The Case Against Leadership Competency Models

The Case Against Leadership Competency Models0:00/569.6641×Somewhere in every large organisation there is a laminated poster setting out the firm's leadership competency framework. Twelve boxes, sometimes sixteen, occasionally twenty, listing things like: Strategic Thinking; Driving Results; Developing Others; Emotional Intelligence; Change Leadership. The language varies between consultancies and which Org Behaviour magazine HR departments read, but the grammar is constant—a finite grid of capabilities, each amenable to rating, training, and aggregation into a score. New hires are assessed against it. Middle managers are developed against it. Potential successors are filtered through it. Entire careers are built, or broken, on the distribution of green dots and red dots across these little boxes.The frameworks are so ubiquitous, and so obviously sensible at first glance, that the question of whether they describe anything real is rarely asked in boardrooms. It is asked, quietly and…