How can you best use team competency development to reach your objectives?

Team Competency Matrix

The prep work for competency development is identifying gaps within our individual professional experience, our expertise and within our teams. You need to know what your employees wants to learn and how that does or doesn’t fit with the goals of the company.

First, of course, you need to identify those objectives. Then you need to work with your team to identify what the needed competencies are and to strategize on how to fulfil these needs successfully. Start to identify what you’re good at and put people in the following positions:

  • Expert: I can teach it. (Green)
  • Practitioner: I can do it. (Yellow)
  • Novice: What is it? (Red)

How to Use the Team Competency Matrix to Fill in the Gaps

Each Team Competency Matrix focuses on a single project. Define the competency requirements for your team to have in order to reach these goals. Try categorizing them like this:

  • Topics and Subject Matter
  • Tools and Technologies
  • Processes and Practices
  • Soft Skills

For each piece of the project decide on competency level needs.

Then create a list answering: Which areas does the team need to have competence in order to reach its goals? Categorize them Green, Yellow, Red, respectively, Expert, Practitioner, Novice. How many are there of each?

Learn more about the Team Competency Matrix at a Management 3.0 workshop! This practice is part of the module Develop Competence: Learning and Competencies

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Finally, fill out the Team Competency Matrix for your team identifying individual potential contributions. Identify the gaps.

Note: The Team Competency Matrix is intended to be a group activity giving you and your teammates the opportunity to self-organize through open communication.