A mid-sized company can build a leadership competency model that people actually use in five steps: start from a research-based framework, tailor a short list of competencies to your strategy, define observable behaviors for each broad leadership level, validate them with your own leaders and data, and embed them in your performance management, development, and succession processes together. Our position is that a company this size should validate a smaller model rather than buy a bigger one, because a model your leaders cannot describe from memory is a poster and not a tool.
If your leadership team had to explain in under two minutes why one manager was promoted and another was passed over, what would they say? In our experience, the honest answer at mid-sized companies is often some version of “we just knew,” and that holds up only until the organization grows past the point where one or two people know every manager personally. At 100 employees and larger, you are usually at or near that point, and a written standard starts to matter.
What is a leadership competency model?
A leadership competency model defines the skills and behaviors that make leaders effective in your organization, described separately for each level of leadership, so that hiring, promotion, development, and succession decisions rest on one standard. A strong model describes capabilities and not personality traits, translates expectations into behaviors someone could observe, and gives leaders at every level a shared vocabulary for what good looks like.
Without that standard, talent decisions drift toward instinct and toward the people who seem like leaders – a judgment that depends heavily on each person’s own idea of what a leader ‘seems like.’” The result is promotion decisions that are inconsistent, development programs aimed at whatever content is available, and succession plans that stall because nobody can say what “ready” means. This often means employees are promoted without the proper preparation for their new leadership role.
How do you build a leadership competency model, step by step?
- Start from a research-based framework. A blank page invites a long wish list, and a generic template invites language nobody recognizes as their own. We begin with the OGC Leadership Competency Wheel, which organizes leadership competencies into six domains and balances adaptive (EQ) and analytical (IQ) capability. It draws on our Managing Partners’ research on organizational systems and on leadership and management.
- Tailor a short list to your strategy. Adapt the framework to your strategy, operating context, and culture, and keep the list short enough to use. Typically 8 to 10 is a good number for organizations using competencies for the first time.
- Validate with your own people and data. A survey that captures broad employee input and focus groups confirm that the draft matches the leadership your employees experience. Structured interviews with key senior leaders ensure you’ve captured additional competencies necessary to support future strategic direction.
- Define behaviors at each level. Strategic thinking looks different for a first-line manager than for a director, and behaviors need to describe the increased complexity of leadership capability to match the org chart. The number of levels typically ranges from three to four, depending on how flat your organization is, with behaviors defined for every competency at each level.
- Embed it in your talent processes together. Update performance management, development, and succession at the same time, along with job profiles and interview guides, so every process draws on the same standard. Launching in one process and hoping the others follow leaves leaders working from conflicting expectations. If your organization is in the middle of other change and needs to introduce the idea gently, development is a reasonable place to soft-launch, but treat that as a deliberate exception. Assign an owner, plan to revisit the model as strategy shifts, and make sure your organization owns the finished framework outright.
How does one model support promotion, development, and succession?
The competencies stay the same across all three; what changes is which level’s behaviors you compare against. For promotion, you look at the behaviors at the next level up and ask whether the person already shows them. For development, you look at the behaviors at the person’s current level to see where to build. Succession works like promotion, aimed at the level of the target role. One validated model serves every decision, which is why we build it once and embed it everywhere.
Which approach should a mid-sized company take?
The choice is usually between three routes, and they trade rigor against relevance in different ways.
| Approach | What you get | Where it breaks down | Fit for 100 to 1,000 employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Off-the-shelf model | Speed and familiar language | Rarely fits well enough to guide decisions, and it was never tested against your leaders | Useful as raw material only |
| Fully custom model built from scratch | Language that matches your culture | Can lack rigor and comparability, and takes the longest to build | Hard to justify at this size |
| Research-based model, tailored and validated | Credibility and relevance together | Requires time from your leaders | Best fit |
Where do leadership competency models usually go wrong?
Four problems account for most of the models we see sitting unused: generic language that sounds aspirational but cannot be acted on, off-the-shelf frameworks that were never validated, too many competencies to be practical, and weak connections to the processes where decisions are actually made.
A model that has not been tested against your own people and data should not be used for promotion decisions at all. An unvalidated model gives a decision the look of rigor without the substance, and when someone challenges that decision, a model nobody tested is hard to defend. A shorter model that you have validated will do more for you than a longer one that you have not.
How will you know the model is working?
Decide what success looks like before the model launches, and build on data you already collect. Early signals include interview guides and promotion criteria that reference the competencies and managers who can describe what is expected of them. Later signals include succession reviews that discuss observable readiness, promotion decisions that hold up, and development spending tied to identified gaps. We cover how to set this up in Measuring Leadership Development: Why It Matters and How to Set It Up Strategically.
Where can your leaders start today?
If you want leaders reflecting on the competencies before a model exists, the free OGC Leadership Competency Self-Assessment takes about five minutes and shows relative strengths across the six domains of the Wheel. It is a reflective tool and not a validated instrument, so treat it as a conversation starter and not as evidence for a promotion decision.
Is your leadership team making promotion decisions against a standard nobody has written down? Let’s talk through how a validated competency model would work at your size and what it would take to build one your leaders will use.
Have a specific question about how this applies to your organization? Our FAQ page covers common questions on talent systems, leadership development, and engagement data.
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