From the course: Foundations of Performance Management

Defining the optimal mix of skills required in each job role

From the course: Foundations of Performance Management

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Defining the optimal mix of skills required in each job role

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- For you and your staff to be successful, you must ensure that each person has the needed skills to achieve all of their goals and tasks. And to help make this happen, you need to define for each position the list of required technical skills as well as soft skills and behaviors which collectively, an honest competencies. In my first leadership role in Eastern Europe, I remember not having this information and struggling to decide who to place in different roles with a new team I had to create. You could avoid this problem by creating lists of needed competencies for each job role. Such lists for a range of roles, I referred to as a competency framework. Such a framework is essential because it provides direction and a common understanding of the needed skills for particular groups of jobs, as well as for each individual job role. It also comprises of skills which can be measured to help you assess the degree to which your team may be lacking certain levels of skills, and it will form the central part of job descriptions, as well as of any learning and development plans. Creating a competency framework isn't easy. The best way to do this is to assess the skills that successful high performers' possess. You can do this by observing and interviewing high-performing individuals working in a particular job role, with the aim of gathering evidence of: What are the essentials, as well as nice-to-have competencies, that these individuals possess that help them succeed in their work? In addition, try connecting these competencies to the values, which you need all of your staff to have and exhibit. Such values might include wanting everyone to trust, openly help and support each other, and these could be included in your competency framework as additional soft skills and behaviors. You should also have an eye on the future and think about: What are any additional skills or behaviors, which may not be needed today but may become essential in the future, perhaps because of changing work processes, products, or client needs? These skills can also be added to the competency framework. It's hard to be 100% sure of what are the full set of skills needed to performing real well. You should review, validate, and update your competency framework at least annually to ensure that you're incorporating any new information. With a completed competency framework, you are in a great position to be able to hire and promote the most ideal candidates. You'll also become experts at developing and training them to master needed skills to succeed in their current and future job roles.

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