How to Leverage Lominger Competencies to Improve Leadership Development

Navigating the seas of leadership development?

Think of Lominger competencies as your compass. These 67 competencies are more than just a checklist; they are the blueprint for steering your leaders toward uncharted waters of success.

This article will explore:

• What are Lominger's competencies. 
• The complete list of 67 Lominger competencies and 19 career stallers (the opposite of competencies)— we grouped them into several clusters.
• How can they benefit your organization's leadership development efforts. 
• All the essential tools you need to effectively manage and develop competencies for specific roles within your organization.

🌟What are the 67 Lominger competencies?

Lominger competencies refer to a suite of leadership competencies developed by Lominger Limited, a company co-founded by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger, experts in management and executive development.

These competencies are 67 attributes identified as critical to leadership success. They are commonly used for talent development, performance management, and leadership training initiatives.

Only 40% of organizations consider their leaders to be good. 

That's because most leadership approaches emphasize intellect and knowledge more than ability and competence. 

The Lominger competency model is a talent management system that assesses 67 competencies focused on essential leadership and talent management. These competencies are used to identify areas for employee development, guide performance reviews, and inform succession planning.

📑 List of Lominger competencies, clustered

There are 67 Lominger competencies. They are grouped into the following factors and clusters:

Factor 1: Strategic skills

Cluster A: Understanding the business

• Business acumen
• Functional/technical skills
• Technical learning

Cluster B – Making complex decisions

• Decision quality
• Intellectual horsepower
• Learning on the fly
• Problem-solving

Cluster C – Creating the new and different

• Dealing with ambiguity
• Creativity
• Innovation management
• Perspective
• Strategic agility

Factor 2: Operating skills

Cluster D – Keeping on point

• Timely decision making
• Priority setting

Cluster E – Getting organized

• Organizing
• Planning
• Time management

Cluster F – Getting work done through others

• Delegation
• Developing direct reports and others
• Directing others
• Informing
• Managing and measuring work

🤹🏻 Learn more about performance management skills, ensuring your managers know how to manage and improve their teams' performance. 

Cluster G – Managing work processes

• Process management
• Managing through systems
• Total work systems 

🛠️ Check out our analysis of 8 best talent management systems and advice on when to choose each.

Factor 3: Courage

Cluster H – Dealing with trouble

• Command skills
• Conflict management
• Confronting direct reports
• Managerial courage
• Standing alone

Cluster I – Making tough people calls

• Hiring and staffing
• Sizing up people

Factor 4: Energy and drive

Cluster J – Focusing on the bottom line

• Action-oriented
• Perseverance
• Drive for results

Factor 5: Organizational positional skills

Cluster K – Being organizationally savvy

• Organizational agility
• Political savvy

Cluster L – Communicating effectively

• Presentation skills
• Written communications

Cluster M – Managing up

• Career ambition
• Comfort around higher management

Factor 6: Personal and interpersonal skills

Cluster N – Relating skills

• Approachability
• Interpersonal savvy

Cluster O – Caring about others

• Caring about direct reports
• Compassion

Cluster P – Managing diverse relationships

• Boss relationships
• Customer focus
• Managing diversity
• Fairness to direct reports
• Peer relationships
• Understanding others

Cluster Q – Inspiring others

• Motivating others
• Negotiating
• Building effective teams
• Managing vision and purpose

Cluster R – Acting with honor and character

• Ethics and values
• Integrity and trust

Cluster S – Being open and receptive

• Composure
• Humor
• Listening
• Patience
• Personal disclosure

Cluster T – Demonstrating personal flexibility

• Dealing with paradox
• Personal learning
• Self-development
• Self-knowledge

Cluster U – Balancing work/life

• Work/life balance

Each of these competencies can be developed and honed through targeted personal development activities, feedback, and on-the-job experience. They serve as a roadmap for individuals seeking to enhance their leadership capabilities and organizations aiming to cultivate strong leaders.

"Those 67 Lominger Competencies will teach you damn near everything you need to know about business and how to be successful in almost any workplace environment." Jineen Williams, digital creator.

🕵️‍♀️ 6 Core principles of Lominger competencies

The Lominger competency model is based on 6 core principles:

1. Research-based: The competencies in the Lominger model are derived from research on what behaviors distinguish outstanding leaders from average ones.
2. Comprehensive: The model covers a wide range of competencies (67 in total) considered critical for effective leadership and talent development.
3. Development-oriented: The Lominger model focuses on developing potential and addressing gaps in competency through targeted development activities.

➡️ Leadership development is a critical investment for your company. Learn how to create an effective leadership development plan.

1. Behaviorally anchored: Each competency is defined by specific behaviors that can be observed, measured and related to current and long-term employee performance. These help you to pinpoint training and development needs that are of high priority.

Corey Donovan, President of Alta Technologies, highlights, "Employees only care about any competency when they're tied to their actual performance assessment."

1. Scalable and flexible: The model can be adapted and scaled for different organizational levels, from entry-level to executive roles.
2. Integrated approach: The Lominger competencies are designed to be integrated into various HR processes, including recruiting, onboarding, and succession planning. As a result, Lominger competencies can be a reference point for employee development and evaluations, thus enabling competency-based performance management.

