The effective use of carefully developed Competency Frameworks as a development tool is resulting in enhanced performance across numerous organisations.
Increasingly, organisations are using competency frameworks to clarify their organisational expectations around individual performances and to drive personal development. Often these frameworks have both a technical aspect – outlining specific performance objectives in carrying out a role – and a behavioural aspect – making clear what behaviours are to be encouraged from team members and how these will be demonstrated.
The Beech Consultancy has worked with a number of organisations to support the development and implementation of highly tailored and individual competency frameworks. One of the important considerations is how to engage people within the organisation through involvement and direct input in developing the competencies. This type of framework works best when it is owned by the team members and they drive its use and its application. Conversely, if it were to be imposed by management, it can be perceived as a directive measurement tool used to gauge performance rather than a development tool aimed at enhancing personal opportunity and motivation.
As always, The Beech Consultancy will work in a consultative and collaborative way to understand the motivations and aspirations behind the potential introduction of a competency framework. Once the measures of success are clearly understood, a strategy for engaging people across the organisation in the development of the framework can be explored and the project scoped out.
The implementation of competencies requires managers in particular to take a non-directive approach and to encourage team members to take responsibility for positioning their own development against the framework. This frequently requires a degree of development for the managers since new behaviours are often required to work effectively with competency discussions. The Beech Consultancy can support each element of this process and work with the client over a period of time to ensure the competency framework delivers on agreed outcomes.
What should I do next?
Competency frameworks often fail to achieve their full potential because the sustainability of the implementation phase is not planned effectively, or because the outcomes required are not aligned to the purpose of the framework. Call the Beech Consultancy on 08454 303021 for an initial exploration of how competency frameworks may support your organisational performance aspirations, and to begin to look at how such an approach might be designed and implemented. Alternatively click to the Contact page on this site.
You cannot teach a person anything, you can only help him find it within himself.