Behavioral Competencies
What are behavioral competencies?
Identifying specific behaviors when recruiting new talent or even defining various positions within your company is one way to better align talent with business needs. These specific behaviors are known as behavioral competencies. Behavioral competencies are the soft skills that distinguish levels of employee’s performance. Some examples of behavioral competencies include:- Adaptability
- Client focus
- Conflict management
- Impact and influence
- Initiative
- Problem-solving
- Resilience
Various positions benefit from different behavioral competencies. For example, you want someone in your finance department to have excellent data literacy, interpretation, and management skills. That wouldn’t be a skill that would be as important for someone in your janitorial department. Effective housekeeping staff must determine how to get stains out and know what supplies they need and when they need them.
Why are behavioral competencies essential to your business?
Correctly applying behavioral competencies to job descriptions and performance indicators sets your company and your employees up for a higher level of success. One of the keys to this success is to make sure that you define exactly what you expect that behavior to look like at various levels of performance. One way to do this would be to define what various performance levels would look like in a rubric. It is true that this type of approach to behavioral competencies takes time to put in place. However, it also puts the employee in control of how they perform against expectations.
What is the history of behavioral competencies?
Behavioral competencies became more prominent in hiring and performance process following research by David McClelland in 1973. His assertion competencies could be more effective predictors of job success than traditional intelligence or aptitude tests. Competencies focus on how individuals apply their skills, often influenced by motivation, values, and behavioral tendencies. For example, two employees may have similar technical skills, but differ in how consistently they apply those skills, respond to challenges, or engage with others, resulting in different performance outcome.Summary
Taking the time to differentiate your company from your competition by defining what behaviors will make sure your employees have the opportunity to be successful. There’s no question that you need to require specific hard skills for each position, but adding these soft skills to those expectations can set your company up for greater success.
