My first task in my new training role is to identify the training needs for our Team Leaders.
However, I only have a brief job description and feel by identifying the core competancies required to be an efficient team leader will initially help me to plan a developmental training programme for them. However, I could use some help in identifying these competancies, could anyone put me on the right track. Thanks
JAYNE BAKER
13 Responses
Here’s some…
In the past I’ve used
Planning and Preparation
Influencing
Motivation
Communication
Team Player/Focus
Leadership
Customer Service orientation
Resilience/Objection Handling
Listening
Team Leader Competencies
Jayne
You might want to contact the ILM (Institute of Leadership & Management) and ask them to send you some information on their Team Leader Award. This information contains a number of competencies for Team Leaders some of which are seen as core competencies and others that are optional, dependant on the organisation’s requirements. Even if you have no intention of using the award it will provide you with a great deal of information. Their website is http://www.i-l-m.com.
Arian Associates Ltd
Agree with last comment – Check out the Team Leader Awards from ILM
NVQ in Team Leading
You can download the standards for the OCR NVQ level 2 in Team Leading from the OCR website, http://www.ocr.org.uk (search for NVQs in Management). The scheme book and candidate assessment record can be downloaded as a PDF file. These may give you some ideas about core competencies.
Team Leader Competencies
We have developed a 3 level set of competencies with headings
Technical
System Knowledge
Client Knowledge
Industry Knowledge
Company & Product Knowledge
Team Management (Planning, Problem-solving, Decision-making, Reporting, People Management)
Client Focus
Teamwork
Trust
Innovation
Performance
Each competence has a set of desired behaviours with Performance indicators for each level of competence along with the appropriate training and assessment method.
Happy to supply details.
andrea.grocott@db.com
TL competencies
Here’s the content of our TL inhouse course (I suspect our issues are the same in Australia)
The Team Leadership Program develops team leaders in the following core capabilities:
· Managing Yourself
à understanding of personal capability and style preference,
à understanding of team leadership roles
à ability to seek feedback and respond constructively, and
à ability to take responsibility for personal learning and development.
· Managing the Business
a. Organisation Understanding
à understanding of the organisation and the broader economic and commercial environment in which business units operate,
à understanding of strategic direction and organisation priorities,
à understanding of customer service as a business driver,
à understanding of decision making and business processes,
à ability to actively participate in the business planning process, the ability to take account of the commercial and financial implications of local business decisions.
b. Business Process Improvement and Change Management
à ability to initiate business efficiency and effectiveness improvements,
à ability to manage the potential impact of change on teams and team members and identify strategies for overcoming resistance,
à ability to analyse business processes in order to identify opportunities for change, and
à understanding of the principles of business process improvement and their application in the workplace.
· Managing Others
a. Managing Relationships
à ability to communicate effectively one to one,
à ability to resolve conflict, and
à ability to give constructive feedback.
b. Managing Groups
à understanding of team dynamics,
à ability to facilitate team meetings, and
à ability to apply effective team decision making and problem solving techniques.
c. Leadership – Managing Performance
à understanding of group dynamics,
à ability to apply effective team decision making and problem solving techniques.
à ability to set effective individual and team goals based on business strategies and objectives,
à ability to effectively communicate performance expectations, and
ability to monitor performance, provide feedback and take appropriate action.
Regards, Gail Schmidt
In addition to competancies
Jayne,
this is a bolt on to the answers requested. We developed a competancy based Team Leader programme for a major UK Bank’s Service Centres. I agree with many of the approaches already mentioned but would like to add a suggestion. Develop the training by asking your existing team leaders what were the problems they encountered as new team leaders within the business. Use these problems to build scenarios and use these scenarios as the foundations for training the competancies. This also allows you to identify the assessment opportunities, which can be scenario based and fed back through line managers.
This approach addresses the problems facing TLs in your organisation, will help support your org’s objectives, and be highly relevant to the needs of the users. Collect this information from existing TLs during your TNA.
Good Luck
Focus on your best performers
Jayne
Beginning with an off-the-shelf competence model is often a good starting point. However, it is vital that you write the competencies in a way that is relevant and meaningful to your team leaders. I would recommend an analyis of the competencies displayed by your most successful team leaders as a starting point. Ask what they do that is different from the average to poor performing team leaders.
Good luck
Richard
Model Success
Jayne, I would go one step further than Richard.
Step 1: Define what success is in your business – make it as measurable and consensual as possible, by involving a small team.
Step 2: Identify the few Team Leaders who show the very greatest levels of success.
Step 3: Model their values, beliefs, competencies and behaviours as applied to the role
Step 4: Look for the common features and start to test the model
Step 5: Develop and deliver training
The benefit of this approach is is a highly contextualized set of competencies that honours your people and, by modelling the best, will by definition deliver results.
Modelling like this is at the core of NLP, but non-practitioners will be able to achieve considerable success. If you want to discuss further, feel free to contact me (mike@thoughtscape.net)
Guided activity
Perhaps this is a bolt-on idea to David’s. I too used a similar case study idea and worked it in with a business game. This got the potential team leaders to address specific behaviours, skills etc they would need in order to address the case study problems. The game I used was “What Makes a Manager” by Northgate. At the time I was working with a group of individuals who were progressing towards management in the future, and had a confused idea of the term ‘competency’. The method did what I wanted it to do, and I’ve used it successfully since then.
If you need more information feel free to email me: gannaway@supanet.com
Reparatory Grid interviews
Jayne,
The approach I’d favour is to use reparatory grid interviews with existing job holders and their managers to draw out the core competencies. This has the advantage over off-the-shelf lists in that it relates them more accurately to your business and uses the language and culture of the business. 360 questionnaires could then be used to assess development needs and focus future training areas.
If you need any help, feel free to email me on Jane.yarnall@care4free.net. If not, good luck!
Jane
Core Competancies
I have recently had to review our own in-house development programme. We are accredited for the ILM First Line Managers award and Certificate in Management. However, like many other respondents to your question we developed some core competencies through surveying existing team leaders. This was working with a company called ERAS Ltd (www.eras.co.uk.). Our resluts provided the following core competencies as being the most important within our orgainsiation’s environment.
Meeting Objectives
Planning & Organising
Decision Making
Quality Orientation
Information Gathering
Team Work
Persuading Others
Ethics and Standards
Customer Care
To date we have been able to draft a revised appraisal format and accredited development programme that addresses these competencies. Initial feedback is very positive for relevance, improved performance and impact on bottom line results. Hope this is usefull.
Endless options
Hi Jayne
I suspect there is as many variations in answers here as there are trainers! I have a set of core competencies falling generally into three categories – empirical managment skills, people skills and leadership which I have refined based on my client base here in New Zealand.
These have been worked into both team leader and first line manager long term development programmes with competence evaluation and ongoing development planning.
Please feel free to contact me for more details if you are interested.
Good luck!