One cannot manage others unless he / she is in command of himself.

Next is communication skills. Spodek rightly points out that people hear what is said - not what is meant. Remember, it's the speaker's responsibility to ensure their message gets across.

The third key development opportunity is our favorite - constantly seek growth. Yes, increasing knowledge and skills in one's industry is a given, but Spodek suggests leaders-in-training should examine and challenge their core beliefs in order to be open to all possibilities.

Finally, Spodek stresses the importance of being comfortable with emotions - both one's own and one's employees. He suggests finding out other's passions in order to lead them in the way they want to be led. Daniel Goleman expresses this same sentiment but refers to it as empathy.

As you can imagine, none of the skills, above, are developed without devoted effort and analysis of what works and what doesn't. A little coaching doesn't hurt either - because it's nearly impossible to say to oneself, "You know what I lack? Self Management." (Thank you, Travis Kalanick, for shining a spotlight on that one.)

Leadership skills should be SOP (standard operating procedure), in terms of training, at all organizations. If your organization doesn't train for these - start today - before you find yourself with no quarterback.