Here’s an interesting way of conceptualizing the leadership abilities that you should expect from your leaders.* You should rate new hires on how they measure up before hiring them, and use these competencies during performance reviews of existing leaders.
These eight leadership competencies are core to every leader, especially those new to the role:
- Creativity and Innovation
- Conflict management
- Decision-making
- Delegation
- Development of effective teams
- Negotiating
- Priority setting
- Time management
With experience as a leader, you can expect the person who has formal leadership authority to have some level of skills in these five leadership competences:
- Influence
- Development and coaching employees
- Managing diversity
- Reading people
- Inspiring others
Finally, the established professional should have the following four leadership competencies:
- Flexibility and dealing with ambiguity
- Strategic thinking
- Leading multiple teams
- Managing vision and purpose.
How many of these competencies now are part of your evaluation system? Maybe it’s time to incorporate them!
* Source: Shawn Kent Hayashi’s Conversations for Creating Star Performers (2012)