Performance Management & Competency Mapping

Module Introduction to Competency Mapping

Session No. I

Version 1.0
 Performance Management & Competency Mapping

Material from the published or unpublished work of others which is referred to in the Class
Notes is credited to the author in question in the text. The Class Notes prepared is of 1,860
words in length. Research ethics issues have been considered and handled appropriately within
the Globsyn Business School guidelines and procedures.

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 Performance Management & Competency Mapping

Table of Contents
1. Introduction to Competency .................................................................................. 4

2. Competence vs. Competency ................................................................................ 4

3. The Term ‘Competence’ ......................................................................................... 4

4. History of Competency .......................................................................................... 5

5. McClelland’s Research Work ................................................................................. 6

6. Behavioural Event Interview .................................................................................. 7

References ................................................................................................................... 10

Table & Figures

Table 1.1: Difference between Competence and Competency ................................................... 4
Figure 1.2: Aims of BEI .............................................................................................................. 8

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1. Introduction to Competency
Competence or skill is required to complete an activity successfully in an organization and in
today’s competitive world; it has become incredibly important to build competitive activities of a
business. Top management tries to identify the core competencies of a company and working
towards establishing them throughout the organization. Human Resource Development likewise
develops the competency based models to drive business results.

2. Competence vs. Competency

The word ‘Competence’ is a noun; it can be defined as the ability to do something successfully
and efficiently. The word competency, on the other hand, is used as a professional jargon,
which refers to the description of professional knowledge and skills, with experience, behavior
and other attributes that are necessary to perform a task or job. A person can develop
competence to work in an area equivalent to most of the peers, whereas competency is
required to function at a basic level of the job. The difference between the two terms,
competence and competency has been explained in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1: Difference between Competence and Competency

Competence Competency
It is a Skill-based It is a Behavior based

It shows the standard attained It describes the manner of behavior

It measures what people can do How the standard is achieved – Focusses on how they do it

Plural: Competences Plural: competencies

(Sanghi, 2007)

From the table it can be understood that competence describes what people can do while
competency of a person describes how a person does the job. Competence describes the skill
and the standard reached for a particular job whereas competency tells about the behaviour
through which the standard has been reached.

3. The Term ‘Competence’

The word competence defines a cluster of related abilities to perform a job role or in a situation
successfully & efficiently.

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American Psychologist, David C. McClelland in his research paper Testing for Competence
Rather Than for “Intelligence”, January 1973 wrote – “How would one test for competence, if I
may use that word as a symbol for an alternative approach to traditional intelligence testing?”

Competence is more straightforward than intelligence, and when an individual has the particular
behaviour and thought processes that a job role calls for, then a person can be competent for
the task. A seller need to establish trust with the customers to make sales, thus building up the
credibility with the customers is the competence the seller should have.

There are three levels of competences – Core Competencies, Generic Competencies and Role-
Specific Competencies.

4. History of Competency
Competence is a set of noticeable characteristics and skills that improve the efficiency of the job
performance of an individual. ‘Competence’ thus can be defined as a “measurable human
capability required for effective performance.” (Hoge, et al., 2005)

The concept of competence can be traced back 3000 years ago when the Chinese empire
recognized the differences in human abilities by employing civil services exam for various
government jobs. In medieval time, craftsmen were required to develop skills by learning it from
master craftsman, and later for hundreds of years; educators have defined knowledge and skills
to be covered in the particular curricula.

An English biologist and an American Psychologist Sir Francis Galton and James McKeen
initiated the development for measuring human intellectual capabilities in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. During 1960s quite a many psychologists attempted to identify human abilities
that would identify their competencies in their respective job fields. Numerous research studies
demonstrated that the academic aptitude tests, grades and credentials were not good indicators
of the future individual performance or success in life.

In 1978, federal USA Government published Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection

Procedures to specify the guidelines set down for selecting candidates based on job-related
qualification.

Few of the modern day job analysis approaches that are still in use were developed in response
to the persuasive need to identify individual effective variables, unbiased predictors of future job
performance to help in the employment decisions by the organizations. (Hoge, et al., 2005)

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Among the individuals working towards identifying individual predictable and unbiased traits for
future employees were Harvard Psychologist David C. McClelland and his colleagues.

