Management 3.0: Team Competency Matrix — Looking for your team talent
It often happens that at the beginning of any project the first strategies are based on objectives defining, planning, looking for the people who will be part of the team, based on its needs, and finally putting all of the above into action.
In certain situations, those teams come to notice a certain imbalance between their work, the challenges, and their results. In those moments you may ask yourself, how can we determine what are the gaps between the current capabilities that the team has and those that are needed for the team to meet its objectives? How can we find opportunities for professional growth and development opportunities?
Gallup research shows that 91% of people who have recently switched roles left their old company, that the most talented are the most likely to leave, and that 87% of millennials and 69% of older generations They say that career growth and development opportunities are the top concerns in a job. (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/267026/rethinking-competencies-part-program-broken.aspx)
A similar situation had a multidisciplinary team, dedicated to training on agility and software development, made up of 6 people and of whom I was the leader. As a result of a retrospective, it showed the existence of a sensation based on the uncertainty of whether as a team they possessed sufficient knowledge and skills for the challenges ahead. Among these challenges were the preparation of new teaching content, the technical logistics needed to carry out online agility events, and training online.
Being a small team with a high commitment, they worked very well, but over time, the differences between their capacities, the lack of some, and even the concentration of many skills and knowledge only in some, were glimpsed of day-to-day activities. People which in some cases led to continuous overexertion.
The team was clear that it should be trained in some skills, or even share knowledge with the rest of the team to eliminate gaps in common skills.
This led me to apply Management 3.0 Team Competency Matrix (https://management30.com/practice/competency-matrix/)
What is the Team Competency matrix about?
Team Competency matrix is a dynamic that helps us identify gaps in a team, between the individual professional experience of its members, the knowledge they want to acquire and the experience that a particular team needs. The result of this dynamic allows us to create strategies and plans for career growth for each member of the team, also finding opportunities to motivate talent.
Team Competency matrix in Action
The entire team was working on remote, so online tools were used, based on the templates proposed by https://management30.com/.
To perform the dynamics we follow the following steps:
- The first thing that was done was to identify the objectives, starting from those that it was desired to achieve in the next four-month period.
- Then based on the previous step, the competencies that the team believes are necessary to fulfill them are listed.
- As a third step, they were prioritized, leading to voting and a brief explanation of the vote.
- As a fourth step, each competition listed in the previous step was placed in the first column, ordered by the proposed priority. Each of these competencies is necessary to meet the objectives.
- Then it was explained how the levels of competence would be identified: Expert: I can teach it to others. (Green), Practitioner: I can do it. (Yellow) and Novice: I don’t know what it is! (Red).
- In the second column, we had put the level of competence required and necessary, for the team.
- In the header of the Matrix, member’s pictures were added
- Then each team member shared what they had filled out and why they believed their level of proficiency was that.
- Closing the session, each member of the team shared with the rest of the team
- Whether or not she wanted to improve some of her abilities, or if she wanted to teach her colleagues, competencies of which he had some mastery.
We should notice in the process of estimating their abilities, people tend to overestimate them. To avoid this situation as a team, we firsts talk and review each skill, looking for examples that make sense for everyone, of each level of knowledge (Expert, Practitioner, and Novice). Then the proposal was to ask the members to visualize themselves assuming responsibilities in that situation, always talking about the levels of competence necessary for the team. All this before selecting your level of competition. The point at this stage is to get a standard or pivot to balance the estimation process.
Learnings
As a facilitator, I learned that the competency matrix helped the team not only to determine what competencies are necessary but also to reflect on the knowledge acquired and where the team wanted to take that knowledge.
The team learned, the knowledge about there were many competencies among their peers of which they were unaware, which bought them peace of mind, it also helped to generate spaces that led to collaboration and work in pairs.
In my next experiment with this dynamic, I will review the competencies from the previous session and assess whether they have changed since the last time. We will change the dynamics at the end by inquiring not only in those who wish to be trained, in adding a step in which in small groups, but they also design their own actions for their career. This will allow you to strategize on how to meet these needs successfully.
The team obtained, as a result, being able to plan actions but with a focus on the competencies, the team already knew it was needed. The following actions were peer work, coaching and mentoring sessions, and the invitation of new professionals to join the team.
Conclusion
Competency Matrix helps us to determine what competencies exist in a team, to know what the team needs for its growth, to know if what we need is within the team or it is necessary to ask for help.
I invite you to experiment in your Competency Matrix team when you discover a gap between what the team owns and its objectives.