Leadership competencies: compare the models, then commit

Leadership competencies suffer from a paradox visible in one afternoon of research: every major institution publishes a different list — different counts, different names, different structures — and yet leadership development somehow proceeds. The resolution of the paradox is the useful insight: competency lists differ because they’re organizational artifacts, not discoveries. Each model encodes what its authors needed leaders to do. Which means the practitioner questions aren’t “which list is correct?” but “how do the serious models compare, and how do I build or adopt one that actually changes behavior?” Both answered below.

How the major models compare

Model family	Structure	Distinctive emphasis	Best borrowed for
SHRM-style (HR profession)	Clustered competencies w/ proficiency standards	Ethics, consultation, business acumen for people-leaders	HR leadership tracks; proficiency-level language
Korn Ferry (consulting)	Large library (dozens of competencies) mapped to roles	Granularity; research-based scaling by level	Enterprise talent systems needing fine gradation
Government/OPM (federal ECQs)	Five executive qualifications, defined behaviors each	Leading change, leading people, results, business acumen, coalitions	Clean tiered structure; public accountability framing
CCL-style tiered	Competencies organized as leading self / others / organization	Development sequence across a career	Career-stage program design
In-house custom	Whatever the strategy demands	Fit to one company’s actual needs	The company that built it — when it’s behavioral

Two honest observations from the comparison. First, the content converges more than the packaging suggests: communication and trust, developing people, decision quality, execution, and leading change appear in essentially every serious model — a durable core underneath the branding. Second, the models differ most on structure (library vs. short list, tiered vs. flat), and structure should be chosen by use: a 40-competency library serves an enterprise talent system and buries a 200-person company; five well-defined qualifications serve the mid-size fine.

The misconception: the list is the work

Competency initiatives fail in a recognizable way: months of workshops produce a handsome model — eight competencies, a wheel graphic, laminated cards — and leader behavior changes not at all, because the model stopped at the altitude of adjectives. “Strategic agility.” “Inspires excellence.” Nobody can practice an adjective, observe it, or measure it; the poster hangs, the Tuesdays continue.

The replacement discipline is translation all the way down: each competency defined as observable behaviors, per leader level, with the behaviors specific enough that a colleague could witness one this week. “Develops others” at the frontline tier becomes runs weekly 1

that ask before telling; delegates one stretch task per person per quarter — which is now trainable (coaching practice, specifically), assessable, and honest. The behavior layer is also where competency models connect to actual development machinery: behaviors can be baselined, practiced in real work, and re-measured, which is the loop a leadership development program runs and a poster cannot.

Building or adopting one, practically

Start from strategy, not template. The opening question isn’t “what do good leaders do?” (the literature answered it; see the convergent core) but “what must our leaders produce in the next three years?” A company entering heavy change weights change-leadership and credibility; a scaling company weights developing others and delegation. The strategy-derived weighting is what makes the model yours rather than SHRM’s with your logo.

Keep it short and tiered. Fewer than ten competencies; behaviors defined separately for frontline, mid-level, and executive tiers, because “drives results” is a different animal at each altitude. The tiered structure (borrow the government ECQ or CCL patterns freely) is what makes the model usable in promotion decisions without pretending a supervisor and a president share a job.

Wire it in, or admit it’s decorative. The test of a live model: it appears in hiring rubrics, feeds the assessment and development system, and shapes promotion conversations. A model consulted only during its own annual review is already dead.

It’s a Thursday in June at an equipment-rental company in Omaha, and the new CHRO is retiring the twelve-competency wheel her predecessor spent a year building — not because it’s wrong, but because in eighteen months she can’t find one decision it changed. Its replacement is almost embarrassingly modest: five competencies, behaviors defined at three levels, each behavior traceable into the interview guide, the 360 items, and the development curriculum. The executive team’s first reaction is that it looks less impressive. Her answer becomes the project’s motto: “The old one described leaders. This one schedules them.”

Describe less, schedule more. That’s the whole discipline — and it’s also why the competency conversation, done seriously, always lands back at trainable skills: the behavior layer is where competencies stop being vocabulary and start being development.