Management Competencies
The competencies included in the Management Competencies domain are specific to supervisory and managerial occupations and include:
Staffing
- Effectively engages in staff planning and helps to ensure that work unit is appropriately staffed to accomplish its goals; anticipates obstacles to staff planning, such as shifting economic and political climates, and makes appropriate contingency plans for these possibilities.
- Accurately and comprehensively identifies candidate skills needed to perform in vacant positions.
- Assesses candidate qualifications thoroughly and accurately, recognizing and hiring /promoting those who possess the skills needed to fulfill vacant positions.
Informing
- Continually gathers data from diverse sources to determine what information employees need to perform their work; disseminates information to employees in a timely, efficient manner.
- Keeps employees well-informed through a variety of means, including productive and informative group and individual meetings and targeted written communications; highlights important information in communications and avoids flooding employees with irrelevant information.
- Monitors internal and external environments to determine if additional information is required for employees to perform tasks; informs employees when changes occur that affect them and distributes updated information when necessary; provides information to peers and subordinates in a timely way that maintains cooperative relationships among people.
Delegating
- Efficiently delegates tasks so that organizational goals are met within established timelines; delegates tasks that are not central to the leader's role and which allow the leader to use his/her time more effectively.
- Makes delegation decisions that take into account the size of the task, whether an employee has the necessary background and skills to complete the task, and the sensitivity and importance of the task; delegates tasks that are challenging but not overwhelming; delegates tasks that develop and extend employee skills.
- Monitors accomplishment of delegated tasks, and provides constructive, timely feedback; provides support and assistance for goal accomplishment, and makes mistakes a learning experience.
Networking
- Seeks opportunities to make contacts and build relationships, including through organizational events, social events, external organizations, and professional activities.
- Establishes strong and lasting partnerships with business contacts; proactively seeks ways of increasing business opportunities with contacts; skillfully influences and negotiates with partners to create opportunities that increase the competitive position of both parties.
- Leverages contacts to obtain information relevant to the health and continued growth of the
Monitoring Work
- Identifies work-related performance criteria that need to be measured for individual and team performance, and determines a means of measuring these criteria.
- Measures progress against timelines set for performance of tasks; asks questions of subordinates and team members to check for problems in work processes; encourages subordinates and team members to report problems and mistakes by creating a non-threatening environment for discussion of problems.
- Conducts frequent progress review meetings with subordinates and team members to discuss progress and any barriers to progress; conducts after-reviews upon task completion to identify lessons learned and generate ideas for more effective task completion in the future.
- Solicits feedback from multiple sources during and following task completion to ensure employee tasks are performed correctly, and to learn how employee and team performance can be improved; conscientiously monitors downstream consequences of work to ensure tasks are completed correctly and have intended consequences.
Entrepreneurship
- Constantly searches for new ways of improving existing processes and doing things more efficiently; strives to understand what is missing from current product stream, and searches for new ideas for product improvement everywhere; attempts to address product gaps and build the business by creating innovative and unique solutions.
- Knows which organizational leaders to influence to win support for new ideas and skillfully persuades key decision makers to invest appropriate resources to transform new ideas into reality; woos venture capitalists, and other extra-organizational constituents to seek financial support for new ideas.
- Encourages innovation and entrepreneurial activity in team members; challenges teams to take calculated risks for innovation, and ensures teams have time to pursue their ideas for new and improved products or processes; holds regular team meetings to solicit bold new ideas.
- Advances and promotes the best ideas, even in the face of organizational resistance; shields the team from bureaucratic processes that interfere with an innovative climate, and works to change processes that interfere with growth and innovation.
- Recognizes the contributions of those who have enabled positive change, and gives appropriate rewards for extraordinary achievements.
Supporting Others
- Shows acceptance and positive regard for employees; maintains a pleasant, cheerful disposition; provides support and sympathy when others are anxious or upset.
- Counsels and encourages employees who have motivational or performance problems; indicates a desire to help subordinates learn from mistakes and overcome performance problems.
- Publicly affirms the importance and value of individual and group tasks in order to minimize the effect of budget cuts or other constraints on resources; skillfully advocates on behalf of employees, teams and their work; works hard to increase the prominence of employee's or team's work within organization.
- Pitches in to help support subordinates when workload is high; minimizes disruptions and helps employees overcome bureaucratic work obstacles; works with leaders in other organizational units to keep work flowing smoothly.
Motivating & Inspiring
- Generates enthusiasm for task objectives and team accomplishment through standard and creative influence techniques; focuses team effort and enthusiasm on goal attainment; secures behavioral commitment of team members for goal attainment.
- Recognizes contributions and achievements of all types, among people in high and low visibility jobs alike; actively searches for contributions to recognize; recognizes improvements in performance as well as commendable efforts that failed.
