Assessments divorced from the technical dimensions of a job are sterile
An HR initiative seems to consume many PSEs today. Many PSEs are readying their Leadership Competency Framework as a first step towards running a Leadership Assessment Centre or, if for employee development only, a Development Centre. Is the Behavioural Competency Framework appropriate, is the development centre the end objective? How can all this be made more meaningful for the PSE?
Competencies may be explained as a combination of knowledge, skills, attitude and personal characteristics that are demonstrated in a behaviour that leads to superior employee performance.
A competency framework is a collection of relevant competencies—- knowledge, skills, attitude or personal characteristics that aid employee performance—for an organisation, which calibrates each individual competency. A competency development centre is typically a one- or two-day workshop in which participants go through a battery of exercises, role plays and the like, watched by behavioural assessors for deciding competency levels.
No two PSEs are identical nor do they have identical work cultures. The unique and successful leadership model for the organisation is meant to be defined by the PSE?s leadership competency framework. Is that really true? Is the double helix DNA of a PSE really defined through its competency framework?
Take any two PSEs in distinct areas of business and read their leadership competency frameworks. Most likely, the leadership competency frameworks of the two are similar.
It would stand to logic that the leadership style of a successful leader, say, in a PSE in the mining business would be distinct from the style required for a leader in the cutting edge electronics sector. For example, c’ustomer orientation’ is a typically assessed leadership competency. The required nuances of customer orientation displayed by a senior mining officer surely should be very different from that of an officer involved in electronic instrumentation sale.
Unfortunately, most leadership competency frameworks are silent on the knowledge and skills aspects of competencies—the technical or business dimensions which are often prerequisites to successful job performance. Once divorced from the technical dimensions of the job, the leadership competency framework becomes a sterile and fairly standard framework.
It is further often argued that the leadership assessment context should be away from the familiar domains of work. It is not unusual to ask a senior leader to role play an air hostess and manage the angst of an irate passenger. It is debatable whether the customer orientation assessed during such a role play is similar in its essence to the competency to be displayed by a senior PSE officer in the mining sector.
The techno behavioural framework
The techno behavioural framework starts reaching out to the DNA of the organisation. It is built on the principle that the successful officers display behaviours that are built on an understanding of the business context of the PSE and on a foundation of relevant technical competencies.
Thus, in our example, a successful senior mining officer responsible for sales of an ore will not only understand the business of his customer, he will have a detailed understanding of the product and on this platform will display the appropriate behavioural competencies necessary to manage successfully the customer.
The same holds true for the technocrat who is responsible for a strategic sale of sophisticated electronic gadgetry. Both these senior officers from a point of view of customer orientation may not have the soothing appeal of a successful airhostess but may nevertheless be viewed by the customer as a trusted business partner.
A techno behavioural framework takes into account the organisation?s business context, detailing the technical competencies possessed by the officer. Such a techno-behavioural competency approach to leadership development has a number of advantages which are further discussed.
The techno-behavioural framework helps establish focus on the competencies required for a role. It sets stage for the rollout of a structured objective-based performance appraisal system aligned with organisational results, with an emphasis on employee development plan.
Through a techno-behavioural competency framework and a well designed appraisal system, it is possible to design leadership career ladders for a PSE. An organisation can systematically groom leaders from the time a trainee joins the organisation to the moment he assumes leadership roles at various levels. Inadequately addressed, too many bright senior leaders are assessed poorly, for example, in the ‘strategic orientation’ competency in development centres. This may be attributed to a systemic failure in the PSE of not providing the grooming inputs at the right points in the individual?s career. These inputs come in from HR-led interventions such as training and job rotation.
A techno-behavioural competency framework can help a PSE develop meaningful promotion criteria. An executive aspiring for a position would have to demonstrate that he has acquired the competencies, for example, through field postings, training and consistent performance.
Finally a techno-behavioural framework will help a PSE design a meaningful development centre with appropriate tools to measure the leadership competencies of the company. Such a framework would be organisation-specific and would reflect the behaviours appropriate for the culture of the organisation and also reflect the nuances of the business.
Needless to say, the design of a techno-behavioural framework for a PSE will require considerable more work and will require the involvement of persons who understand the business and the technical demands of the job in addition to the behavioural dimension. If a PSE is keen on taking the application of a competency framework beyond just a one-time development centre, the effort to develop a techno-behavioural framework will certainly be worthwhile.
The author is director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India