We should be more concern with competencies than with intelligence when attempting to predict the potential success of employees. When a person demonstrates a competency, he or she is acting intentionally and behaving in a way that leads to successfully accomplishing a task.
For example, if a manager engages an employee in a conversation about performance, the manager is demonstrating competency called “developing others” if he or she (1) intend to guide and direct the employee’s behavior toward effective performance, growth, and development, and (2) gave specific, constructive feedback and expressed positive expectations for the employee’s improvement.
Competencies also involve other levels of personal characteristics that impact intention and action: motives, enduring personal traits, self-concept, knowledge, and skills.
Five Components of Competencies
Motives. Motives are needs or drive that fuel action. Employees are often driven with three needs: to achieve personal goals, have influence, and build positive relationship with others.
Traits. Are psychological or physical characteristics and/or consistent ways of responding to situations. For example, race car drivers have good hand-eye coordination and a tendency to remain calm in stressful situations.
Self-concept. Includes attitudes, values, and self-image – all powerful drivers of actions. For example, a self-confident person who values honesty will be more likely to take action when he or she sees unethical behavior.
Knowledge. Knowledge is information that a employee has at his or her disposal or the ability to find information when needed.
Skills. Finally, skills are learned abilities that are needed to perform tasks. Most professions require distinctive knowledge and skills. For example, a programmer needs to be skilled in the use of computer , and he or she must have knowledge of programming language. Similarly, an instructor needs to be skilled and knowledgeable in teaching.
Knowledge and skills are more easily observed. For this reason, knowledge and skills are often focus of development and training programs. Motives, traits, and self-concept are not as easy to develop as knowledge and skills. However, in order for employees to develop competencies, all levels must be attended to. In fact, if the deeper aspects of a competency are not attended to, the likelihood that the competency will be improved is much lower.
In shaping the organization’s core competencies, it needs to ask what the underlying knowledge, skill, is and attitude that enables the organization to provide its unique set of products. Another point is to determine how to use the organization’s core competencies to develop strategic responsiveness to gain competitive advantage.
In our school, one of our core competencies is the expertise of teachers in their respective fields; manage by competent and effective school heads. Most of them are having masters’ degree and doctorate degree in their fields of specialization. Highly qualified workforce capable to cater the student’s skills and knowledge they need to acquire in their chosen program. Establishing student’s career in today’s competitive industries has become a challenging pursuit of our organization. We believe that employers are increasingly having difficulty finding the right person for the job which often remains huge gap between the skills required by the industry and what a graduate has to offer. That is why a group of exemplary professionals in various fields we included them in the preparation of the curriculum/ curricula being taught in all SDSSU campuses.
Core competencies are like fuels used for innovation and the roots of competitive advantage. These core competencies lead to the development of core products. The kind of students that we produce is what I am considering as the core products. The way we educate and equip them with knowledge and skills in their technical and professional fields to become competent and well-rounded are the outcome of the core competencies that we applied