- Rewards employees for high performance; takes the time to determine what is rewarding for individual employees, and fairly and objectively dispenses rewards based on performance indicators that reflect a person's effort and competence.
- Sets an example for others by acting in ways that are consistent with organizational goals and objectives; confronts behavior that undermines the reputation of the organization.
Developing & Mentoring
- Helps employees identify skill deficiencies; develops mechanisms that elicit feedback from multiple perspectives, and encourages employees to solicit feedback from others about strengths and weaknesses; mentors employees by giving specific, constructive feedback on how performance can be improved.
- Provides opportunities for skill development on the job; plans for and seeks out developmental opportunities and stretch assignments that simultaneously develop employees and help the organization reach its goals; when appropriate, gives employees opportunities to mentor more junior employees.
- Encourages employees to attend relevant training and workshops to broaden skills; explains why training is relevant to employee's career and works with employees to identify training goals.
- Provides support and encouragement during learning process; expresses confidence that employees will be able to learn a new procedure or skill.
Strategic Planning/Action
- Establishes long-range objectives and specifies the strategies and actions necessary to achieve those objectives; identifies the most probable short and long-term consequences of implementing various strategies; strategically analyzes the risks, benefits and opportunities of various strategies.
- Confidently implements chosen strategies, despite difficulty and resistance from others; collaborates across organizational units to ensure buy-in and follow-through on strategies; skillfully obtains commitment from affected parties to transform strategic vision into reality.
- Comprehensively considers a wide range of problems that could affect the entire work unit; strategically identifies ways to address or capitalize on these problems.
- Identifies emerging trends and forms strategic plans to address them.
Preparing & Evaluating Budgets
- Studies all relevant budget material and anticipates future needs by gathering data on forthcoming plans; ensures that budget proposals incorporate all elements; translates organizational objectives, priorities, and analysis of current resources into accurate budget proposals.
- Prepares highly accurate and precise estimates of costs; obtains the most recent cost estimates from vendors or catalogs.
- Recognizes and corrects misstatements or errors of omission in budget proposals; effectively consolidates budget requests and proposals of multiple units.
- Prepares budget justifications and proposals that reflect the needs of the office; submits proposals that are thorough and accurate, and that receive management acceptance with little or no questioning.
Clarifying Roles & Objectives
- Clearly explains job duties, responsibilities and priorities; informs employees of the work for which they will be responsible for and helps them establish priorities; checks to ensure that employees understand duties and responsibilities.
- Provides instruction on how to accomplish an assignment; explains correct and incorrect ways to accomplish tasks; provides timely and effective feedback about whether task is being performed correctly.
- Helps employees set performance goals; in consultation with employees, sets goals that are clear, specific and attainable; informs employees of deadlines for goal attainment.
- Explains relationship between individual work tasks and overall organizational objectives; continually rethinks job duties and responsibilities as organizational objectives shift, and communicates new roles and responsibilities to employees as appropriate.
Managing Conflict & Team Building
- Identifies sources of conflicts, and provides parties with an opportunity to express their point of view; remains impartial in gathering and verifying information relevant to the conflict.
- Makes healthy use of conflict and disagreement to promote learning and expand team perspectives; encourages parties to work together towards problem resolution; works with parties to identify a range of acceptable solutions; when appropriate, proposes effective compromises that satisfy some of each parties' needs; ensures mutual commitment to a solution.
- Expresses concern for improving relations among team members; explains how dispute is affecting others; discourages non-productive behavior such as threats, insults, stereotyping or exaggerations.
- Encourages and builds mutual trust, respect and cooperation among team members; seizes opportunities and utilizes creative methods to build team cooperation and cohesion.
Developing an Organizational Vision
- Develops a strategic vision for the future of the organization or unit.
- Identifies fundamental values and beliefs to guide the organization into the future; generates excitement, enthusiasm and commitment for the vision.
- Skillfully gains commitment to make organizational vision a reality; creates a belief that vision can be achieved.
- Embodies organizational vision and demonstrates conviction in vision in order to inspire others.
Monitoring & Controlling Resources
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- Continually seeks to identify resources (e.g. staffing, training and monetary resources), both internal and external, that can be useful to unit and assist in work accomplishment; proactively works to secure additional resources for work unit.
- Develops strategic plans for making a wide array of resources available; ensures that knowledge of those resources is spread throughout organization.
- Develops strategic plans to anticipate future resource needs, and accurately identifies, tracks and prioritizes existing resource needs; monitors resource availability and makes contingency plans to ensure the availability of adequate resources in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
- Consistently seeks to perform work unit tasks in a cost efficient manner; identifies ways to produce the same level and quality of work while utilizing fewer resources; creates an organizational climate in which cost effectiveness is valued and rewarded.
