Competence, A Core Leadership Trait

By A,Abeku Haywood-Dadzie

“Competence goes beyond words. It's the leader's ability to say it, plan it, and do it in such a way that others know that you know how - and know that they want to follow you” John C. Maxwell

Man, material, machine, method, and money are the 5M's that leadership is all about influencing and managing. It's about persuading and encouraging an organization to improve their performance, efficiency, and effectiveness by employing best business practices.

Leadership involves the selection and monitoring of materials used by a team with the aim of significantly increasing productivity over the entire process. It also involves the installation and maintenance of durable machines to optimise the operation process of a unit by combining the latest innovations with time-tested methods to create a lean and efficient manufacturing process. Finally, it also includes precise measurement and control as well as feedback to help keep systems performing at their peak. This calls for leadership competence.

"Competence" is one of the most important requirements for leadership. Skill, talent, capacity, expertise, proficiency, capability, fitness, and qualification are all synonyms for "competence." According to the US Army, "competence" is defined as a set of skills, knowledge, attributes, and behaviours that are observable and measurable. It is the ability to perform activities to the standards required in employment, using an appropriate mix of knowledge, skills, and attitude. All competencies have indicators that allow them to be observed and measured. When applied to leadership, competence is a set of leadership skills and behaviours that contribute to superior performance. It includes defined attributes that are used to assess a leader. It’s important to note that although competence alone can't make a leader, it can unmake a leader. Leaders who are competent exhibit a set of attributes which includes the one below.

A leader must exhibit cultural intelligence to be effective. Culture is a "genus equus", a wild horse that leaders must tame if they intend to succeed; like a game of darts, they must focus on culture if?they want to have a shot at the bull’s eye. Culture remains an important consideration in the implementation of any strategy. Whereas a strategy remains an inanimate creature on paper, culture possesses an invisible persona that can be identified by members within an ecosystem. To quote Peter Drucker, "culture eats strategy for breakfast; it has the capacity to take out any strategy and render it useless."In-between ambition and performance, leaders must appreciate the fact that the success of their team depends not?only on the hard issues but on the soft issues as well. David Livermore is quoted as saying that "a diverse workforce, whose members have developed their cultural intelligence, is a more productive workforce—and a diverse team?with high cultural intelligence will outperform homogeneous teams." It’s imperative for leaders to appreciate that diversity exposes hidden norms and values and exhibits the richness of differences among cultures. It also removes mysterious partitions?and demystifies long-held myths within an ecosystem.

Another skill that leaders must have is social intelligence (SI).Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey believes that "it is social intelligence, rather than quantitative intelligence, that defines who we are as humans." In other words, social intelligence is how we read others and approach them to gain the best possible connection. It is the ability to successfully build relationships and navigate social environments.

Another core competency a leader must exhibit is intelligent quotient (IQ). While intelligence quotient declines in favour of emotional intelligence as a leader progresses up the leadership pyramid, intelligence quotient remains a required competence for leadership.It may not necessarily be the best predictor of leadership potential, but it is a key ingredient in leadership. It is crucial for a leader to exhibit a high level of mental astuteness when it comes to technical skill, or intelligence quotient. It is imperative?for a leader to possess the ability to reason logically, communicate excellently, and possess a wide knowledge of skills and abilities in the field of their endeavor. A leader must not necessarily know everything but must know enough to serve as an information reservoir and hub for the team he/she leads, a last resort when it comes to key issues relating to the organisation in order to engender trust among the team members. They must be able to answer the question, "Where are we going?"?

Another unique competence that distinguishes good leaders from great leaders is emotional intelligence. According to Daniel Goldman, "It’s the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for?motivating ourselves and for managing emotions in ourselves and in our relationships." He emphasised that what differentiates great leaders from good leaders isn’t technical skills or intelligence quotient [IQ] but emotional intelligence, a group of five skills?that enable the best leaders to maximise their own and their followers' performance. These five key elements are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, and empathy and social skills. It must be said that a leader must learn to lead himself or herself in?order to lead others. Emotional intelligence, however, is not about being nice in the face of disengagement, misalignment, or underperformance. It’s not about being expressive, effusive, unreserved, and it's not about being touchy-feely. John D. Mayer captured?it this way. "It’s not agreeableness. It is not optimism. It is not happiness. It is not calmness. It is not motivation. Such qualities, although important, have little to do with intelligence, little to do with emotions, and nearly nothing to do with actual?emotional intelligence. "