➡️ Want to measure progress and identify areas of improvement for your people? Here are 11 performance management tools to accelerate employee growth and development.

🆚 Lominger competency model vs. other competency frameworks

3 key elements that differentiate the Lominger model from other leadership competency frameworks:

• Complexity and detail: The Lominger model is highly granular, with a large number of competencies that provide a detailed framework for leadership development. Other models prioritize simplicity and ease of understanding. 
• Complimentary tools: Lominger offers additional tools, such as the Career Architect Development Planner and the Lominger VOICES 360º Feedback System, which enable more effective leadership development initiatives. 
• Types of competencies included: Other models may focus on a smaller set of core leadership competencies, which are more generic or industry-specific and could vary in how they integrate with organizational strategies. 

👀 Understand the differences between functional, technical, and core competencies.

🔬 5 Lominger competencies scrutinized

Business acumen

Business acumen involves:

• Knowing how businesses work.
• Being knowledgeable in current and possible future policies, practices, trends, technology, and information affecting the business and organization.
• Knowing the competition and knowing how strategies and tactics work in the marketplace. 

For example, you have a senior software engineer in your tech company, an essential contributor to the success of your product. 

They participate in meetings with executives and managers where there is a lot of discussion about the business side of things. However, their contributions are limited because they lack business jargon and don't see priorities as other stakeholders do. They don't think about the bigger picture because they do not have the required business acumen.

Customer focus

Customer focus involves:

• Being dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers.
• Acting with customers in mind. 
• Identifying and implementing solutions for customer problems.
• Consistently strive to build a customer-focused culture and only settle for quality that consistently exceeds customers' expectations.
• Establishing and maintaining effective relationships with customers and gaining their trust and respect.

Whether your department's customer is an external or internal group or individual, the business principle stays the same: maintaining customer satisfaction is vital for long-term success. Those who please the customer best win. It's as simple as that. 

So, to be successful, it is crucial to continuously pay attention to customer needs and adapt as these evolve. A focus on customers drives innovation and creates a responsive and agile organization.

Conflict management

Conflict management involves:

• Stepping up to conflicts.
• Reading situations quickly.
• Resolving challenging conflicts and disagreements.
• Helping parties with differing opinions or perspectives come together to achieve a significant and innovative resolution.

Managing conflict is considered a core competency for leaders because how they manage their team, particularly when disputes arise, significantly impacts the workplace environment and how the team works together in the future.

When conflict is effectively managed, it can be helpful in problem-solving and team building. However, when managers and supervisors lack conflict management competency, it causes enormous problems and breaks down teamwork. 

The most visible cost of conflict resolution in competency is not litigation; instead, it is the overall loss of productivity, employee engagement, and teamwork.

Building effective teams

Building effective teams involves:

• Encouraging high morale and team spirit in the organization
• Sharing achievements and triumphs, encouraging open communication, allowing people to complete and be accountable for their tasks.
• Defining success in terms of the entire team and building a sense of belonging within the team.

Building a high-performance team is more than just randomly assembling a group of talented individuals. Many organizations overly focus on individuals and disregard a key fact: team accomplishments are greater than the added total of each individual member performing separately. 

To build a great team, leaders and their teams need to figure out together what everyone will do, how they'll work together, what the team will get for doing a good job, and what they're all trying to achieve. Instead of just thinking about each person alone, an effective leader will think about everyone as a group.

Eric X. Hernandez, CEO and founder of eXstrategy, believes that the crux of leadership is helping your team members achieve their full potential. When you invest in your people, they'll be more committed and successful in the long run.

Imagine a project team in a software development company tasked with creating a new app. The launch date is set, but there are unforeseen technical challenges that the team must navigate. Instead of working in isolation, the team leader fosters a collaborative environment where each member is encouraged to contribute ideas and solutions.

The team leader keeps morale high by celebrating small victories and maintaining open communication channels so team members can voice concerns and offer feedback.

The leader assigns clear roles but also ensures that the team members have the autonomy to tackle their tasks, holding each person accountable while emphasizing the collective responsibility for the project's success.

Dealing with ambiguity

Dealing with ambiguity involves: 

• Effectively coping with change and shifting gears comfortably.
• Deciding and acting without having the total picture.
• Handling risk and uncertainty comfortably.

Managing ambiguity means being able to make decisions based on limited information. It also means being able to adapt your approach when situations change or problems come up.

In a business context, dealing with ambiguity is essential as it allows leaders and employees to navigate complex situations without having all the answers, make informed decisions with limited data, and adapt to changing circumstances. It is a trait that enables resilience and innovation, especially in fast-paced or rapidly evolving industries, such as logistics and retail.

For instance, a retail store manager expecting a new shipment of products may face ambiguity if the delivery is delayed and the exact arrival time is unknown. The manager must act despite this uncertainty, perhaps by communicating with the supplier for updates and preparing the store for various scenarios. This might include scheduling extra staff for anticipated arrival times or rearranging store layouts to accommodate the new stock.

