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Competency ModelDevelopment of the ThinkWise Competency Model

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PurposeThe Leadership Competency Model offered standard with ThinkBox and other ThinkWise modules was developed specifically to provide users with a robust, but easy way to employ what is described in David Dubois’s definitive book Competency-based Performance Improvement as the Customized Generic Model Method for creating a competency model for defining success in their organization, job family, or role. Using our unique Competency Modeler, a pre-developed universe of potential leadership competencies are provided for the organization.

Executive Leadership or Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) can rapidly select the Competencies they see as critical for successful implementation of organizational strategy and vision, or success in a job family or role. Although the competencies are themselves generic, the selection method, and flexibility within the system itself allows the user to interpret the competency model within the broader context of the organization (hopefully the business strategy, culture, and critical metrics) to craft their unique final competency model.

As noted by Dubois, the advantages of this approach over the more job analytic approaches are that it is much faster and easier for leaders to make their selections. The advantage over the Generic Model method offered by many assessment based approaches is the degree of customization and “fit” to the organization’s reality.

The ModelThe ThinkWise Leadership Competency Model was derived from three sources. First, was an extensive review of the competency and leadership literature, including such key work as Zacarro’s meta-analysis of the existing literature on competencies. Also, a large number of competency models available in the literature and public domain internet sources were examined. In addition to the authors’ own work, Dr. Neil Christiansen and a team from Central Michigan University contributed to the literature review and critically examined the model. As Dr. Christiansen noted, the ThinkWise two tier competency model allows selection first at higher level descriptions of overall “traits” of leadership (the Global Competencies) which are then anchored in the job behaviors of the Supporting Competencies.

The second source was the authors’ experience with using established models or developing custom competency models for organizations. This experience led to the decisions to use the two tiered model and to provide competencies which addressed different levels of essentially similar behaviors to permit the user to more accurately reflect their reality of what success looks like. The final source which guided the selection of the exemplar behaviors used to define the Supporting Competencies as well as the over use and under use behaviors used to create the proprietary on-line coaching resources was the author’s extensive experience with executive coaching and leader development.

The resulting model of 21 Global Competencies and 61 Supporting Competencies (with a total of 316 linked behaviors) was tested during development of the ThinkWise Candidate Survey by the process of mapping a suite of 32 established, validated personality and performance factors from leader assessment work to the Supporting Competencies of the ThinkWise model. In this test, the model was examined in detail by a group of 15 experienced M.S. and Ph.D. SME’s with experience using competency models for leader selection. They were able to establish linkage between the ThinkWise Competencies and the established factors derived from decades of personality and leader assessment research. ThinkWise continues to test the model through the use of Competency Blueprint studies for new and prospective users where the full competency model is empirically tested to identify which competencies differentiate between Star performers and average performers.

DifferentiationA question that is often asked is how the ThinkWise Model differs from other commercially available competency models. The answer is that there are few if any appreciable differences in the models, whether derived from decades of traditional job analysis, extracted form SME’s and critical incidents, or developed from the literature. You can quite literally map the major models onto one another with little unique coverage.

The major difference is how the models are designed to be used and the extent to which the user has other resources, such as ThinkWise’s integrated suite of selection, assessment and development resources, to help them leverage the competency model the user eventually defines as critical. We believe that the only value a competency model offers is its ability to first define what behaviors and predispositions are critical for success, and second guide organizations to developing those capabilities to ensure success.

About ThinkWise, Inc.

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