A leader must also exhibit excellent political skills to succeed in today’s environment. Power and politics are inextricably linked to leadership; they indirectly define and regulate an organization's environment. Whenever people come together, a "power field" or "power platform" is created due to the fact that most organisations have a pyramid-shaped structure, and this results in the emergence of a political atmosphere. Power and politics within organizations are common?because, as a social system, organisations provide a power base for individuals and groups, and since people want power for many different reasons, political behaviour becomes widespread in most organisations. Leaders everywhere, from the Pope to my President, from?the King to the Local Chief, from the Metropolitan Chief Executive, to the Local Authority Officer, accrue power in their capacity as owners of a resource or as agents acting on behalf of the owners of the resource. The management of these resources puts them?in a position of power and creates a political atmosphere around them.?They require this power to lead their organizations, and they obtain this power from both positional power and personal power.?The key to effective leadership lies in using a combination of both. It is incumbent on leaders to know how to manage these powers by first knowing what they are and how to use them appropriately within the organization's political space. Effective leaders?know how to use their power to influence the members of the organisation towards the mission and vision of the organisation and to put into place processes and procedures that work towards their organization’s goals.

Successful leaders understand the importance of teamwork. They know how to yoke the efforts of their team to complement each other’s efforts in order to avoid or minimise conflict. They see their team as a jigsaw?puzzle: "a set of numerous interlocking pieces which when assembled together produce a complete picture." They understand that although each piece of the puzzle might be unique, when fitted together, they contribute to the entire puzzle. They believe in synergy?and the fact that harmony does not always mean singing in unison. According to Tom Peters, such leaders don't create followers, but more leaders.

Leaders who had previously dismissed social media platforms as "child’s play" are rewriting their notes. Leaders in the social media age must be more consultative, collaborative, and responsive to different shades of culture, gender, and age. Social media gives the leader numerous opportunities to quickly connect and communicate with his audience.It helps leaders to establish immediate relationships and rapport across business functions. It’s currently a reliable?way to facilitate knowledge sharing. Effective leaders know how to leverage social media to encourage innovation and enrich dialogue at all levels of the organization. Unlike the days when organisations controlled the flow of information, today's social media continues to tip the balance of power towards individuals. It’s therefore imperative for the leader today to be comfortable when it comes to driving real time social conversations while navigating the risks that come with an environment he has little or no?control over.

Effective communicators have the ability to paint pictures with words. They are clear, concise, and accurate. Knowing what you want to accomplish may seem clear in your head, but being able?to clearly and succinctly describe what you want done is the definition of leadership. Successful leaders communicate to energise their base. They know why they are communicating, what they want to communicate, when to communicate, and who they are communicating?with. They know how to encourage and empower their followers with their words. They understand that people don’t remember what they think is important, but they remember what they think is important. This is because each of their followers enters?into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly influence their understanding of the message, and their response.

The ability to make the right decision is another great competency needed for leadership. Leaders are decision makers, and great leaders make great decisions. Life is a series of decisions, and our individual decisions determine our destiny. According to Professor Robert Bernard Reich, "The intellectual?equipment needed for the job of the future is an ability to define problems, quickly assimilate relevant data, conceptualise and reorganise the information, make deductive and inductive leaps with it, ask hard questions about it, discuss findings with colleagues,?work collaboratively to find solutions and then convince others." To put it another way, for leaders to be successful in the future, they must be able to stay cool and confident under pressure, think on their feet, and make excellent decisions.

Most organisations spend billions on leadership training to develop, sustain, and enhance the leadership competence of their leaders. The challenge, nonetheless, is how leaders are able to translate what is learnt during these training sessions onto the job. There is and always will be a gap between theory and practice. This gap, however, can only be filled by what intrinsically motivates the individual leaders. That is the ability of the individual to define the direction?of what he wants to achieve in life, and to move in that direction with consistency and clarity. Personal leadership or self-leadership emphasises what HR practitioners call a personal development plan [PDP], a capacity to develop, improve, and sustain?one’s own leadership competence.