Leadership Competency Model

Competencies will drive our new HR system

The State's human resources system encompasses a wide range of separate but related areas, including hiring, promotions, training, salary-setting, and performance evaluation.

What we're doing to modernize the State's human resources system

We're working to modernize all these areas to make it easier, and faster, for the State to hire qualified people. We also want to help employees pursue their career goals with the State by simplifying the complex civil service system and clearly identifying the training and qualifications our jobs require.

To reach these goals, we need to integrate all our HR functions so they use the same databases and same criteria. That means basing our system on what these separate but related personnel functions have in common, which is "competencies."

What are "competencies"?

"Competencies" refers to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics as demonstrated by behaviors that are needed to succeed in a job. Until now the State hadn't documented the competencies for California State civil service classifications. Instead, we relied on a "duties-based" system, which tended to divide rather than unify our various personnel functions.

The HR Modernization Project is approaching the daunting task of defining competencies one occupational group at a time. General competencies for jobs within the same occupational group tend to be the same. For instance, "scientist" classifications share the same general competencies, even though their technical requirements likely vary based on scientific field or specialty.

"Leadership" competencies

We recently completed work on expanding the "leadership" competencies - PDF to include competencies for ALL supervisors, managers, and executives in the State of California. You can see a list of these competencies and their definitions here - PDF. You can view a summary of the leadership competency model by competency cluster here - PDF.

 

Leadership Competency Model

• Competencies will drive our new HR System
• How your department can start using "competencies" for supervisors, managers, and executives
• More background on the Leadership Competency Model
• More about the "competency" concept for HR professionals

See also

Competency dictionary: List of 37 examples of general competencies and the behavioral characteristics associated with each one. This list will help you get a clearer picture of what we mean by general competency.

Leadership Competency Development Guides: Guides that are organized to help individuals build and improve in 16 competencies identified in the State of California's Leadership Competency Model.

Updated September 15, 2011 at 3:35 PM.