Continued from previous page COMPETENCIES DESCRIPTORS/BEHAVIOURS Building and Maintaining High Performance Teams Promote a clear picture of the department’s/organisation’s future and ensures the team can relate own goals to same; provide clear directions to individuals about performance expectations and checks to ensure understanding; work closely enough with team to know when issues are 'brewing'; keep team informed about developments in the organisation and what this means for them; ensure that team and others have all the necessary information to remain motivated and work effectively; clarify issues when needed and give explicit instructions to the team when new or different priorities emerge; support the team and its reputation; demonstrate the ability to work as part of a multifunctional team to meet desired business goals; meet team deadlines and responsibilities; listen to others and value opinions, help team member to meet goals, welcome newcomers and promote team atmosphere; identify and recommend steps to address team or individual capability requirements and gaps to deliver current and future work; promote inclusiveness; continually seek and act on feedback to evaluate and improve their own and team’s performance. Coaching and Mentoring Ensure that individual and organisational learning and talent development opportunities are fully exploited in order to enhance organisational capability; identify and develop all talented team members to support succession planning, devoting time to coach, mentor and develop others; role model workplace-based learning and encourage development, talent and career management for team members; coach and support colleagues to take responsibility for their own development; ask powerful questions; drive intra- and inter-team discussions to learn from experiences and adapt plans and processes accordingly. Knowledge Seeking, Information Management Identify a broad range of relevant and credible information sources and recognise the need to collect new data when necessary from internal and external sources; recognise patterns and trends in a wide range of evidence/data and draw key conclusions, outlining costs, benefits, risks and potential responses; ensure that departmental data and information is treated with care in accordance with security procedures and protocols; inform the design of such procedures and protocols; invite challenge and where appropriate involve others in decision-making to help build engagement and present robust recommendations; is able to seek out information based on an underlying curiosity or desire to know more about subject area; ask questions that go beyond what is routine, in order to 'dig' or press for exact information; monitor external sources of sector or specialist information as a basis for taking decisions or building plans; review, scan and analyse trends in the external environment, looking at what can be learned from other sources. Elements of this competency descriptor have been taken from the UK Civil Service Competency Framework 2012-2017 As you examine the leadership competencies above, share with us: What do you see as the linkages between leadership and effectively addressing the current complex challenges that we face today? How might we foster these leadership competencies for our varying levels of leadership? Send your comments to: info@caricad.net Dr. Lois Parkes is the Leadership Development and Institutional Strengthening Specialist at CARICAD. This article was originally prepared as a blog on the organisation’s website but was adapted for this edition of the Horizon. 10
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