Leadership Competencies
Leadership competencies can serve as the foundation for many organizational talent management activities including:
Assessment of candidates
Succession planning
Leadership coaching
360 degree evaluations
Identifying and developing high potential identification
New leader on-boarding
Leadership development
Providing performance feedback
Exceptional Leadership LLC uses competencies in very unique ways to ensure that there is greater objectivity in leadership processes.
Succession planning. Amazingly, few healthcare organizations have succession plans. Most current studies suggest that only one-third to forty percent of healthcare organizations have addressed the leadership succession issue. Even fewer have done so in the physician leadership ranks. Those that do often have very superficial programs laced with little data to support the program.
360 degree evaluations. Most 360 programs are based upon perceptions of chemistry and ability to get along with others. While these criteria are important, the more robust programs are anchored in specific leadership competencies.
Assessments and job descriptions. "Many organizations fail to use leadership competencies in their assessment regimen. This happens often because of the superficial wording in the qualifications section of many job descriptions or in some cases because no well-developed leadership competency model exists."
The following competency model was developed by Carson Dye and Andrew Garman in 2005 and updated in 2015 for their book, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives. While there are many competency models in use today, this one has significant support throughout the industry and has proven to be one that has wide acceptance. It has been used extensively in assessment, selection, leadership development, succession planning, and coaching.
Dye-Garman Leadership Competency Model
(below model is copyright protected)
The Sixteen Competencies in the Dye-Garman Model
Leading With Conviction means you know and are in touch with your values and beliefs, are not afraid to take a lonely or unpopular stance if necessary, are comfortable in tough situations, can be relied on to remain consistent even in tense circumstances, are clear about where you stand, and will face difficult challenges with poise and self-assurance.
Using Emotional Intelligence means you recognize personal strengths and weaknesses; see the links between feelings and behaviors; manage impulsive feelings and distressing emotions; are attentive to emotional cues; show sensitivity and respect for others; challenge bias and intolerance; collaborate and share; communicate openly; and can handle conflict, difficult people, and tense situations effectively. A person’s emotional intelligence is some-times referred to as his emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ.
Developing Vision means that you see the future clearly, anticipate large-scale and local changes that will affect the organization and its environment, are able to project the organization into the future and envision multiple potential scenarios or outcomes, have a broad way of looking at trends, and are able to design competitive strategies and plans based on future possibilities.
Communicating Vision means that you distill complex strategies into a compelling call to action, inspire and help others see a core reason for the organization to change, talk beyond the day-to-day tactical matters that face the organization, show confidence and optimism about the future state of the organization, and engage others to join in.
Earning Trust And Loyalty means you are a direct and truthful person, are willing to admit mistakes, are sincerely interested in the concerns and dreams of others, show empathy and a general orientation toward helping others, consistently follow promises with promised actions, maintain confidences and disclose information ethically and appropriately, and conduct work in open, transparent ways.
Listening Like You Mean It means you maintain a calm, easy-to-approach demeanor; are seen by others as warm, gracious, and inviting; are patient, open minded, and willing to hear people out; see through the words that others express to the real meaning (i.e., cut to the heart of the issue); maintain formal and informal channels of communication; and build strong rapport over time.
Giving Great Feedback means you set clear expectations, bring important issues to the table in a way that helps others hear them, show an openness to facing difficult topics and sources of conflict, deal with problems and difficult people directly and frankly, provide timely criticism when needed, and provide feedback messages that are clear and unambiguous.
Mentoring means you invest the time to understand the career aspirations of your direct reports, work with direct reports to create engaging mentoring plans, support staff in developing their skills, support career development in a nonpossessive way (e.g., support staff moving up and out as necessary for their advancement), find stretch assignments and other delegation opportunities that support skill development, and model professional development by advancing your own skills.
Developing High-Performing Teams means you select executives who will be strong team players, actively support the concept of teaming, develop open discourse and encourage healthy debate on important issues, create compelling reasons and incentives for team members to work together, effectively set limits on the political activity that takes place outside the team framework, celebrate successes together as a unit, and commiserate as a group over disappointments.
Energizing Staff means you set a personal example of good work ethic and motivation; talk and act enthusiastically and optimistically about the future; enjoy rising to new challenges; take on your work with energy, passion, and drive to finish successfully; help others recognize the importance of their work and find it enjoyable; and have a goal-oriented, ambitious, and deter-mined working style that others find infectious.
