A. Designing the competency model

Before you start, the talent3sixty program, please make sure that you have an assessment model/ behavior expectations on which you will anchor the talent3sixty assessment. There are various views on how this should be put together.

a. Organizations will use the statement of their values. They believe that values are at the core of the behavior expected at all levels of leadership and are the best filters to determine differentiated leadership performance & behavior.

b. Brief and powerful enablers of potential (not more than 3-4) which in the Organizations’ view are the best filters for assessing long term potential in their culture & business model.

c. A leadership competency model. Some organizations will use a standard competency library which are available in plenty. The advantage is that you will probably get a whole lot of content and probably the 360-degree assessment questions along with the model.

However, Talent3sixty has a view on the matter. Read more about this at resources To the extent that your business model is differentiated, your expectations of what your leadership must be good at should also be differentiated. Commoditized leadership competencies cannot produce differentiated performances. It depends on industry and company issues. A manufacturing organization will be very high on teamwork and eco system management. Hospitality will be high on service orientation. A company trying to double its revenue CAGR will put massive focus on action and implementation skills. A competency library cannot be divorced from these business imperatives. Please contact us for a discussion on the subject.

B. Using the competencies for different levels.

Competency models, unlike values do not apply uniformly across jobs and levels. You need more or less of each depending upon the requirements of the role. The simplest way of stacking this is to divide the organization into 3 or 4 strategic layers as shown on the right and map competencies as per job role.

C. Applying the rating scale.

The five point rating scale is the most common though talent3sixty is flexible and offers other models to suit your policy.

Values are invariably assessed on a 3 point scale. (1)Does not live the values (2)Lives the values & (3)Sponsors the values.

One challenge is to apply the rating scale across multiple roles and levels. Does the competency model apply uniformly across roles and levels? How do we use this to create a leadership model? There are two alternatives.

Alternative 1

Define different behaviors for each competency for each role. In effect, in the above example, “customer centricity” has different behavior anchors for the Strategic Leader, the Solid Core and the Foundation depending on the contribution which they are required to make and the specific behaviors required to discharge their roles effectively.

This has an impact on how the talent3sixty is implemented. Separate question bank for each competency for each role, and effectively 3 separate 5-point scales.

Alterative 2

Adopt the same definition for each competency irrespective of roles and calibrate the definition at the level of “expert. “. In the above example, “customer centricty” has one “expert level” definition, irrespective of role. This becomes like a gold standard against which the leadership is assessed. The rating implication is that the same question bank is used for each competency and effectively you have a single 5 point rating scale against which all are assessed.

Talent3sixty has a point of view on this though the product is flexible to adopt both approaches. We prefer alternative 2 for the following reasons.

a. It provides a single view of each competency. So the leadership in different roles has a clear view of the gradient to climb from a development standpoint to discharge higher roles.

b. It’s simpler to implement.

c. It creates a clear development trajectory against the benchmarks of a gold standard set for each competency.

d. The same model can be used for other forms of assessment in PMS or assessment centers.

e. It avoids the confusion of multiple scales. For example, If I am rated at 3.5 in the talent3sixty assessment for “bias for action” at a foundation level, that assessment cannot be compared with a 3.5 talent3sixty rating on “bias for action” at the solid core level. This “telescoping” is left out and sometimes difficult to explain and translate.

Alternate 1 is simpler for the assessor / manager, and sometimes they would specifically ask for alternate 1 because its easier for them.

Please contact us at admin@talentonic.com for further discussion and advise.