Leadership Competencies Searching in All the Wrong Places

Written By: Bob Anderson CEO & Founder of The Leadership Circle

While leadership competencies play a very important part in developing e ective leaders, they are not the key to development. Certainly leaders need to continue to improve their competency models, especially in a world of escalating global complexity. But, in that search, they must not lose sight of the fact that competency is only part of the equation for developing e ective leadership. Focusing exclusively on competency will cause leaders to miss how development actually happens.

While the Leadership Circle Proles contain a very robust set of leadership competencies, a competency-only approach misses the power of The Leadership Circle altogether.

In a world of escalating global complexity, many leaders nd themselves In over their heads.
This phenomenon results when the leaders Operating System is not complex enough to match the complexity of the challenges facing the leader. In this case, the leader needs more than skill development. The leader needs to develop greater complexity of mind.

The Leadership Circle is founded on the principle that competency-only approaches are inadequate to the challenge of developing leaders for the complexity they are now facing.

Merely identifying an improved set of competencies, can only marginally enhance one's ability to develop e ective leaders. E ectiveness, in more complex leadership roles, requires a more advanced leadership operating system. Therefore, the Leadership Circles assessments contain a robust competency assessment that is packed into a much larger framework for developing leaders.

System Dynamics Theory

In System Dynamics Theory, structure determines performance. In other words, the primary determinate of the performance of any system is the design of that system. Underneath the design of the system is the thinking and assumptions that formed the design. In other words, thinking creates the design, and design determines the performance.

Deep structure is the system of the thinking that drives a leaders pattern of behavior.
Deep structure is the Leaders Operating System. The Leadership Circle Pro les are designed to surface deep structure. They create a platform that allows us to inquire into the beliefs and assumptions that are the source-code for the pattern of behavioras measured in the competency data. The bene ts of this approach are obvious: accessing the underlying assumptions that drive behavior creates the opportunity to redesign the operating system. This allows the desired leadership e ectiveness to develop naturally.

The Leadership Circle Assessment tools are powerful because they include a complete competency model and because they provide immediate access to the deep structure conversation. This combination serves-up breakthrough developmental opportunities.

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