I have written quite a bit about competencies on this blog and these past posts have attracted comments from readers. (Click on either the Category or Tag Competencies at the right hand navigation bar to find the posts.)

These posts have also attracted the attention of Korn Ferry, who, I think, own Lominger, which is the set of 67 competencies and associated tools that has swept through the public service in New Zealand. I received an email from a marketing specialist at Korn Ferry asking me if I would be interested in blogging about their current special package, in return for receiving a copy of the package itself.

I have to confess to going immediately into a bit of a spin because it meant that this little blog had been noticed enough to be approached for a deal. So I immediately saw the recognition in this approach – someone out there has noticed and thinks what I’m writing has some value.

I will reveal that my base and crass second reaction was to wonder about whether this could be a first step to monetisation of the blog (i.e. finding a way to make some money out of my blogging efforts). However, receiving four free books is not going to make me Bill Gates. Although at the price they charge for these Lominger books, perhaps it would get me closer than I expected. Either way, please don’t set Inland Revenue onto me!

My third and most significant reaction was to ponder on the ethics of this. Would I be writing an advertisement? I had visions of my blog inundated with Google Ad Words, or dangerous banners luring unsuspecting people to click on them.

Then I thought that maybe what is required is advertorial. You know the kind of thing, write an ad that doesn’t appear to be an ad – oh, that’s called PR.

Would I be required to say "this is an ad" and then promote the books? Considering how my previous posts have been critical of competencies, I didn’t think that either of these two alternatives would wash.

And then, perhaps the whole thing was a scam like all the emails I get from (apparently beautiful) women wanting to meet me, or bankers in foreign countries wanting me to move millions of dollars through my account in return for a 10% commission.

So I thought about saying no to the offer. But this wasn’t very attractive either because I don’t like to say no to opportunities too early. I like to explore them well to see how they might work out and what avenues they might open up.

So it took me two weeks of sitting on the fence to figure out what I would do. You are now reading the results.

I replied "Yes" to the offer and the books duly arrived.

The offer is a 45% discount on the following four books:

• "FYI 5th Edition" – note that most Government departments only have version 4, and my previous copy was version 4 as well. So this is the latest.
• "FYI For Teams"
• "You" which is about being more effective in your MBTI (Myers Briggs) type.
• "Broadband Talent Management" which is about coaching others.

The books would normally cost $US252.95 and under this special offer you save $US113.95.

Go to http://store.lominger.com and enter Development Gift Pack to get the discount. Happy reading!

I am currently reading The Saturated Self by Kenneth Gergen. In it, he discusses the impacts of burgeoning technology on our identity – i.e. how we experience who we are. He says that through technology we are now bombarded by many disparate voices of humanity – both harmonious and alien.

He demonstrates how the scientisation of human behaviour has led to an explosion of terms to describe mental health deficits in the 20th century. Terms such as low self esteem, repressed, authoritarian, obsessive-compulsive, bulimic, sadomasochistic and post-traumatic stress disorder have only come into being relatively recently, and they all refer to problems, shortcomings or incapacities – mental deficits.

He is pointing out that we now have countless ways of locating faults within ourselves and others that were unavailable even to our grandparents. He says that as psychiatrists and psychologists have worked out ways to explain undesirable behaviour, they have generated a technical vocabulary of deficit.

This language has become increasingly disseminated to the broader public as they become aware of these issues. People have increasingly come to see self and others in these deficit terms. He uses this process as an illustration of how the language of the self is malleable – that is to say, it changes gradually over time, and thus how we see ourselves changes over time.

Implications for Leaders

I am struck by how the same process is operating in terms of leadership. One of the side effects of the proliferation of tools such as competencies, 360 degree feedback, climate surveys, engagement surveys, personality questionnaires, emotional intelligence is the corresponding increase in the number of deficit terms we now have for leaders. For example I have on many occasions recently heard people described as "low in emotional intelligence." Our performance management systems provide lists of competencies and behavioural indicators in categories of differing levels of deficit, and even overuse.

Just as in the mental health example given by Gergen, the proliferation of deficit terms for leaders has been the result of the "scientising" of leadership. This scientising process involves attempts to break leadership down into its constituent parts and make these attributes more amenable to control. For example, the development of particular personal attributes such as listening skills, in the service of the organisation.

So, the language of leadership is malleable, it has changed gradually over time. Even the concept of leadership is relatively new – having emerged in the twentieth century.  It is still not conclusively determined what leadership actually consists of (or indeed whether there is even such a thing as leadership).

