Leadership Competencies -Searching in All the Wrong PlacesWritten By: Bob Anderson CEO & Founder ofThe Leadership Circle

While leadership competencies play a very important partin developing e!ective leaders, they are not the key todevelopment. Certainly leaders need to continue toimprove their competency models, especially in a world ofescalating global complexity. But, in that search, they mustnot lose sight of the fact that competency is only part of theequation for developing e!ective leadership. Focusingexclusively on competency will cause leaders to miss howdevelopment actually happens.

While the Leadership Circle Profiles contain avery robust set of leadership competencies,a competency-only approach misses thepower of The Leadership Circle altogether.

In a world of escalating global complexity, manyleaders find themselves “In over their heads.”

This phenomenon results when theleader’s “Operating System” is notcomplex enough to match thecomplexity of the challenges facingthe leader. In this case, the leaderneeds more than skill development.The leader needs to develop greatercomplexity of mind.

The Leadership Circle is founded on theprinciple that competency-only approachesare inadequate to the challenge of developingleaders for the complexity they are nowfacing.

Merely identifying an improved setof competencies, can onlymarginally enhance one's ability todevelop e!ective leaders.E!ectiveness, in more complexleadership roles, requires a moreadvanced leadership operatingsystem. Therefore, the LeadershipCircle’s assessments contain arobust competency assessmentthat is packed into a much largerframework for developing leaders.

System Dynamics Theory

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

Deep structure is the system of the thinking thatdrives a leader’s pattern of behavior.

Deep structure is the Leader’s Operating System. The LeadershipCircle Pro"les are designed to surface deep structure. They createa platform that allows us to inquire into the beliefs andassumptions that are the source-code for the pattern ofbehavior—as measured in the competency data.The bene"ts of this approach are obvious: accessing theunderlying assumptions that drive behavior creates theopportunity to redesign the operating system. This allows thedesired leadership e!ectiveness to develop naturally.

The Leadership Circle Assessmenttools are powerful because theyinclude a complete competencymodel and because they provideimmediate access to the deepstructure conversation. Thiscombination serves-upbreakthrough developmentalopportunities.

Read more and comment by visitingwww.TheLeadershipCircle.com

And clicking on “Leadership Quarterly”

- OR -

Get there directly atwww.TheLeadershipCircle.com/in-over-your-head