Competency is defined as the quality of being competent; adequacy;

possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification, or capacity.

12 Common Leadership Competencies

1. Supervising Others
Managing others can be a challenge for the new supervisor who has not had
management experience. Training new managers on what to do, as well as
what not to do, can help to minimize issues related to supervising others.

2. Conflict Resolution
Conflict in the workplace is an inevitable reality. It is important to manage this
conflict because it can affect relationships between people and groups of
people which can have a major impact on organizational culture and worker
productivity.

Leaders should be able to manage conflict and create win-win situations for
those involved. This can be done by identifying the source of conflict and
working with both parties to negotiate and collaborate to resolve issues.

3. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to be aware of, control,
and express ones emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships
judiciously and empathetically. Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be
learned and is a mark of professional maturity. It can take years to develop
and a lifetime to master.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether EI is a natural or trained

ability. Regardless, it is an important leadership competency that every
manager and supervisor needs to perfect.

4. Communication Skills
Managers need to have good written and verbal communication skills to
effectively manage employees. Additionally, there needs to be a structured
communication processes to filter information throughout the organization.
For example, can you answer these questions:

Is it a priority to communicate with employees?

How often is information shared?
What is the process for communicating new information to employees?

5. Manage Performance
To effectively manage employees, managers need to understand the basics
of managing performance. To do this successfully, managers need to do the
following:

Set clear expectations for job assignments.

Write and monitor employee goals.
Hold employees accountable for job responsibilities and achieving goals.
Reward employees for doing a good job.
Mentor, coach and discipline employees when necessary.

Interviewing Skills
Having the ability to identify the right person for open positions helps to
ensure the organization secures the best talent for the job.

Leaders and managers need to have basics interviewing skills. This includes:

Being prepared for interviews.

Becoming familiar with the job that the candidate is interviewing for.
Reviewing job candidate resumes and job applications.
Identifying the best questions to ask in the interview.

7. Team Building
Leaders need to be able to build strong teams that rally around the mission
and vision of the organization. This necessitates managers to have
basic team leader skills that help them develop teams, minimize team conflict
and manage team dynamics.

8. Delegation
Anyone who has ever managed projects understands the importance of
delegation. Delegating helps develop employees by gradually increasing job
responsibilities and accountability. And, effective delegation is the result of
forethought and strategy.

Successful delegation is knowing the people you work with and is an innate
understanding of what others can do if given the chance.

Learning to trust and develop others to perform tasks takes skill and practice.
However, once learned it can be very liberating for a manager and allows
them to perform higher level tasks.

9. Change Agent
Organizations are being forced to make dramatic improvements to products
and services, to not only compete, but to survive in todays economy.

Progressive organizations understand that change is constant and that in

order to move forward, there needs to be a continuous process of improving
what, and how, work is done.

Consequently, leaders need to be the change agents and lead continual

change initiatives.

10. Coaching
Being a good coach is one of the most rewarding aspects of managing others.
Helping others build on their strengths and improve weaknesses is part of the
professional development process.

11. Problem Solving

Managing people and processes requires problem solving skills. Problems
could be with employees, work processes or related to product or service
quality.

Managers must be able to identify problems, understand basic problem

solving techniques and facilitate a process to solve problems and resolve
issues within the work environment.
12. Motivating
Leaders need to understand what inspires and motivates their employees. Th
ere are many different motivation models that can be incorporated into a
managers strategy for motivating employees. And, it is important to
remember that we are all motivated differently. The trick is to identify what
motivates employees and develop systems and processes that support those
motivators.

This is merely an example of a few leadership competencies. Having the

ability to identify specific competencies for your organization can help create a
work environment that motivates, develops and manages employee
performance.

What leadership competencies does your organization operate with?

Are You Born a Leader or Can You Learn to Lead?

It could be argued that great leaders are born, but it takes circumstances to make them
great. At the same time, it can then be argued that without the circumstances, they
would never be leaders, so therefore, they are made.

Leaders are Born

The most commonly held belief about leaders is that they are born. Those who support
this reasoning say that for someone to be a leader, they must be born with the attributes
that will make them a leader.

Looking at the definition of a leader, they are someone who rules, or guides, or inspires
others. Therefore, a leader is someone who others are willing to follow to the ends of
the Earth, without question. The leader has a great deal of confidence, they make the
right decisions, but if they make a wrong decision they are not afraid to admit it.

Those who say leaders are born believe that people will simply know when someone is
a leader. This comes down to that charisma factor. If someone lacks charisma, any
amount of determination will mostly be lost because they will have few, if any followers.

This intangible characteristic, many will argue, is simply something people are born
with. It is not something you can see, but it is something you feel. When a follower
comes across this type of individual, they do not know what the characteristic in the
leader is that they are drawn to, but they know the leader has it.

