5 Strategies for Growing Employee Competencies

As I explained in an earlier post, a "competency" is a skill or behavior that describes excellent performance or strengths. They're the characteristics your best employees will use to achieve success in their careers.

When you look at an employees’ weak competencies, the key is to focus on growth. Making growth the priority will enable both you and your employee to view the competency -- whether weak or completely lacking -- as a trait that can be learned or retrained, and not a permanent weakness or limit.

Today, I’ll use the weak competency of poor listening skills as an example as I describe five strategic steps any manager can take in working towards growing employee competencies.

Step 1: Actions

If your employee has a difficult time listening to others and tends to talk too much, start by identifying actions he can take on the job now to change the behavior. Actions provide him with practice and help him establish new habits and avoid old ones.

Here are a few examples of actions that make sense with this example:

• Participate on a project team. Join a team project and focus your attention on taking notes and listening instead of talking.

• Practice active listening. When others are speaking, provide verbal and nonverbal cues that you’re interested and hearing what they have to say.

• Avoid interrupting. If you feel the urge to interject in a conversation, resist and practice listening instead.

Step 2: Coach/Mentor

Coaches and mentors are powerful allies for growth because they provide living examples for your employee to follow. So, rather than talking or reading about change, your employee can work with a reputable coach or mentor who will provide her with real-time feedback and developmental help.

In addition to feedback, coaches and mentors often increase visibility of the employee they are working with and aid in propelling her career forward.

Step 3: Developmental Events

“Developmental events” are on-the-job opportunities that help employees grow specific competencies. These events have many professional benefits including, increasing skills, business acumen and visibility among executives.

The main goal of a development event is to stretch an employee’s skills and promote rapid learning. One example of a developmental event would be to lead a team in a project or task force that enables your employee to facilitate the group and solicit input from its members.

Step 4: Reading

Reading increases competency and exposes your employee to new methods and research in his field -- in this case on listening. Consider books, articles, business periodicals and industry publications as you create an appropriate reading list. Also, consider starting a book club so employees can meet to discuss the materials. To further incorporate the readings into work, develop actions steps that coincide with the reading material.

Step 5: Training

Training and continuing education are beneficial for advancing an employee’s competency. These can include, classroom training, webinars, online courses, workshops, seminars, conferences, as well as accredited higher degree programs.Your organization’s human resource department is a good place to start looking for training recommendations. As with reading, add actions steps that coincide with the training material to further incorporate new skills and knowledge into work.Success Labs is a full-service, strategic organizational and leadership development company located in Baton Rouge, La. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.