Page 109 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

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Defining the Role
Defining the job requires identifying four job elements:

1. Tasks performed on the job, including functional-technical tasks, and
leadership abilities needed to do the role
2. Elements of emotional intelligence such as high levels of self-awareness,
empathy, and teamwork needed to be effective
3. Expected performance level
4. Performance conditions

Tasks Performed in the Role
First review the functional-technical and leadership tasks performed on the
job under review. Reviewing these tasks will give you a sense of the type of
training, background, and experience a good candidate will need. In general,
a position will have between 6 and 12 primary tasks, including leadership and
management tasks and functional-technical and professional tasks.
Directly related to the tasks performed on the job are competencies needed
to complete the tasks. Competencies are the skills, abilities, or talents required
to perform the job tasks successfully. In what areas must the candidate demon-
strate competence in the functional-technical and professional skills needed
to do the work? What are the necessary leadership and management abilities?
There are often one to two mission-critical competencies for a position.
These are essential competencies that any incumbent or candidate for a role
must have from the first day in the position. An all-too-common mistake is
to select someone who currently lacks capability in one or more mission-crit-
ical competencies. Usually, the rationale is that the person has most of what
you are looking for and can develop the rest. This is almost always a very bad
selection mistake. The reason a particular competency is mission critical is
because it is vital to the role and will undoubtedly be extremely hard for some-
one to develop in the amount of time necessary for it to be consistently
deployed in the role. In this regard, do not let hope and optimism overcome
good common and business sense.
Examples of functional-technical competencies include these:
■ Ability to perform a highly specialized task
■ Ability to follow government regulations
■ Ability to operate a particular piece of equipment or device for a
specific outcome