The manager's ability to adapt plans as new information becomes available and to keep the store running smoothly without disrupting customer service showcases effective handling of ambiguity.

🚧 Lominger career stallers and stoppers: 19 Behaviors that can derail any career

Lominger career stallers, part of the Lominger competency framework, are behaviors or attributes that can hinder an individual's career progression. These are the flip side of the competencies, essentially the pitfalls that can derail success. 

Here are the 19 Lominger career stallers and stoppers, grouped by 2 factors and sub-clusters:

Trouble with people

Cluster 1 – Doesn't relate well to others

• Unable to adapt to differences
• Blocked personal learner
• Defensiveness
• Insensitive to others

Cluster 2: – Self-centered

• Overly ambitious
• Arrogant
• Betrayal of trust
• Lack of composure
• Lack of ethics and values
• Political missteps

Cluster 3: – Doesn't inspire or build talent

• Failure to build a team
• Failure to staff effectively
• Overmanaging

Trouble with results

Cluster 1 – Too narrow

• Key skill deficiencies
• Non-strategic
• Overdependence on an advocate
• Overdependence on a single skill

Cluster 2 – Doesn't deliver results

• Poor administrator
• Performance problems

How your organization can use the 19 career stallers

1. Self-awareness and development: These behaviors and attributes help individuals recognize potential areas of weakness or blind spots in their professional behavior that could impede their growth.
2. Performance improvement: Use career stallers to provide targeted feedback and development opportunities, helping employees overcome these challenges and improve performance.
3. Succession planning: By identifying and addressing career stallers, you can better prepare employees for future leadership roles, ensuring a more capable and versatile talent pipeline.
4. Retention: Addressing career stallers can increase job satisfaction and employee retention, as individuals feel the organization is invested in their personal and professional growth.
5. Cultural Alignment: Recognizing and managing career stallers helps maintain a positive work culture by mitigating behaviors that can disrupt teamwork and collaboration.

Paula Kerr, Director at the Korn Ferry Institute, says, "When you see these behaviors in yourself or teams, they're something that you need to pay attention to and adjust."

🙅‍♀️ 3 Limitations of Lominger competencies: The unseen hurdles

The model can be overly complex for some organizations

With 67 competencies to consider, the model can be overwhelming for some organizations to implement and manage effectively.

Employees and managers may find it challenging to focus on so many areas, leading to diluted efforts and less targeted development.

You must also ensure that your people receive the necessary training to understand every competency. As a result, smaller organizations or those with limited HR capabilities may find it challenging to allocate the resources needed to fully utilize the model.

Why one-size-fits-all doesn't work: Customizing competencies to organizational cultures

One major critique of the Lominger framework is its potential lack of cultural sensitivity. The framework might need to consider these differences more in today's globalized business setup where diverse cultures interact. 

Some leadership qualities Lominger emphasizes might not work well in all cultural contexts. 

For instance, some major challenges global leaders may face compared to domestic leaders are managing diverse employees and adjusting to new values and cultures.

So organizations using the Lominger framework should consider offering extra training on its competencies, ensuring their leadership development efforts are more culturally inclusive and effective.

Reevaluating Lominger competencies to address shifting workplace dynamics and technologies

Like job descriptions, competency models must be regularly evaluated and updated as needs dictate. The world of work has changed dramatically, and it will continue to do so. 

From work-from-anywhere models to living in a managed COVID world, from increased global competition to ongoing technology innovations, you do not have to look far for evidence of significant change. 

However, the approach to using Lominger competencies has stayed relatively stable. 

In light of these profound shifts, it is imperative for organizations to regularly revisit and adapt their competency models to align with the contemporary demands of the workforce and the evolving business landscape.

Think about AI entering the HR world. There are new ways AI affects performance management or learning and development, just to mention a few. Your competency models should keep up with technological breakthroughs.

➡️ Effectively measure, manage, and build competencies with Zavvy

In today's fast-paced business world, the key to organizational success lies in a team that's not just skilled but also adaptable, innovative, and equipped to handle challenges and uncertainties. 

Yet, in many organizations, job competencies are often hastily assembled, lacking clarity and direction. Zavvy transforms this narrative with its robust employee enablement solution:

• 🗺️ Clear career pathing: Create competency-driven career paths for employees to have full transparency of what is expected for every role and seniority and give your people a structured and transparent career growth path.
• 🔄 Feedback for growth: Leverage competency-based 360 feedback to help your people understand where they excel and where they need to improve.
• 🌱 Bridging skill gaps: Identify and bridge individual skill gaps with personalized development plans and guided conversations.
• 💪Targeted learning: Assign courses to ace each competency. There are thousands of learning resources on Zavvy with competency tags. Your people will find suitable training materials based on their roles and skill profiles.

With Zavvy, you're not just tracking skills; you're cultivating a workforce that is continually evolving and aligning with your strategic goals. Empower your team's growth and drive organizational success with our comprehensive competency management solution.

📅 Talk to our experts about creating a custom competency model for your organization.