Competency Models Drive Success

In a previous post, I asked the question: How can schools, colleges, and universities help in the process of building the characteristics that tomorrow’s employees will need to be successful?

When facilitating personal growth beyond knowledge and skills any approach must first be intentional. Personal growth doesn’t come by accident. It also isn’t achieved over night.

Using competency models (knowledge, skills, abilities and characteristics) within an academic setting can help students to see the bigger picture of success. For example, when I was in college as a journalism major with a photojournalism emphasis, my English professor pulled me aside and told me that my first job was not going to be as a photographer but as a writer/photographer for a small newspaper. Not one professor in the school of journalism mentioned this but my English teacher truly guided me by helping me see the big picture. She helped me to be a better writer so that when I graduated I was able to step into a job as a Sport’s Writer. Understanding the competencies I needed, gave me an opportunity to be successful after graduation.

My English professor, used coaching and mentoring, to guide me down the right path. This too is an important component of leading students to be successful in their career field.

Another way colleges and universities may intentionally address expand their view of a student may be in their educational model. Rev. Russell Smith, pastor of Covenant-First Presbyterian, relayed his educational experience from a summer program at Oxford,

The methodology was that we would have twice weekly tutorial meetings with a professor in our chosen subject….we would have assigned reading that we were supposed to preview and then the tutorial (usually 1-on-1 or 1-on-2) was a matter of hashing through it and demonstrating an ability to interact with the material.

While I’ve not participated in this type of educational experience personally, it does seem that it opens the door for personal growth opportunities that far exceed the traditional lecture format of a course.

While coaching and mentoring can be very powerful for personal growth, a formal competency model however, can provide a more clear image of the knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes and behaviors a student will need to be successful both at school and later in their career.

If a college provided students with a complete competency model (knowledge, skills, abilities and characteristics) for specific career fields and mapped these models to specific courses as well as demonstrated behaviors, students would be better equipped for success.

Let me provide an illustration…
My first day as Sport’s Editor, was also a day that our weekly paper went to the printer. The stories had been written, so after meeting the staff, my task that first day was to simply layout the sports page: one page, for each of three newspapers. After working nearly all night trying to make the stories and photos and ads fit together on the page, I knew that I should have worked harder in that Layout and Design class I had a the University of Kentucky. I had passed the class with an “A” but the real world was very different than the experience I had in class.

My professor was a professional editor for a large paper. He knew what it was like in the real world so I must have missed attaining a competency that would have been useful that first day. If I would have had a better picture of the competencies I needed to attain in the course, I may be been better prepared for my first day as a Sport’s Editor.

Competency models give students, employees and employers the specific information they need to be successful. When those competencies are synchronized with training resources and coaching / mentoring, students can see the knowledge, skill, abilities and characteristics they need for success.

Related Articles
- How Do We Support Competency Models?
- Facilitating Personal Growth Through Training