A Modern Approach To Understanding The Structure Of Competencies

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-18 02:26

Understanding the structure of competencies is essential for the functioning of a modern organization. After all, it is precisely on the basis of an understanding of what competence is and how it works, that the employer builds up his requirements for the employee, the compliance with which will determine his future performance. Unfortunately, at this stage, it is not always possible to talk about a direct correspondence between the requirements of employers and the productivity of hired employees of the organization. Firstly, this is due to the fact that these requirements do not always reflect the real need of the organization (very often the employer looks only at the applicant's education or work experience, having no idea of competencies at all). Secondly, the approaches to understanding competencies are different, so it is necessary to investigate the extent to which this or that approach can reflect the requirements for the employee, and to what extent these requirements will actually correspond to the given position. Third, the structure of competencies is also an important issue, i.e. the approach to understanding competencies should be structured in such a way that the requirements for the employee, developed within the framework of this approach, not only correspond to the requirements of the position, but also that they describe these requirements in full, and not only part of them.

The last point is very often overlooked in various approaches. In most cases, attention is directed only to the behavior of the employee, without considering the cognitive and emotional components. In other cases, these components are taken into account, but are considered for granted (for example, the mere presence of a diploma is taken as proof of possession of an intellectual skill).

The creation of a competence-based approach is credited to the American scientist David McClelland and his article "Testing Competence, Not Intelligence" [3]. It is the approach of this author that formed the basis of modern American research in this area.

Spencer and colleagues (Lyle M. Spencer, Jr., Signe M. Spencer) created a model that incorporates the main provisions of the authors-pioneers of the competence approach (Richard Boyatzis [1], David McClelland [3]), highlighting the following elements of competencies [nine]:

1. Basic quality (motives, psychophysical characteristics, "I" -concept, knowledge, skills) means that competence is a deep and stable part of the personality and can predetermine human behavior.
2. Causal relationship … Competencies based on motive, property and self-concept predict behavioral action, which, in turn, predicts the results of performance.
3. Execution criteria (best performance, efficient performance). Competence predicts performance, which is measured using a specific criterion.

The English approach, in its original form, concentrates on performance standards and excludes the personal component of competencies from consideration. However, one of the more recent models (Cheetham and Chivers, 1996, 1998) deals with it as well. A similar situation to the expansion of the competence model and the inclusion of personal characteristics in it is observed in other European countries.

In Russian practice, the competence-based approach is most often associated with the field of education. Hence, three areas of competence stand out: "knowledge, skills, skills", to which "experience of work" is added. Although this approach is applicable to the educational process, these components are insufficient to describe the structure of professional competencies. However, in Russia there are other approaches to determining the structure of professional competence:

N. M. Lebedeva considers the following aspects: problematic and practical - the adequacy of understanding the situation, setting and effective implementation of goals in a given situation; semantic - understanding the situation in the general socio-cultural context; value - the ability to correctly assess the situation, its essence, goals and norms from the point of view of their own and generally valid values [7].

F. S. Ismagilova in the structure of professional competence identifies such basic elements as: cognitive, reflecting the availability of knowledge; regulatory, allowing the use of knowledge; reflexive-status, which gives the right to act in a certain way at the expense of authority; a normative characteristic reflecting the terms of reference; communicative characteristics, because practical activities are always carried out in the process of interactions [6].

I. V. Grishina identifies the following structural components of competencies: motivational; cognitive; operating; personal; reflexive (anticipation, assessment of one's own activity) [4].

The above-considered approaches of Russian authors describe the structure of competencies rather qualitatively and fully, but in view of their complexity and volume, they represent a rather serious problem for the selection of assessment methods. In addition, and this applies not only to Russian authors, there is often a mixing of descriptions of the structure of competencies and elements of the list of competencies. So, the reflexive component can well be attributed to the cognitive element, only being its kind.

Based on the analysis, the author's approach to the consideration of this problem was formulated. The structure of competencies developed by Spencer was taken as a foundation, since it is it that seems to be the most optimal and at the same time easy to understand. The work will try to avoid the shortcomings of his approach (it is quite suitable for describing and diagnosing competencies, but poorly applicable to modeling skills, and to training employees).

The structure of competencies can be described by four components: personality traits, cognitions, behavior and results. This structure is at the same time a system where each element is connected and affects others. So, personal qualities determine the cognition of a person and his behavior, they predict the possibility of performing a particular activity. Human behavior is carried out on the basis of cognitions. On the other hand, by changing behavior, we also change the cognition of the individual, and if such changes occur continuously and systemically, then perhaps they will affect his personal qualities. The interconnection of these elements ultimately determines the result.

