Competency Modeling

Competency Modeling

How do you build a competency model for a specific job? Sure, you can create a list of skills and behaviors employees must perform in order to be successful in the role…all while trying to figure out which behaviors and skills, specifically, are MOST critical to success. In other words, which ones are most impactful in differentiating an “exceptional” employee from a “pretty good” employee? In learning and development you’d need to zoom in on that small number of critical skills/behaviors to boost performance given time, budget, and resource constraints.

Of course, the developers would have ideas about which ones are most important…and they’re probably on the right track. But they’d like to approach it somewhat scientifically, or at least benefit from the guidance of a model, to guide our thinking.

Idea 1

If you first start with modeling ideal performance - and then systematically derived all of the knowledge/skills required - you end up with Performance Competencies and linked Enabling Competencies - and you should be able to - or have your client - target the most high Reward and high Risk Performance.. If you need to "back into" how your list of skills and behaviors enable performance - first figure out what performance is most critical to the business - then have some of your exemplar performers tell you which are the most critical. Then assess your other top performers to see if they have what it supposedly takes.

Idea 2

Interviews with critical incident questions. Study the differentiating behaviors of "exemplars" in the role. What are the behaviors that correlate with the best performers in the role. It doesn’t matter what competencies you think are important, the list must be from the people who are doing the job(s) or spearheading/requesting the project.

Idea 3

What about "top down" approach towards competencies? Rather than asking SMEs to assess competencies using a Likert scale (typicall we ask them to assess difficultly, criticality, and importance) you approach this form the other end. Get the organization to assess the major accomplishments (i.e., outputs) and then assess the competencies against them. Avoid the trap of "laundry lists" of competencies and try to focus in on the ones that really make the difference between success and failure in terms of outcome.

Observe what the best do and what the average employees do. Even the best performers can't tell you everything they do to be successful because it is second nature to them. Sometimes only observation gives you the clue.

I would also check out your skills and knowledge list during your observations to make sure what the best are doing and how it is different from what average performers do.

Is Task Analysis a lost art? I think it is the only way to identify the real intelligence of the job.