I’m just back from a couple of days out of the office and catching up on e-mails.

One e-mail is a request, from a member of the Training Journal Daily Digest, for templates and ideas to support the process of identifying soft skills needed across the organisation as the basis for a Training Needs Analysis. I offer a super-simplified description of the process I would often go through with a client:

– I use either in-depth interviews or focus groups to elicit data about the behaviours shown by effective and outstanding performers. Either way, this involves a process of understanding what effective and outstanding performance look like in a particular job (often leadership or sales) or across a whole organisation;
– This process elicits mountains of data! So I look for themes across this data. (In my case it helps that I have a specific training in conducting this kind of research. Still, if you have the skills to discern themes and if you also have the skills to be alert to the difference between behaviours that lead to effective or outstanding performance and “nice to have” behaviours which don’t affect performance, this is a process that you can go through within your organisation);
– I have a specific process or way of describing behaviours so that they can then be used as the basis for the kind of gap analysis my correspondent describes. I include a definition of the competency: what is it all about? What are the intentions that underpin it? I look for levels of competency – what is the most common manifestation of this competency? Then what additional levels are shown by increasingly successful performers? Some organisations like to include contra-indicators – what do people do who lack mastery of this competency?
– Gathering data allows me to describe competencies in the language of the organisation I am working with, whilst drawing on much wider research. For anyone conducting this research (whether as a third-party consultant or in-house) it helps to validate the competencies and competency descriptions, e.g. by asking your management group for feedback.

I view this as a highly specialist process – and of course I would, because I have that specialist knowledge! So I know that organisations do work in house that I look on with horror – and still it’s a great step forward for their organisation! Maybe the heart of this process – the core question – is to be asking: What behaviours differentiate effective from outstanding performers in our organisation? Unless research is strongly anchored to performance it is unlikely to benefit the organisation.

Of course, there are also a number of books out there to draw on, including:

Goleman: Emotional Intelligence at Work
Mitriani, Dalziel and Fitt: Competency Based Human Resource Management
Spencer and Spencer: Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance

As I write I am only too aware that my description reflects my training and experience as a consultant with the Hay Group. This in turn reflects the Hay Group’s relationship with Professor David McClelland whose pioneering work in this area provided both the basis for the Hay Group’s approach and the underpin of work done by many other organisations and consultancies.

For my part, I am immensely grateful for my long and deep apprenticeship in this methodology. As a consultant I continue to draw on this work, to help organisations to describe the competencies that drive outstanding performance (especially amongst their leaders) and as the basis for assessing candidates for senior leadership posts. As a coach, this understanding also informs my work so that I work with senior executives with the understanding that the patterns of behaviour they adopt will determine the outcomes they achieve. It is so simple – and yet so often overlooked.