Developing Organizational Competencies

Prioritizing organizational competencies in your workplace is essential to giving your team the tools and support they need to succeed. When you allow employees to grow their competencies, it helps the competencies of the whole team grow as well.

The organizational competency growth process is likely to differ for every company. However, there are some tips and tricks that you can use to tailor them to your team.

What Are Organizational Competencies?

Organizational competencies are the skills, knowledge sets, and attributes that the employees in your team possess. Simply put, they are the standards for each role within your organization’s team.

When you focus on developing competencies based on an individual’s skills and interests, you are better set up to have the right people in the correct positions. With this approach, you’ll likely see an improvement in coaching, morale, and productivity.

Let’s look at some common organizational competencies you should focus on.

Business Mindset

This is the ability to look at problems and situations from a business perspective when making decisions. You should consider all decisions with business success and metrics in mind.

Maturity

Maturity relates to the ability to stay professional and dignified in all work situations. It also includes the ability to take responsibility for one’s actions, regardless of the outcome.

Problem-Solving

Solving problems requires the desire to find the best solution for your team and business. It also involves taking time to thoroughly consider many options and not rushing to make decisions based on short-sighted views.

Being Decisive

Decisiveness involves making quick, well-thought-out decisions. It also includes helping the other people on your team make the same quality of decisions. Decisiveness’s main goal is always moving forward as a team.

Flexibility

Being flexible allows you not to become frustrated when roadblocks arise at work. Not only that, but it also gives you the skills to give your teammates clarity when they need it. When flexible people work together, gaps in knowledge or roadblocks on the way to your deadline become less stressful.

Growth-focused

Having coaching and feedback as part of your work environment is an essential organizational competency. Embracing these growth aspects and effectively applying them helps develop every employee professionally and personally.

Having Strategy

Having a reason and purpose behind every decision you make at work is essential. If you’re only focused on the current day, your strategy can get lost in the chaos the day may bring. A plan for each project and long-term goal helps you stay focused and produce better results.

What Makes Organizational Competencies Different Than Skills?

On the surface, organizational competencies may seem the same as skills. However, competencies are the overall category under which skills fall. The skills an employee needs to succeed at work get grouped together into different competencies. Plus, a single competency may include many different skills working together.

Developing Organizational Competencies

Now that you understand organizational competencies, it’s time to learn how to work on them with yourself and your team.

When choosing your business’s main competencies, consider your core values. The competencies you focus on should all tie back to those values. This allows for a more significant connection and purpose for each competency. Employees who see this connection are more likely to stay motivated to reach their goals.

You must consider humans when choosing your competencies instead of data or reports. This will make them more attainable and relatable, both crucial for success. Consider talking to your team members and getting insight into their most essential qualities in the company. With this information, you can begin developing your organizational competencies.

How Many Organizational Competencies Should a Company Have?

It can be tempting to create a long list of competencies you want to see improve in your company. However, if you have too many, it can become overwhelming for you and your team. Most experts agree you should have no more than ten organizational competencies.

When choosing competencies, keep your company’s goals and vision in mind. It’s also important to get opinions from people in various positions so you can have the most complete perspective of what values are most important.

Tips for Implementing Organizational Competencies

The sooner you can implement organizational competencies in your workplace, the sooner you’ll see the improvements they bring. Here are some tips on areas to focus on.

Time Management

When there’s a focus on managing time efficiently, productivity and efficiency go up. Distractions happen, especially when employees are working from home. However, it’s essential to ensure distractions don’t become a constant issue.

One way to help with time management is to take larger tasks and break them down into smaller, more achievable ones. When you’re looking at the overall project, getting started can seem time-consuming and daunting. Yet, it becomes easier to manage when you break it down into smaller chunks of time.

Poor time management hurts your work quality and focus and can cause higher levels of stress. When it comes to time management, check these tips out:

• Prioritize daily tasks
• Avoid multitasking whenever possible
• Schedule breaks
• Know your limits – and don’t overextend yourself

Scheduling

This tip goes hand in hand with time management. Taking time to schedule your day, week, and month can help you better understand your priorities. When you schedule your work, you can maintain a better balance throughout each work day.

Your schedule should include every part of your work day: projects, emails, meetings, breaks, and any other engagements. When you see everything laid out, you can better prioritize your tasks.

Delegating

When you delegate, you can hand off tasks to someone you trust who can complete them. When you’ve taken the time to develop organizational competencies, you’ll better understand who is capable of which tasks.

This understanding allows you to properly delegate tasks to your team members. Without knowledge of what your employees excel at, you may end up giving them a task that will stress them out or overwhelm them.

This is also why scheduling is essential. When you’ve scheduled your priorities, you’ll know in advance which tasks need delegating. Then, when your employees have been scheduled, they’ll know whether they can take on one of your delegated tasks.

Collaborating

When your team successfully collaborates, everyone can bring their unique strengths to create a high-quality project. If you want the most success with collaboration, you’ll need a healthy workplace culture. True collaboration isn’t forced and must happen organically through connections your employees have built.

When your team masters collaboration, its potential is much higher than it was. Individuals have weaknesses at work. Yet, when they work with people who are better in certain areas, they’ll be able to produce better results.

Goal Setting

No matter what organizational competencies your company chooses, setting goals related to them is crucial to success. Leaders, employees, and whole teams should all focus on setting and meeting goals. It’s best to have a good mix of short- and long-term goals to stay focused while having smaller wins to celebrate along the way.

When it’s time to set goals, follow these steps:

• Brainstorm
• Prioritize the goals you come up with
• Consider which employees should help with which goals
• Come up with action plans
• Take action!
• Evaluate how performance has changed
• Don’t be afraid to be flexible along the way

Communication

As with any area of a healthy workplace, communication is vital to successfully implementing organizational competencies. If your team can communicate well, it can build both trust and morale.

Communication starts with leadership. It’s vital that employees feel they have an open line of trust and communication with their managers. This makes feedback and coaching more successful. The better your team’s communication is, the better their performance will be.

Takeaway

You should choose organizational competencies that reflect what’s important to your company. However, some tips help you make the most of your chosen ones, regardless of your unique goals. Don’t confuse organizational competencies with skills. Skills comprise competencies, the bigger picture of your company’s values.

When leadership is passionate about the company’s organizational competencies, it will make its way down to all levels of employees. That’s why it’s crucial to have managers buy into the organizational competencies your company has chosen to focus on. Their excitement will become contagious.