But one thing we can be sure of is that the leadership tools have nevertheless introduced plenty of language terms to point out deficits in the personal characteristics of those who lead in organisations. 

When you think about it, it is fairly obvious that there can be no "I" without we, you (singular), he, she, you (plural) and they. "I" can only be thought of as "I and relationships with others." "I" cannot be thought of as a stand alone individual in isolation from others. You could think of "I" as meaning "interdependent I."

You can distinguish between interdependent I and others, but you cannot separate them – interdependent I only exists in relationship to other people.

The language of speaking about "I" tends to mean that you forget about the interdependent nature of "I" and it seems that maybe there is an "I" that is separate. For example, we come to take for granted that the "I" is resident inside the individual person, quite secluded from other people.

Think about the relationship between two people, A and B. This relationship actually consists of two relationships – AB = A’s perspective of the relationship and BA = B’s perspective of the relationship. In the world of mathematics AB=BA, but not in the human world.

Here’s another way of saying it. Everyone that I think of in the third person as "she", e.g. my friend Robyn, thinks of herself in the first person as "I", and she in turn thinks of me in the third person as "he" or sometimes as "you." So Robyn’s perspective of our relationship is different just in the quality alone that her "I" is different from my "I." It’s all a matter of perspective.

I have found it useful to bear this in mind in any corporate or business situation, especially when you are involved in change.

There are always at least two perspectives in every relationship, the perspectives of each party to the relationship, and both of them are valid.

So, as a leader of change, it is helpful if you remember that. Remembering that there are two perspectives will lead you to first seek out the different perspectives, and secondly to find a way to hold both perspectives at the same time, even if they are contradictory.

The most common response to being faced with contradictory perspectives is to become anxious. And then to try and resolve the two points of view so that the "right" perspective, or the "facts" can be found. The problem with this is that one perspective then is labelled "right" and one labelled "wrong." Usually the "right" perspective is the one that is closest to that of the most powerful people.

It is very helpful to have the capacity to hold contradictory points of view without becoming anxious. Apart from keeping a relatively calm atmosphere for others, it also helps you to facilitate the parties to see the other’s point of view and this allows the possibility for each point of view to be transformed, into something new. And this is at the very heart of leading change in organisations – the ability to assist others to transform their point of view.

This post is based on the ideas of Norbert Elias, in What is Sociology, 1978.

Photography by Ruby Cumming

The idea of competencies is that you will be able to identify necessary skills and define the steps required to acquire those skills. So, an important step in developing leaders is then to be smart enough to analyse the work of a manager or leader, or make use of the work of those who are smart enough to research and precook a set of skills for you. These skills are separated from the context in which the skills are used. Hence, strategic agility is said to be something that people can acquire by using strategic buzzwords, doing five year projections even though five year plans don’t happen as projected, or regularly reading strategy gurus and Harvard Business Review. These remedies are among those recommended in Lominger’s book FYI For Your Improvement, Fourth Edition, pp 344 – 348.

I have been saying that as leaders and managers you need to be paying more attention to the quality of your own experience and relationships with those around you, and noticing the impacts of the conversations you and others are having. This requires a reflective development of self knowledge, and taking your own experience seriously.

These skills are difficult to develop and difficult to sustain. And these competencies do not usually figure in the skill sets devised for managers. The following are all part of what I am coming to think are required:

• Self-reflection
• Noticing what is going on
• Owning one’s own part in what is happening
• Facilitating free-flowing conversations
• Articulating what is emerging in conversations 

These skills are not included, or else are quite different when they are expressed in competency frameworks.

For example, the nearest Lominger competency to "self reflection" is probably number 55 "self knowledge," which is essentially seeing yourself as others see you. Consistent with this, the remedies prescribed in order to develop self knowledge are all about getting feedback about how others see you. It is not seen as important to reflect with others on what is going on, what you and others have done together. The emphasis in Lominger is about getting feedback from others so that you can change your behaviour and be more effective. This is not the same as reflecting with others on the events that are taking place around you, and your part in them.

The competency frameworks such as Lominger have been developed based on the assumption that organisations are systems, that people are parts of the system that comprises the organisation, and that the skills of human beings are parts of the people that make up the system that in turn comprises the organisation.

The skills I have listed above are only intended as examples to show how a different way of thinking about organisations leads to a different set of skills with an orientation that is quite different as shown in my example of the difference between self knowledge and self reflection.

