Leadership Competency

According to Dr. Warren Bennis, competency of leadership focuses on the five personal characteristics, or competencies, essential to effective leadership and on the five skills with which leaders put these competencies into practice.
The five categories the instrument assesses are:
1. Focused drive
2. Emotional intelligence
3. Building trust/enabling others
4. Conceptual thinking
5. Systems thinking
Each competency and each skill has a definition and an associated set of behaviors that demonstrates the competency or skill. Additionally, ten of these behaviors described each competency and each skill described by five of the behaviors. Furthermore, the ten behaviors for each competency are organized into two groups of five, each corresponding to a component of that competency.

Focused Drive
The competency of focusing on a goal and harnessing your energy in order to meet that goal—a balance between the components of:
• Focus. The ability to identify an important goal or vision and to channel efforts at specific targets that support that goal or vision.
• Drive. The ability to persevere, sacrifice (when necessary), and expend high degrees of energy to reach high levels of performance.

Emotional Intelligence
The competency of understanding and mastering personal emotions in a way that instills confidence, motivates, inspires, and enhances group effectiveness—a balance between the components of:
• Perception. The ability to read the emotions and thoughts of others using insight and analytical skills.
• Emotional Maturity. The ability to master emotions and cope with stress in a way that instills confidence, motivates, and enhances group effectiveness.

Trusted Influence
The competency of evoking trust from others and placing trust in others to enable them to succeed—a balance between the components of:
• Commitment. The ability to evoke trust from others by keeping commitments, adhering to high ethical standards and principles, and building shared goals or values.
• Empowerment. The ability to help others reaching higher levels of performance through trust, delegation, participation, and coaching.

Conceptual Thinking
The competency of conceiving and selecting innovative strategies and ideas for the organization—a balance of the components of:
• Innovation. The ability to create/enhance ideas, products, and services that lead to bottom-line success.
• Big-Picture Thinking. The ability to see all of the forces, events, entities, and people that are affecting (or are being affected by) the situation at hand.

Systems Thinking
The competency of rigorously and systematically connecting processes, events and systems—a balance between the components of:
• Mental Discipline. The ability to sort through ambiguity and alternatives in a way that crystallizes and puts ideas into action.
• Process Orientation. The ability to increase overall learning and performance by designing, implementing, and/or connecting processes.