Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™

Competencies are defined as ‘measurable skills and behaviours that lead people to succeed in their work’. They continue to grow in relevance because they can be combined in unique capability models to align people to their organisation’s current or future business strategy.

Recognising the impact of a changing business climate in 2014, Korn Ferry set about discovering the response of organisations around the world. They found leaders were asking for competencies to equip their people to meet new and unfamiliar challenges and to prepare for the future.

As a result, the updated Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ was released as a streamlined 38-competency framework that captured high-impact skills and behaviours for the 21st century.

It was immediately applauded for its contemporary language and themes that resonate strongly with an accelerating need for flexible and adaptable leadership.

Competency models

The Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ allows you to identify competencies that are critical for achieving your business goals. This is important because the competencies of individuals combine to link directly to organisational outcomes that matter.

At a macro level, you can create a competency model to focus your people on skills that will drive performance for your organisation, in your industry and your operating environment.

Whether you are driving change, promoting innovation or pursuing a growth agenda, there are clusters of competencies that will enable people at all levels to contribute to the effort.

You can also drill down to a micro level to diagnose, for example, the skills that would be needed for an individual team member to succeed in a team leader position.

Competency research

The Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ gives a solid foundation for choosing competencies. The extensive research and normative data behind it mean that you can take the guesswork out and put science into the process.

Much work has been done to identify which competencies are critical for success in differing business contexts. Empirical studies have analysed which are most strongly related to high performance ratings, business outcomes and promotion.

Other studies have looked at how weakness in certain skills or the demonstration of problematic behaviours can impede a career or contribute to demotion or termination.

Ongoing analysis of the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ competencies against job performance ratings has revealed a startling fact – competency proficiency accounts for between 45 and 64 percent of job performance for individuals at different levels across an organisation!

Talent management

In summary, a well-constructed competency model provides a solid foundation for all aspects of talent management – selection, onboarding, assessment, leadership development, career planning, succession management and deployment.

The Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ can be used to make substantial improvements in each of these processes. Ultimately, it allows you to establish an aligned and integrated talent management system, that can be fine-tuned over time to meet the evolving needs of your business.