TL;DR  

Many organizations struggle with leadership readiness because they lack clearly defined competencies. Without them, talent decisions default to gut feel and bias. Orange Grove Consulting’s research-based competency framework provides the clarity, fairness, and alignment needed to strengthen hiring, development, and succession planning. 

In our recent article on leadership readiness, we explored why so many organizations struggle to fill critical roles. Leaders often say, “They’re just not ready.” But as we pointed out, readiness doesn’t emerge on its own — it requires clarity and structure. 

One of the biggest contributors to the readiness gap is the absence of clearly defined leadership competencies. Without them, organizations are left making critical talent decisions based on instinct, personality, or guesswork. That not only slows succession planning, but also reinforces bias and misalignment. If readiness is the destination, then competencies are the roadmap. 

The Problem: Talent Decisions Without Clear Standards 

Too often, organizations promote or develop leaders without a shared understanding of what good leadership actually looks like. In practice, that means managers lean on gut feel or fall back on selecting those who “seem like leaders,” rather than those who can truly deliver in the role. The result is a cycle of biased promotion decisions, inconsistent hiring practices, and development programs that don’t prepare leaders for what’s really required. Succession plans stall out, engagement declines, and organizations remain vulnerable to leadership gaps. 

Why Leadership Competencies Matter 

Defined leadership competencies provide the backbone for talent management. They give leaders and employees a common language for what success looks like, align career pathways with organizational culture and strategy, and make decisions fairer and more consistent across hiring, development, and succession planning. Most importantly, competencies transform leadership from a vague aspiration into a measurable, teachable, and scalable capability. 

Recent research confirms that organizations that approach their talent management systems using well-structured competency frameworks experience benefits in culture, workforce alignment to business goals, and stronger HR practices. 

The OGC Leadership Competency Framework 

At Orange Grove Consulting, we’ve invested heavily in creating a leadership competency model that is both academically rigorous and practically relevant. Our framework is grounded in Managing Partner Dr. Jodi Detjen’s original research into organizational systems and gender bias, paired with Managing Partner Dr. Kelly Watson’s academic expertise in leadership and management. Together, we conducted a comprehensive literature review and applied these insights in practice with clients across industries, refining the framework over time. 

Our framework is visualized as a concentric leadership wheel that shows how capability scales from self to enterprise. The center anchors leading self; each outward ring represents a wider sphere of impact—relationships, teams/organizations, and enterprise. The upper and lower arcs balance two domains—adaptive/EQ and analytical/IQ—highlighting that effective leadership grows in both dimensions as scope expands. 

OGC’s model includes six core competencies, each with 4–9 skill categories, and behavior definitions for entry, mid, and senior leaders. This structure ensures that leaders at every level know what’s expected, while also giving organizations a scalable framework that can be adapted to their unique context. 

How to Develop Effective Competencies 

Organizations don’t need to start from scratch. With OGC’s framework as a foundation, the work becomes one of tailoring and integration. That begins with validation — ensuring the competencies accurately reflect leadership in a given organizational context. Validation can take many forms, from structured interviews with senior leaders, to surveys that capture broad employee input, to focus groups that explore leadership expectations in depth. These methods confirm whether draft competencies truly match the lived leadership experience inside the organization. 

The next step is analytics — using our data analysis tools to identify where competencies are clear, relevant, and impactful, and where they may need refinement. From there, we partner directly with client stakeholders to finalize the framework and embed it into talent systems. The process is collaborative by design, ensuring that the final model is rigorous, practical, and aligned with both strategy and culture. 

From Competencies to Training 

Defined leadership competencies don’t just shape hiring and promotion decisions — they also provide a roadmap for targeted training. By identifying specific gaps against the competency model, organizations can design learning programs that directly address the skills leaders need most. This makes training more relevant and impactful, since it’s tied to observable behaviors rather than generic skill lists. Competencies also create consistency across development initiatives: whether delivered in workshops, coaching, or stretch assignments, training can be aligned to the same framework, ensuring leaders build capabilities that truly support the organization’s strategy. And when training is grounded in competencies, its impact can also be measured more strategically — a point we explored further in our article on measuring leadership development. 

The Benefits of Competencies in Action 

When competencies are defined and embedded, organizations see tangible benefits. Succession planning becomes a process of evaluating observable readiness rather than making assumptions. Leadership pipelines strengthen because development is tied to clear expectations. Employees engage more fully when they understand transparent growth opportunities. And because competencies evolve alongside strategy, organizations become more resilient and better prepared for the future. 

Closing the Readiness Gap 

The readiness gap won’t close on its own. Without defined competencies, organizations will continue to rely on subjective judgments and hope leaders emerge ready. With them, leaders gain clarity, talent decisions become fairer, and organizations build true bench strength. 

Let’s talk about how we can help you define and adapt leadership competencies that strengthen your talent management system.