The question may arise about the need to include in the structure of competencies and such an element as emotions ("emotional intelligence" and similar categories are often singled out into a separate group of competencies). However, if we rely on the concept of behaviorism, then a person's emotions are no different from his behavior. And in modern cognitive psychology, emotions are a simple response to our thoughts and beliefs (cognitions). It is worth adding that the emotional state, in addition to behavior and cognition, is also the result of our personal qualities (for example, melancholic people are more prone to negative emotions than sanguine people). Hence the conclusion that emotion is not an independent unit for us, and its assessment makes sense only when we consider it as a consequence of behavioral reactions, personality traits or human cognitions.

The reason for the selection of these components was the criteria for their description, which are different for each of them. Accordingly, the diagnostic methods used also differ.

We will now take a closer look at each of the components:

Personal qualities. We will subdivide this element into two more levels: deep and surface:

The deep level includes the psychophysiological characteristics of the individual, his motives and personal qualities. To measure these indicators, standardized psychological tests are used, such as the 16-factor Cattell questionnaire, Eysenck's questionnaires, MBTI, etc. The choice of the questionnaire depends on the list of competencies used, since different functions of an employee require different personality traits.

The surface level differs in that it can be assessed by behavioral manifestations, i.e. directly, while we can only diagnose the parameters of the deep level with the help of specialized methods, or the deep life experience of a specialist engaged in an assessment, i.e. indirectly. The superficial level includes the values of the individual, and in some cases, the most deep and rigid beliefs can also be referred to here.

Values are, in fact, a direct and concretized manifestation of an employee's motives. They allow you to determine whether an employee is motivated to work, and whether he will be able to work within the framework of a given corporate culture. There are separate questionnaires for determining the values of an individual (for example, Schwartz's value questionnaire), but values can also be diagnosed in a regular interview with an employee. In particular, this problem is being developed in detail in neurolinguistic programming. NLP adepts have identified linguistic forms that have values and beliefs. Values are expressed in the form of nominalizations (verbal nouns), such as "success", "freedom", "love", "devotion", and are diagnosed by the questions "what is important to you (" was important ") (in a particular situation)", " for what? "," for what? ".

Nominalizations are a special case of a complex equivalent, using which a person expresses his beliefs. The complex equivalent involves equating internal experience with external experience. For example, "I am a good leader (internal experience, inference), because subordinates always followed my orders (external experience)." Often the second part of the expression (reason) is omitted in speech, and only the first remains. An individual's beliefs are also an important aspect of his entry into the existing corporate culture, affecting the performance of his functions. For example, if an employee's belief is that a client can be cheated, while the company is focused on honest and high-quality service, then, most likely, even having achieved a result in the short term, such an employee will bring losses in the long term.

Both beliefs and values are revealed not by simply counting the repetitions of individual phrases during the interview, but by assessing their importance to the individual. So a person, when pronouncing important words for him, can change his posture, voice indicators, use certain gestures, change the direction of his gaze (“change the calibration,” as it is called in NLP). There is no need to highlight any specific calibrations that would be indicators of "importance", it is enough to note the deviations from the standard state of the individual when pronouncing certain phrases.

Cognitions … The element includes, firstly, the body of knowledge and belief system of the employee, and, secondly, his thinking strategies (thinking skills). At this level, those competencies are described that cannot be observed (it is worth noting that, nevertheless, internal work can also manifest itself bodily in the form of eye movements, changes in muscle tone, etc.). If personal qualities are described by us as stable formations, then in human cognitions, processes and algorithms are more interesting. Models from cognitive psychology are used to describe and diagnose them, however, as applied to an individual subject, NLP adherents have achieved the greatest success in this regard, although they are not yet able to fully explain where ideas come from, despite all their attempts to model the thinking strategies of geniuses [five]. To describe cognitive strategies in NLP, the TOE model is used [8] … The so-called metaprograms are used as description criteria.

Metaprograms are not independent development, but are only a combination of various classifications of personality types, ways of thinking, cognitive styles, filters of perception, typical reactions and methods of processing incoming information from different branches of psychology. But in view of the presence of a large number of criteria (now the researchers already have more than 250 metaprograms), modeling achieves rather great success. If now it is not possible to simulate the process of creating brilliant ideas, then routine and even specific skills are modeled quite easily. By analogy with military strategies, cognitive strategies require certain resources (in the form of knowledge, personal qualities, level of intelligence, etc.), therefore, although the right strategy allows you to sort and optimize any mental activity, it alone is not enough.

To assess professional knowledge, as a rule, specialized tests are used. An experienced manager can assess the knowledge of an employee, even without the use of special techniques. Finally, a certificate or diploma can serve as an indirect indicator of the employee's knowledge.

It is worth noting that in the documentation, the cognitive and behavioral elements will not be separated, since most of the activities contain both components. For example, in the “customer focus” cluster, such type of behavior as “understands other people” can be included. This behavior (in the broadest sense of the word) includes, as a cognitive aspect, i.e. the employee must truly understand the client and the behavioral, i.e. express this understanding to the customer.