Generating Informal Power means you understand the roles of power and influence in organizations; develop compelling arguments or points of view based on a knowledge of others’ priorities; develop and sustain useful networks up, down, and sideways in the organization; develop a reputation as a go-to person; and effectively affect others’ thoughts and opinions, both directly and indirectly.
Building True Consensus means you frame issues in ways that facilitate clarity from multiple perspectives, keep issues separate from personalities, skillfully use group decision techniques (e.g., Nominal Group Technique), ensure that quieter group members are drawn into discussions, find shared values and common adversaries, facilitate discussions rather than guide them, and ensure the consensus-building process itself is viewed as fair and appropriate.
Mindful Decision Making means you are conscious of the approach you take to decisions; you make decisions based on an optimal mix of ethics, values, goals, facts, alternatives, and judgments; use decision tools (such as force-field analysis, cost-benefit analysis, decision trees, and paired comparisons analysis) effectively and at appropriate times; and show a good sense of timing related to decision making.
Driving Results means you mobilize people toward greater commitment to a vision, challenge people to set higher standards and goals, keep people focused on achieving goals, give direct and complete feedback that keeps teams and individuals on track, quickly take corrective action as necessary to keep everyone moving forward, show a bias toward action, and proactively work through performance barriers.
Stimulating Creativity means you see broadly outside of the typical; are constantly open to new ideas; are effective with techniques for stimulating group creativity (e.g., brainstorming, design thinking, Nominal Group Technique, scenario building); see future trends and craft responses to them; are knowledgeable in business and societal trends; are aware of how strategies play out in the field; actively read within and outside of healthcare; and make connections between industries and other trends.
Cultivating Adaptability means you quickly see the essence of issues and problems, effectively bring clarity to situations of ambiguity, approach work using a variety of leadership styles and techniques, track changing priorities and readily interpret their implications, balance consistency of focus against the ability to adjust course as needed, balance multiple tasks and priorities such that each gets appropriate attention, and work effectively with a broad range of people.
From: Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, 2nd Edition, Carson F. Dye & Andrew N. Garman, 2015, Health Administration Press.
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How well do leadership competencies work?
“One of the more significant reasons that competencies work so well is that they are so practical.”
Dye (2010) wrote that leadership competencies are “one of the only theories of leadership that actually offers the chance to ‘see’ leadership. For example, the trait theory of leadership states that a leader is an effective communicator; the competency theory provides specific behavioral examples of what effective communication is.” This is one of the reasons that many organizations have adopted their use.
Those in the position of selecting leaders can also benefit from learning about competencies. It will help them in their assessments of candidates and in their hiring decisions. A hiring mistake at the senior level is disastrous for any organization, and a better understanding of exactly what comprises highly effective leadership will minimize this risk.
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Exceptional Leadership enters its second decade.
“After almost nine years of use, examination, and application, the 16 competencies have stood the test of time.”
To re-verify the accuracy and the application of the competency model for this second edition, Dye and Garman:
◆ talked to several CEOs and other senior healthcare leaders, human resource executives, and leadership development executives about their use and acceptance of the competencies in the model;
◆ reviewed the use of the competency model with organizations, executive search, and consulting firms; and
◆ considered the many comments of support for the 16 competencies we have received over these years from individual readers."
(Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, 2nd Edition, Carson F. Dye & Andrew N. Garman, 2015, Health Administration Press.)
“What Carson Dye and Andy Garman have given us is not only knowledge about leadership—of which there are more detailed academic tomes on the subject—but rather a more practical application of leadership knowledge to competencies (skills and behaviors) that can be learned and measured. This application is important in the academic context because we have moved to competency-based curricula in our health administration programs and we also must measure and evaluate those competencies. One way to do that is by applying the Dye–Garman model to real-life situations.”
“The debate persists on whether leaders are born or made. Thankfully, the Dye– Garman competency model does not require us to know the answer. Rather, we can take leaders from where they are—with core strengths and ability—and seek to move them to extraordinary, using the best-practice tools outlined in the book to assess and improve critical success skills.”
Physicians and Leadership Competencies
“Physicians as leaders are often like fish out of water.”
Physicians are typically quick learners. Using the 16 competencies as a guide, they can learn and practice leadership quite effectively. This section includes suggestions for physicians to develop their leadership skills as they contemplate moving into either part-time or full-time leadership and management positions.
Leadership is exceedingly complex, but a good competency model can provide a helpful roadmap to the terrain. As more physicians move into the leadership ranks of healthcare organizations, they will be doing well by themselves and their organizations to learn and adopt a competency-based approach to leadership.