The standard competency approach assumes (without explicitly saying so) that humans are autonomous individuals with the ability to think ahead, plan and then bring about that which they desire in organisations, by developing the requisite competencies and then applying them effectively.

I think that humans are interdependent beings who, through interaction with each other in the context of changeable power differentials, generate population-wide patterns No one is in control of those patterns and no one can influence the patterns except through their own interaction with others, in which changing power differentials play an important part.

The competencies in competency frameworks do not acknowledge the interdependence of human beings and the importance of context. If you are using competency frameworks, it is likely then that you are using the wrong competencies and you should therefore limit the importance you place on such competency frameworks. 

Acknowledgement: This post was stimulated by the thinking of Ralph Stacey in his book Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics.

Leadership competencies tend to reinforce individualistic behaviours that downplay the meaning that their leadership work has for practising managers – the "emotional and moral labour of creating chioices and meanings for themselves and others," as Bolden and Gosling put it.

I think our leadership development activities should have far more reflection and discussion on real life practice and experience.

Bolden and Gosling use an apt musical metaphor – the behaviours articulated in leadership competency frameworks can be considered like musical notes on the page, or the scales practiced by the musician. However the experience of a great musical performance relies on interpretation, improvisation and interaction, with the other musicians and with the audience. Likewise, the richness of leadership involves emotion, intuition, experience, and symoblic and narrative processes of collective sense making in the organisation.

Competencies are not enough, and in fact divert attention away from the important aspects of how meanings emerge and transform over time.

We often hear that leaders lead through action, but in practice they lead through their words. You could say that the actions are acts of speech.

In an interesting research method, Bolden and Gosling compared the language of 29 different competency frameworks with the language of approximately 250 practising managers who gave reflective accounts of their own leadership practice. There was a distinct difference.

Bolden and Gosling found that in the competency frameworks, leadership was presented as a set of traits and behaviours possessed by the leader. As noted in earlier posts, this is an individualistic approach in that leadership is seen as a characteristic of the individual, not as being jointly created with others.

The narrative accounts of leadership by practising managers emphasised the moral and relational dimensions of leadership, dealing with complexity and uncertainty with an emotional engagement with others.

According to Bolden and Gosling, the competency frameworks tended to neglect the more subtle, moral, emotional and relational aspects of leadership. 

That is why I think our leadership development efforts should spend more time on these subtleties and less time on competencies. In fact I would go so far as to say that the usefulness of our leadership development courses is actually in the extent that they encourage reflection on these subtleties. And in many programmes this kind of reflection is only incidental, rather than being given a central place in the design.

What do you think about this?

Henry Mintzberg, no less, asserted that "acquiring competencies does not necessarily make a manager competent," in his 2004 book Managers Not MBAs.

I think this is equivalent to my realisation that the fact that I can plonk my way on the piano in very hesitant steps through a Beethoven minuet for easy piano does not make me a musician. Or at least not someone who can earn my living as a musician.

Simply acquiring a competency does not necessarily mean you will use it and nor does the absence of a competency make you "incompetent," according to Bolden and Gosling. In fact, excessive levels of a seeming useful competency such as ‘team orientation’ can turn to indecisiveness – having too much of a competency can lead to failure. Lominger competencies address this issue by including behavioural indicators that demonstrate over-use of a competency, and this is a popular selling point for Lominger’s competency model.

Nevertheless, in spite of efforts like this, at the heart of this issue is that competencies consider the worker and the work as distinct entities. The strong emphasis on individual behaviour mean that outcomes are invariably attributed to the individual irrespective of any collective effort or contextual factors that were involved.

The upshot? You can safely file competencies under I for ‘individualism.’

Richard Bolden and Jonathan Gosling in their article "Leadership Competencies: Time to Change the Tune?" (article is subscription only) in the journal titled Leadership, cite Marcus Buckingham from Gallup as identifying three further assumptions behind the competency approach. Sorry no link to Gallup – they don’t make it easy!

Assumption 1

That those who excel in the same role display the same behaviours.

Response 1

That is why competency models look so similar to each other and yet the leaders and the organisations they purport to describe look so different from each other. And of course many individual leaders achieve similar results via different approaches.

Assumption 2

That these behaviours can be learned.

Response 2

Competencies come down firmly on the "made" not "born" side of the leadership traits debate. This to my mind is not necessarily a problem, but is this assumption acknowledged in your own thinking about leadership competencies?

Assumption 3

That improving on your weaknesses leads to success.