Isolation of the cognitive component may seem redundant, because any mental activity should still lead to some kind of real behavior. Indeed, if we are talking about a simple assessment of an employee, we can limit ourselves to describing specific behavior, often without even touching on personality traits. However, if we want to train an employee, determine his motivation, be able to understand how the best employee does what he does and transfer it to others, it is necessary to consider all the components of competence discussed above. You can write as much as you like in the description of the competence "identifies the needs of a person", but until we understand how exactly the employee identifies these very needs, this behavioral description will be useful for us, only within the framework of screening out inappropriate candidates for the position, but we cannot develop the existing ones will not help.

Behavior. The element includes skills, a generalized description of behavior in work situations and basic behavioral reactions (reactions to stress, conflict behavior, etc.). By behavior here we mean precisely the totality of muscle contractions, i.e. the cognitive element is not included here. On the other hand, very often it is a cognitive skill that leads to a certain behavior, therefore, before the assessment process, it is important to determine what we will be evaluating or modeling: a behavioral or cognitive skill.

Skills can be assessed by direct observation of an employee's behavior in the workplace or in a simulated situation. Also, the skill can be tested based on the result obtained and the time spent on obtaining it.

Generalized description involves an analysis of behavior that cannot be described in terms of skill. This description implies an analysis of the employee's behavior in many work situations. There may be descriptions such as: "Open to others (uses an open pose, etc.)", "Actively listens to the interlocutor", etc. These descriptions can be obtained using the method "interviews for obtaining behavioral examples" Flanagan's Critical Incident Method and Thematic Apperception Test.

Result … It is this element that determines the appropriateness of the allocation of a particular competence. Very often, HR managers use ready-made competency models, not understanding which competence leads to which result, which subsequently does not allow in any way to evaluate the competency model itself and change it. For this reason, it is necessary to determine the criterionally described result for each competence, which is a big problem, which in modern management, as a rule, is solved by the introduction of a system of key performance indicators. It is often not easy to define criteria for describing the outcome of the use of competencies. If complex skills related to sales and negotiations can be directly determined by assessing the number of successful sales, customer loyalty, etc., then, for example, such a manager's skill as “the ability to motivate subordinates” is difficult to determine through direct observation, but to evaluate criterially (according to the degree of manifestation of motivation in subordinates after the influence of the head), it is practically impossible without using special psychological methods, but they are not always accurate and often do not take into account external factors. That is why here we are talking about the importance of describing the strategy by which successful behavior is carried out. If we can understand and criterially describe what kind of internal work takes place in a person and how exactly he exercises a behavioral skill when he successfully motivates an employee, then we will have criteria for describing the changes that have occurred in the employee after the impact on him.

Moreover, without knowing what result we are achieving, it will be impossible to diagnose the competencies we need, since it will be unclear what to start from when identifying them.

Above, we examined a number of techniques that can be used to identify the competency components we need. They are not intended to replace standard methods, but only to complement them. Below we list a number of standard methods.

Functional analysis is used to define competency-based standards for a handbook of qualifications. It begins by describing the key goals of the profession and then identifies its key functions. A distinction is made between the actions that take place in the workplace and the functions that are the goals of these actions. The method focuses on the results of an action in order to establish expected performance in the workplace.

Critical Cases Method, proposed by J. C. Flanagan [2], is intended to obtain data on effective and ineffective behavior, which was demonstrated in reality (in critical cases). Usually the method is a step-by-step interview going through several stages: description of situations of successful or unsuccessful activity; a description of the employee's behavior in the framework of each of the events; systematization of descriptions at the levels of task areas and the traits of the employee's successful behavior that are adequate to them.

As a result, it is possible to compile a list of competencies and include indicators or performance standards for each core task.

Repertoire grids - method based on the theory of personality constructs by J. Kelly (George Alexander Kelly). It can be used to define criteria that distinguish high performance standards from low performance standards. The worker evaluates a set of objects using a set of constructs (rating scales). As a rule, both objects and sets of constructs are produced by itself. A typical instruction is to set the union of two objects out of three by some property that distinguishes them from the third, after which it is necessary to register the property used for categorization. Due to further factorization, a unique structure of the individual's personal constructs is built.

The above techniques can be applied together using the method "Assessment Center" … This is a comprehensive method for assessing the competencies required to work in a specific position, based on modeling professional activities.

The composition of the procedures of the assessment centers: interview with an expert; psychological, professional and general tests; a short presentation of the participant to the experts; business game; biographical questionnaire; description of professional achievements; individual analysis of specific situations; expert observation, based on the results of which recommendations are made for each employee.

The most promising, in defining competencies, seems to be the American tradition of highlighting the best workers and defining what distinguishes them from the mediocre ones. This sets a higher bar for employees, moreover, this is the only way to teach them the best skills.

The purpose of this article was not only to develop a more convenient and simple model of the structure of competencies, but also to point out that competencies can be used not only as criteria for evaluating an employee, but also as a tool for studying and modeling the activities of the best of them with the aim of subsequent transfer to all employees of the organization the best skills and abilities and the formation of their personal qualities, leading to maximum results.

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