Leadership task competence development: A diamond in the coal pile - netzwerk managementberatung | coaching
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Leadership | Competence development of employees

Leadership task: competence development

From Sabine Walter, Head of netzwerk managementberatung | coaching

In times of crisis, it is often the first thing to be significantly reduced or cancelled altogether: Continuing education. Yet training is crucial for the continuous development of the competences available in the company. Furthermore, in my daily work I notice that competence development in many companies is not yet strategic enough and is often delegated to HR. Similar to German education policy, many companies still fail to realise that the real asset they have is the know-how and competences of their employees and managers. Since in many companies decisions are still purely numbers-based, this asset is lost. It is not shown in the balance sheet as an asset, but in the form of costs in the profit and loss account. This is one more reason to once again emphasise training and competence development as a central management task.

The industrial age is over. The era of digitalisation has begun. It is common knowledge that this transformation requires new competences. Even though almost all companies have already committed to digitalisation, it is still unclear for most what this means for competence development.

Competences in times of digitalisation

Soft skills in the era of digitalisation

Soft skills are becoming even more important in the digital age. Which of these are indispensable in order not to jeopardise the competitiveness of the company? At this point, I would like to mention what I consider to be key competences:

  • Self-confidence and relational trust
  • ability to cooperate
  • (Self-)leadership
  • Willingness to take responsibility
  • Conflict skills and conflict resolution
  • Debating skills and decision-making ability
  • Lateral and networked thinking
  • Courage and risk-taking
  • The joy of experimentation
  • Innovative strength

How can these competences be developed?

Competence development as an integrative process

The competences listed above suggest that a seminar alone will not be enough to anchor them in the people of an organisation and thus in the company. So what can such a development process look like? Let's look at the competences in detail:

Strengthening self-confidence and confidence in relationships

Self-confidence and relational confidence develop in us humans in our earliest childhood. They grow or decline in the course of our lives. Crucial for strong self-confidence are positive experiences; things that succeed; something you have created yourself through your own power. Praise and recognition are secondary. What is crucial is that we humans are given the opportunity to try ourselves out. It needs Design freedom. It needs a free space that challenges but does not overburden.

And this There must be room for manoeuvre in companiesto promote self-confidence. This is Task of the managers. And it should be an integral part of the corporate culture. To ensure that this freedom is not overwhelmed Target clarity necessary, a Good sense of who can use which free space. It needs Support services - even if it is only the possibility to ask questions - and a Dealing constructively with errors.

Self-confidence and relational confidence are mutually dependent. If you trust yourself and your abilities, it is easy to trust others. Only in organisations with a pronounced culture of trust will cooperation be fruitful and the Working together in high performance teams be possible.

Promote the ability to cooperate

A fruitful culture of cooperation needs more than just trust. It needs a culture in which knowledge is not understood as a symbol of power and status. This succeeds once again when the company has a transparent communication prevails. Decisions comprehensible are and Decision-making processeswhere possible and necessary, in the team run off.

Of course, cooperation experiences can be made in seminars, rules of the game of cooperation can be worked out together in workshops. But developing this competence to the point where it becomes a matter of course can only happen on a daily basis. It can be useful to have cooperation processes or selected cooperation projects accompanied by moderators from outside the team or company in order to identify stumbling blocks and remove them directly.

A willingness to cooperate also becomes self-evident in every employee when remuneration is based solely on team results and the individual contribution to those results.

(Self-)leadership and responsibility

In order to achieve the team goals or team results, everyone needs to be willing to take responsibility for 100%. This in turn requires self-leadership. Why? Because it is about subordinating one's own goals and needs to a high percentage of the common team goals. These two competences therefore develop in teamwork or in cooperation projects. Provided: There is clarity of purpose, trust and an open and constructive feedback culture in the team.

Conflict skills and conflict resolution

Conflict capacity exists when people do not see conflicts per se as something bad, but are aware of the opportunities of conflicts. Furthermore, people who are capable of conflict are able to separate between person and thing and to leave factual conflicts on the factual level and not drag them onto a personal level. Thus, they understand disagreement or arguing about the best solution as exactly what it is and not as a rejection of their own person. A high ability to deal with conflict can only develop as a natural competence in a person if he or she has strong self-confidence.

A high ability to deal with conflict is a prerequisite for good conflict resolution skills. While the development of strong conflict skills requires personal coaching or even therapeutic support, the foundations of conflict resolution skills can be laid in trainings or seminars and further developed in everyday team and company life through moderation, mediation or supervision. This task can be carried out by persons outside the team or the company who have been trained for this purpose.

In order to anchor a constructive conflict culture in companies, it is important that it is lived from the top.

Debating skills and decision-making ability

Good decisions can only be made if they are free of personal sensitivities, fears and worries. This requires the ability to deal with conflict. It requires clarity in terms of goals, framework conditions and decision-making powers. It needs critical thinking and debate competence. Goals, framework conditions and decision-making powers can be defined. Critical thinking and debating skills can be learned in seminars and practised in everyday life, with guidance or support if necessary.

If decisions are to be made in a team, the moderation of decision-making processes must be learned. The basis for this kind of decision-making is provided by sociocracy.

All these competence modules to be learned can only be fully developed if the individual has self-confidence, relational confidence and the ability to deal with conflict on a personal level.