Response 3

Many individual leaders have managed to be successful despite significant personal flaws e.g. Napoleon and probably any successful CEO you can think of from your own experience.  

Yet More Assumptions!

As if that were not enough, Salaman points out some fundamental but often unacknowledged characteristics of the competency approach:

• The competency approach is a framwork for measuring, monitoring and regulating the behaviour of managers. 
• Competencies require a translation from strategy to organisation to the individual manager, which tends to disguise organisational objectives and priorities which then remain hidden and unquestioned.
• Because the list of competencies serves as a specification for further improvement, the first management competency is commitment to the list of management competencies itself.

All in all, Bolden and Gosling suggest that leadership competencies are like written music, the notes and scales that denote the music, but that it is only in the performance of the music that it comes to life and has meaning for those who participate. Carrying this metaphor further, they suggest that the ability to play solo does not mean they can be an effective member of a group or orchestra (i.e. organisation) and the ability to read music or play certain notes does not make one an excellent musician. Further, being a successful musician in one genre such as classical does not mean that the talent will be able to be transferred to another genre such as jazz, rock or hip hop.

In summary, following the leadership competency approach means that you risk being able to do  scales or musical exercises, but not being able to create music that will stir the emotions and move your people towards the ends that you desire.

The competency approach is so commonplace in organisational life that it hardly seems worthy of comment. It has become like the air that you breathe, always present so that you take it for granted and hardly notice it.

Here are four assumptions behind the competency approach that are rarely mentioned. For these, I have drawn on Carroll, Levy and Richmond’s article Leadership as Practice: Challenging  the Competency Paradigm.

• Human behaviour can be described in a manner that is free of context and other people – as an individual agent choosing what behaviours to exhibit, in isolation of the specific context.
• Human actions can be reduced to fragments and then rebuilt into a complete ‘whole’.
• What has worked in the past will inevitably continue to be relevant for the future (competencies are based on past behaviour).
• Competencies, which by their nature can only articulate what is tangible, ‘objective’ and measurable can be used to describe leadership, a phenomenon which is intangible, subjective and not measurable. 

As I consider each of these assumptions I come to the conclusion that they are not accurate assumptions.

Human behaviour can surely only be described in particular situations with other people, not in disembodied descriptions of context-free behaviour.

The reduction of human action to fragments is potentially useful for thinking about some micro aspects of behaviour, but the ‘whole’ can only make sense in the context of the relationships between the people concerned, the past background of those involved, and their intentions. The kind of ‘whole’ that can be built from these fragments does not seem to me to be very useful.

It seems that the future may be quite different from the past.  As I write this it seems that the world is about to head into a recession. Many of the people managing organisations currently or in the past, upon whom the various competency models are based, will have learnt their skills in a very different world from that we anticipate in a recessionary environment.

And as for the final assumption above, I do not think that applying reductionist methods to the world of human beings does much except give us an unrealistic view of human behaviour.

We need to find better ways of understanding human beings, ways that acknowledge the interdependence of humans, ways that acknowledge that we cannot step outside of human relating to break it down into its component parts, ways that acknowledge the unknowability of some aspects of being human.

Leadership is an academic journal on leadership published in the UK. The November 2008 issue just out has an article by Brigid Carroll, Lester Levy and David Richmond of Auckland University, entitled Leadership as Practice: Challenging the Competency Paradigm. The authors take as their starting point Richard Boyatzis’s definition of competency as "an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to effective or superior performance in a job."

Carroll, Levy and Richmond say that the key words of this definition are "individual," "causally," "superior" and "performance." In other words, the individual agent takes primacy, there is a linear relationship between intention and intervention, and superior performance is the result of a strategic plan formed by purpose and principles.

The article goes on to challenge these assumptions, and this is the first of several posts in which I want to explore the competency approach to leadership and whether it stacks up. Because, as you’ve probably guessed, I don’t think it does.

Competencies are ubiquitous in NZ organisations, and in particular Lominger competencies are prominent in the public sector. The 67 Lominger competencies are very appealing because they are ready made, consistently worded, behavioural indicators for effective performance in ineffective performance are all developed and there are even behavioural indicators for overdeveloped use of each competency.

And yet there is surprisingly little empirical research robustness behind the leadership competency approach, according to Carroll et al and Bolden and Gosling. In spite of competencies having been in widespread use for many years, the concept is not at all proven!! Carroll et al say that "Many of its assumptions do not hold true when subject to scrutiny."

My next post on Tuesday explores the assumptions of competency-based leadership.