Profile of Strengths
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”
A critical leadership core competency is for a leader to build and sustain effective working relationships with a wide array of constituencies and workers they serve.
In my 40+ years of providing consultative support and advisory services, there were a significant number of leadership core competencies that I provided. I call these competencies my Profile of Strengths. These are like arrows in a quiver - competencies that may need to be drawn to meet the needs and succeed in a given leadership challenge. I had both the need and opportunity to develop and deliver many leadership competencies in my leadership journey.
In your leadership journey, you may be confronted with challenges that require you to draw other arrows from your quiver. This is the challenge of leadership. Leaders must be situationally aware and ready to deliver the leadership competencies necessary to meet a myriad of needs.
Leaders must convey an understanding of and concern for clients, constituents, and most importantly, the workers they serve. The leader actively explores ways to enhance satisfaction among these diverse groups. Leaders understand the client’s perspective and accurately identify the client’s immediate and long-term needs. The leader must maintain and apply solid and substantial professional, educational and technical expertise. Areas of specialization included in the Profile of Strengths include:
Ability to align organizational strategies to people, process, structure, and culture
Ability to bring about successful outcomes through conference, discussion, and compromise
Ability to collect data from internal and external sources utilizing multiple methods (interviews, surveys, focus groups, document analysis, and standardized assessment tools)
Ability to seek consensus by identifying areas of agreement
Ability to uncover people’s basic assumptions, values, and norms
Ability to operationalize change models
Knowledge of strategic planning process and models
Organization development skills
Communication skills- both speaking and listening
Project management skills
Ability to create and articulate a vision for strategic planning
Ability to utilize best practice information from similar organizations in order to improve performance and effectiveness
Ability to work effectively with persons of different gender, status, background, beliefs, and personal characteristics
Ability to understand implications of decisions and recommend adjustments
Knowledge of diagnostic models which can help to identify organizational issues
Knowledge of change models
Knowledge of organizational change concepts
Facilitation and group process skills
Conflict management skills
Competency development
The leadership core competencies listed here are not intended to be a complete list. They represent my leadership journey. Your journey may call you to draw many of these arrows from your leadership quiver, but your challenges may also call on arrows not mentioned here. Your situational awareness and position awareness for the space and events confronting you may call you to bring other important leadership core competencies to bare.
Professional / Human Capital / Organizational Development Core Competencies
The following are essential leadership core competencies. Your leadership journey will benefit from honing these skills and bringing them to those you serve.
Facilitation
At the core of each of your professional experiences needs to be the capacity to “connect.” To connect with people and organizations in a meaningful and respectful way. To actively listen and observe, to process formatively and summatively. For leaders, this critical connection capacity manifests itself through one-on-one coaching, mentoring, and team-building. Quality facilitation founded upon honesty, integrity, and precision needs to be a cornerstone of your professional practice.
Communication
Knowing what to say, how to say it, and when to say it, are essential to successful leadership practice. Poise and presence in verbal communication and the compelling articulation of your written communication are key for the well-developed leader. Your non-verbal communication is also regularly observed and interpreted by those around you. Communication, in all its forms, are key.
Situational Awareness
The capacity to identify, synthesize, and process what is going on technically, politically, and culturally within an organization, and to facilitate, articulate, and mediate in a compelling and persuasive manner the critical pathway(s) to success are essential situational awareness competencies for an effective leader. The capacity to act as a strategic bridge, joining problem identifiers and problem solvers is a significant competency. Situational awareness is so much more than analytics. Analytics are important, but situational awareness is the expansion of numbers to what they mean, how they are interpreted, and how the organization and its people may benefit from more complete awareness. Leaders are regularly challenged to showcase the important leadership core competency of situational awareness.
Organizational Team and Advisory Excellence
Being able to create and/or recognize winning partnerships between leaders, managers, and staff is a complex and challenging proposition. Being able to implement these “win-win” situations requires a delicate balance and understanding of the needs of the organization and its people. These skills provide a further strategic bridging competency. Often, it is not a question of good people or bad people. Rather, it is the leader's challenge to ensure the right people are in the right places, doing the right things at the right time. The leader’s capacity to implement organizational design and organizational team changes deftly are key leadership traits.
In my own personal leadership journey, I have maintained a genuine passion for the art of leadership. Key to that passion has been my drive for excellence. From being the #1 ranked officer in each and every military unit I have been in as an active duty and reserve Naval Officer, to being a top-producing broker for a major New York Stock Exchange member firm, to being President and Founder of my own leadership and management development firm, I have been a leader. I have brought hard work, diligence, discipline, focus, and intellectual capital to bear consistently in my professional life. Perhaps most importantly though has been my passion. I believe this passion for leadership has been infectious throughout my life, and my hope is to channel that passion to help guide you along your leadership journey.
