31 Core Competencies

List of 31 Core Competencies
The following is a summarized list of the 31 competencies listed by "cluster" (similar
competencies related to a common skill set).
I. Competencies Dealing with People
1. Establishing Focus: The ability to develop and communicate goals in support of the
business' mission.
2. Providing Motivational Support: The ability to enhance others' commitment to their work.
3. Fostering Teamwork: As a team member, the ability and desire to work cooperatively with
others on a team; as a team leader, the ability to demonstrate interest, skill, and success in
getting groups to learn to work together.
4. Empowering Others: The ability to convey confidence in employees' ability to be
successful, especially at challenging new tasks; delegating significant responsibility and
authority; allowing employees freedom to decide how they will accomplish their goals and
resolve issues.
5. Managing Change: The ability to demonstrate support for innovation and for organizational
changes needed to improve the organization's effectiveness; initiating, sponsoring, and
implementing organizational change; helping others to successfully manage organizational
change.
6. Developing Others: The ability to delegate responsibility and to work with others and coach
them to develop their capabilities.
7. Managing Performance: The ability to take responsibility for one's own or one's employees'
performance, by setting clear goals and expectations, tracking progress against the goals,
ensuring feedback, and addressing performance problems and issues promptly.
8. Attention to Communication: The ability to ensure that information is passed on to others
who should be kept informed.
9. Oral Communication: The ability to express oneself clearly in conversations and
interactions with others.
10. Written Communication: The ability to express oneself clearly in business writing.
11. Persuasive Communication: The ability to plan and deliver oral and written
communications that make an impact and persuade their intended audiences.
12. Interpersonal Awareness: The ability to notice, interpret, and anticipate others' concerns
and feelings, and to communicate this awareness empathetically to others.
13. Influencing Others: The ability to gain others' support for ideas, proposals, projects, and
solutions.
14. Building Collaborative Relationships: The ability to develop, maintain, and strengthen
partnerships with others inside or outside the organization who can provide information,
assistance, and support.
15. Customer Orientation: The ability to demonstrate concern for satisfying one's external
and/or internal customers.
II. Compentencies Dealing with Business
16. Diagnostic Information Gathering: The ability to identify the information needed to clarify
a situation, seek that information from appropriate sources, and use skillful questioning to
draw out the information, when others are reluctant to disclose it
17. Analytical Thinking: The ability to tackle a problem by using a logical, systematic,
sequential approach.
18. Forward Thinking: The ability to anticipate the implications and consequences of situations
and take appropriate action to be prepared for possible contingencies.
19. Conceptual Thinking: The ability to find effective solutions by taking a holistic, abstract, or
theoretical perspective.
20. Strategic Thinking: The ability to analyze the organization's competitive position by
considering market and industry trends, existing and potential customers (internal and
external), and strengths and weaknesses as compared to competitors.
21. Technical Expertise: The ability to demonstrate depth of knowledge and skill in a technical
area.
22. Initiative: Identifying what needs to be done and doing it before being asked or before the
situation requires it.
23. Entrepreneurial Orientation: The ability to look for and seize profitable business
opportunities; willingness to take calculated risks to achieve business goals.
24. Fostering Innovation: The ability to develop, sponsor, or support the introduction of new
and improved method, products, procedures, or technologies.
25. Results Orientation: The ability to focus on the desired result of one's own or one's unit's
work, setting challenging goals, focusing effort on the goals, and meeting or exceeding them.
26. Thoroughness: Ensuring that one's own and others' work and information are complete and
accurate; carefully preparing for meetings and presentations; following up with others to
ensure that agreements and commitments have been fulfilled.
27. Decisiveness: The ability to make difficult decisions in a timely manner.
III. Self-Management Competencies
28. Self Confidence: Faith in one's own ideas and capability to be successful; willingness to take
an independent position in the face of opposition.
29. Stress Management: The ability to keep functioning effectively when under pressure and
maintain self control in the face of hostility or provocation.
30. Personal Credibility: Demonstrated concern that one be perceived as responsible, reliable,
and trustworthy.
31. Flexibility: Openness to different and new ways of doing things; willingness to modify one's
preferred way of doing things.
Reprinted with permission from "The Value-Added Employee," by Edward J. Cripe and Richard S. Mansfield,
Copyright 2002 by Butterworth-Heinermann.