Leadership Competencies for the Common Good

Written by julia fabris mcbride | Edited by Rory Hart
Sections of this topic
    An executive director talking with a leadership coach

    Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
    Lie in three words — health, peace, and competence.
    ~ Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope penned those lines of iambic pentameter in the first half of the 1700s. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard them from a stressed-out 21st century nonprofit executive director. Imagine the conversation.

    An Executive Director, on the verge of burn-out, talks to her leadership coach:

    Nonprofit ED: (stress evident in her voice) I still care about the mission. I want to move this organization forward. But I can’t see the big picture. Everyone wants something from me. The budget’s a mess. We’ve set some tough goals and I’m feeling overwhelmed. Like I’m just not up to it.

    Coach: What do you need?

    Client: I want to enjoy my work again. I want be able to make choices with all my senses intact. It’s pretty simple, really. I need health, peace, and competence.

    Leadership Competence in Civic Life

    In Tuesday’s blog post, Steve Wolinski wrote, “The primary benefit of competencies is that they provide an easily shared and understood view of leadership that can be used in a wide variety of ways to build human capital and drive business outcomes.”

    This morning, I’ll share a set of four competencies, developed by the Kansas Leadership Center, to help individuals exercise leadership in civic life. For two years, I’ve been using these competencies in coaching conversations with clients in Kansas and across the country. We find them useful in guiding the answers to two common questions about leadership:

    1. What can I do to focus my efforts?
    2. What should I pay attention to in order to make progress on the issues I care about?

    Civic Leadership Competencies (courtesy of Kansas Leadership Center)

    DIAGNOSE SITUATION

    • Explore adaptive and systemic interpretations
    • Distinguish the technical and adaptive elements
    • Distinguish the process challenges from the content challenges
    • Test multiple interpretations
    • Read the temperature in system
    • Identify the locus of the work

    ENERGIZE OTHERS

    • Engage unusual voices
    • Work across factions
    • Start where they are
    • Speak to loss
    • Infuse the work with purpose
    • Build a trustworthy process
    • Discover connecting interests

    MANAGE SELF

    • Identify you capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers
    • Figure out how others perceive your role in the system
    • Distinguish self from role
    • Choose among competing values
    • Increase tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict
    • Experiment beyond your comfort zone

    INTERVENE SKILLFULLY

    • Make conscious choices
    • Raise the heat
    • Give the work back
    • Hold relentlessly to purpose
    • Speak from the heart
    • Act experimentally

    What do you think? What interests you? Any thing you want to experiment with? What competencies or sub-points do you want to hear more about?

    julia fabris mcbride