Lateral and networked thinking

Lateral thinking is promoted when people repeatedly deal with new tasks, situations, problems or questions. In order to promote the competence of lateral thinking and networked thinking, the areas of responsibility should be broadly defined and varied, job rotation should be promoted and there should be sufficient creative freedom.

Lateral thinking and networked thinking grow during play and experimentation. Lateral thinking and networked thinking need creative freedom and many impulses from outside. Lateral thinking works better in a team.

Courage and risk-taking

For courage and risk-taking to grow in a company, they must be exemplified across all management levels.

"What is the worst that can happen?" is the question that can be used to separate fears from the factual level. It is the task of the manager to anchor this question in the company. Courage cannot be learned. Courage is there or it can be tickled out and recognised. Courageous behaviour is promoted through self-confidence, trust in relationships and organisations, and a constructive culture of making mistakes.

The joy of experimentation

In order for the joy of experimentation to develop and grow, it needs an environment that gives freedom of design. To fill the competence of experimentation, it needs a diversity of experiences, perspectives and opinions. And it needs imagination. Imagination is what we get when dreaming is allowed. But imagination requires the interconnected work of both hemispheres of the brain. That, in turn, can be trained.

Creativity, innovation and even experimentation do not follow the rigid laws of efficiency or productivity. On the contrary. Pressure in any form, including time pressure, works against new ideas. Recognising this and translating it into framework conditions It is the manager's job to cast the right light.

Innovative strength

Innovative thinking can be encouraged. There are numerous innovation techniques such as design thinking that can be learned in seminars and trained in the projects. Real innovative strength, however, is in many parts the result of the competences outlined above. Therefore, it cannot be developed as a competence in its own right.

However, the framework conditions and processes that are needed to enable innovation can be created. Innovation is an idea turned into money. This process is divided into six steps. The manager's task is to make sure that all these phases of the Innovation process The innovation process must be mapped, internalised and successfully completed within the company. It is the task of management to ask the central questions about fields of innovation and innovation partners or initiators.

Continuity in the development process

Competence development is not something that happens once. It is not something that can be reduced to quarterly feedback or even annual goal-setting meetings or done through a few standard seminars. Competence development is a comprehensive and continuous process. It consists of three elements:

  • Target competence map
  • Actual competence map
  • Competence development on and off the job

Let's look at each of these elements in detail:

Competence maps

A competence map is a graphical representation of all professional and personal competences. The target competence map is about the representation of the competences that a company needs, for example, in order to achieve the defined goals. The actual competence map shows the competences that the company's employees, external service providers and cooperation partners have.

Furthermore, the competence maps should show where in or outside the company the competence is needed, to what extent, to what extent and by when.

For a competence map to be meaningful, it is important to list the competences listed in sufficient detail. For example: "Communication competence" is very general. "Conducting conversations in customer contact" and "presentation skills" are already more concrete. If then each competence still Described with observable behaviour the competence map provides a good basis for competence development.

Competence maps are dynamic and subject to continuous development. Strategic impulses due to market and technological changes are to be reflected in the same way as the further development of the organisation - triggered by recruitment, the further development of employees, the departure of employees as well as changes in cooperations or service providers. 

  • Change in the need for competence: Which additional competences are needed? Which ones are needed more, which ones less? Which competences have become irrelevant?
  • Change in the expression of competence: Which competences have already grown through qualification? Which ones have been added by new hires, a new service provider or cooperation partner? Which have decreased or disappeared completely, e.g. due to the end of a cooperation or the departure of staff?

This makes it clear that competence maps need to be continuously revised. Ideally, this process is supported by an appropriate IT system. 

Competence development on and off the job

Competence development is the responsibility of each individual and at the same time the task of the manager. The Personal responsibility shows in the Will for permanent further development. Task of the Executive is to make the Create a framework for this further development and sparring partner of these and development workers. They are development facilitators when they create spaces for development on and off the job, take pressure off, give feedback, recognise progress, point out development potential. They promote competence development when they strengthen individual and team responsibility, make knowledge accessible and accept mistakes as part of development processes.

In order to develop competences during daily work or accompanying personal coaching, therapy, seminars and trainings, experimenting and playing or through blended learning offers, a secure space, i.e. trust and confidentiality is necessary. Further development or Growth only takes place outside the comfort zone. To leave this zone, courage and security are needed at the same time. Challenging courage and providing security is the task of both the leader and the surrounding team.

The role of the surrounding team

Why is the surrounding team crucial for the development of competences in individual employees? Because it performs different tasks:

  • Pulse generator: A diverse team in which the individual team members complement each other in their competences provides impulses to learn from each other. A diverse team demands and promotes lateral thinking.
  • Encourager and safe haven: A team that works together in trust and deals constructively with mistakes provides the framework to leave the comfort zone and thus enable development.
  • Creativity boosterAs is well known, ideas develop better in exchange with each other.
  • Mirror and feedback provider: Peer learning through observation, mirroring and direct feedback is often more effective than feedback from supervisors.

Since the surrounding team plays a central role in the competence development of the individual, it is the task of the leaders to assemble diverse teams and to support the formation of a culture of trust within the team.

Conclusion: Competence development is a management task

Continuous competence development is an elementary component of a future-oriented corporate strategy and a central element of competitiveness. That is why competence development is a management task. I have shown in this article that development must take place on and off the job. I have described what competence development by managers looks like in concrete terms. All that remains is for me to wish you every success in this process. And if you need support in the process or an impulse from outside, then speak to me.

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