This is the strongest argument for saying that leaders are born, not made. How can you
make charisma? You can have a nice suit, nice hair, and a handsome or pretty face, but
when it gets down to being a leader, will people follow you? They may do so briefly,
before realizing that the 'leader' has no idea what they are doing.

Acting is all about faking charisma. You have to fool the audience into thinking you are
the boss in the movie or the play, you have to fool them into thinking you are more of a
leader than you are, but there, it is all just acting.

Hence, leaders are born. They do not have to act, they do not have to fake it, they are
just automatically leaders.

It can be difficult to disprove that leaders are born, not made. Look at any great leader
in history and people will say they had the skills that made them great leaders already in
them. They will argue that what made them great was not the circumstances, but how
their innate talents responded to those circumstances.
For those who believe that people are made as leaders, not born, it can be hard to
disagree.

Leaders are Made

This is the other common belief in terms of leadership, that leaders are made. Most
people accept that a leader is not a leader when they come out of the womb, and that
their life experiences must forge them into the person they are going to be, the leader
that they will be.

Learning to be a leader is all about watching other leaders and emulating their behavior.
They may be reading about Alexander the Great and choose to emulate his leadership
style, or perhaps their leader is their father and they want to honor him with their own
leadership. As they begin to go through life, these potential leaders seek out more and
more mentors to teach them how to handle situations and become quality leaders. They
begin to improve from feedback that they receive from those around them, which they
then put to use.

A leaders are like scientists, when we think of leaders being made not born, because
they learn by trying out new techniques and figuring out what will work and what will not
work. They will critique their own performance in these situations, and any failure is only
a failure if they do not learn from the experience.

The concept of leaders learning from their failures was outlined in an excellent book
called Geeks and Geezers, by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas. In it, they identified
the 'crucibles', which are the trials and hard lessons that leaders use to build on their
strengths for future problems. However, while many called these 'failures', leaders see
them as the potential to take a bad situation and create something good out of it.
This is how effective leaders control their destiny. They take control of their
development and use the training opportunities that are available to them. They use
these training programs to get the job done and to learn from every one of their
experiences.

This is evident in a study done by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan. In it, they
looked at the progress of 88,000 managers who went to leadership development
training. Afterwards, they viewed those who returned from training and looked at who
talked about the training and used what they had learned on the job, versus those who
did not. They found that those who used what they learned to improve their job
performance were much more effective leaders, while those who did not use what they
learned showed no improvement whatsoever.

Want to learn more? Take an online course in Leadership and Supervision.

What is the Right Answer?

Looking at both of these ideas, it is easy to pick either one as the right one. Are leaders
born? Some would say, "Yes". Are they made? Others would agree with this. However,
are either right?

To understand the answer, let's look at a good example involving legendary hockey
player, Wayne Gretzky.

As a child, Wayne loved to play hockey. He strived to become a hockey player and
couldn't wait to get his skates on. His dad, Walter, built him a hockey rink in the
backyard, where Wayne practiced over and over to hone his skills. He would
watch Hockey Night in Canada and point to where the puck would be, not where it was.
All of this--his commitment and skill combined--turned him into the greatest hockey
player the world has ever seen.

Now, what made him the greatest hockey player ever?

Was He Born great?

This could be argued. People could say he was born with the talent to succeed in
hockey and that is what made him the greatest.

Did He Train to Become Great?

Others will look at how he practiced and honed his skill to become the greatest hockey
player in history.

The Right Answer

The right answer is that they both played a part. Wayne Gretzky could be a good
hockey player by honing his skills, but he needed the base talent to make him great.

So how does this all work together? Well, to be a great leader, you are both
born and made. You are born with the qualities that make you a leader, including
courage and strength, while you hone your leadership qualities through trial and error,
to become the person you are and the leader you want to be.

Was Alexander the Great born great? No. He was born with a keen and intelligent mind,
but he needed to be taught to be a leader by his father and by one of the greatest minds
in human history, Aristotle, who just happened to be the student of Plato.
Leadership and leadership development in
Education
Leadership takes over?
Leadership in context
the impact of
leadership on school effectiveness and student outcomes is still poorly
understood.
From a review of some 20 years of research in the UK, Hall and
Southworth
concluded: The idea that powerful and visionary heads enhance the
schools
effectiveness isa continuing belief in the research and the teacher
profession
generally. Yet beyond this assertion surprisingly little else is known
(1997:164).
Despite a great deal of empirical evidence from many countries, there is no
consensus about what constitutes effective school leadership practice
(HarrisSkilful school leaders
influence school and classroom processes that have a direct impact on
student
learning (ibid.: 185). In other words, their actions are mediated by others.
Second,
school leaders are themselves heavily influenced by the norms of the
school and
by its external context.