5. McClelland’s Research Work

 McClelland was asked by The United States Information Agency (USIA) to develop new
methods that could predict human performance. For this, they have developed a two-
step strategy to guide their research:
1. The identification of criterion samples comprised of individuals who were either
clearly successful in their work or life outcomes, or were significantly less successful
2. The comparison of these samples to determine which behaviours and other
variables were causally related to the differences in success. (Spencer, et al., 1994)

 USIA’s objective was to eliminate potential bias of traditional intelligence and aptitude
testing and for doing so they also devised a plan to do a thorough Behavioural Event
Interview (BEI) process with the job applicants or interviewees. The BEI was
administered to various groups of workers who were performing the same task, and had
been differentiated into as high, average and poor performers. McClelland identified the
variables that distinguish superior performers from the average and poor performers.
 “A diploma or license hanging on the office wall is no longer accepted by all as sufficient
evidence of one’s abilities to provide safe and effective care” - This forms the beginning
of the competency measurement in the employment zone.
 McClelland got names of most outstanding employees of USIA from the directors and
top managers and also the names of the secure yet not exceptional job holders in the
organization.
 To differentiate between the two groups, McClelland and his colleagues chose 50 people
and asked them to describe three incidents when they had performed outstandingly and
also where they had really bungled up in a great way.
 The research team had noted down minute details from the interviews – what was said,
done, when and where all happened etc. to get a clear picture of the interviewees.
 The detailed descriptions enabled the team to identify and find a pattern of numerous
competencies that distinguished superior from average officers among US State
Department Foreign Service Information Officers. He named some of these
competencies as ‘‘Cross-cultural Interpersonal Sensitivity,’’ ‘‘Maintenance of Positive

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Expectations of Others Despite Provocation,’’ and ‘‘Speed in Learning Personal

Networks’’ etc. (Hoge, et al., 2005)
 Many of the skills and variables identified by McClelland during the interview process
were crucial to job performance but are irrelevant in every day duties.
 For validating the conclusions deduced from the interview results on the core
competency skills, McClelland tested on other two groups identified as outstanding and
mediocre. He used psychological tests for the key competencies, and found out that
first-rate officers consistently outperform their mediocre counterparts in all the tests for
key competencies. Thus it became clear that the key competencies identified were
indeed relevant to the job performance of an individual.

D. C. McClelland introduced the ‘Behavioural Event Interviews’ (BEI) through which he could
develop the competencies required for creating the model. The objective of the BEI is to get
detailed behavioural descriptions of how a person goes about doing his work.

6. Behavioural Event Interview

Hard information on Individual Performance can be obtained from data process, procedures
manuals etc. whereas the information on individual’s competency items on soft skills can only
be obtained through interviews, client conversation, and focus groups. The structured interview
process known as Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) developed by McClelland and his
colleague, C. Dailey.

BEI process was based on John Flanagan’s Critical Incident Technique (CIT), where
interviewees were asked to describe key successful and unsuccessful events that had occurred
while they were on the job. John Flanagan was a noted American Psychologist, known for
developing and utilising CIT techniques during World War II to identify and classify human
behaviour related to success and failure of the armed forces.

McClelland asked specific questions related to individual’s success and failures in the events as
being described the interviewees in a short story format, as how they as an individual
approached the critical work situations, both successful and failures, and these are known as
behavioural events.

The non-leading probing strategy with open-ended questions helped the interviewer to find out
what he did, said and thought at key-points in each situation.

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BEIs are focused, clinical-type, recorded interviews that can take approximately 2-2.5 hours to
complete. Interviewers require working with a candidate to develop a series of "behavioural
events." After each interview, the recording is analysed for evidence of competencies. The total
process of recording the interview, creating transcripts and analysing them for competencies
can take up to six hours per interview (Interview Edge, 2019) .

In the process, the candidate is asked to answer five key questions like – “What was the
situation?”, “Who was involved”, “What the interviewee think, feel or want to do in the
situation?”. These questions are also being followed up with other set of questions depending
on the situation the interviewee had described.

BEI technique was developed to predict the future behaviour based on the competencies and
skills shown in the past behaviour. BEI allows the interviewer to:
 Gain detailed job-related examples
 Assess past performance
 Assess competencies

Figure 1.2: Aims of BEI

Position/Role Candidate Skills

Tasks Task Mastery
Success Factors Competencies

Increased
Productivity
and
Job Satisfaction

(Sanghi, 2007)

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The aim of BEI as shown in Figure 1.2. is to provide a tailored-fit between the candidate’s
competency and the job requirement, so as to provide an increased productivity for the
organisation and job satisfaction for the employee.

The purpose of BEI is to match the candidate’s skills, competencies and motives with that of the
job requirements and success factors for the position thus to ensure higher productivity and job
satisfaction as the end result as shown in Figure 1.2.

McClelland and his team developed a sophisticated method of content analysis from the data
collected to categorise into themes of the outstanding performances from the average ones.

The themes were further organized into small set of ‘competencies’ which the researchers
hypothesized as the determinants of outstanding performances in the job.

The categorization even included the non-obvious ones like “speed in learning political
networks” where the superior performers could easily identify the influential persons and also
could figure out a person’s political interests.

McClelland’s article combined with the work done by Psychologist Douglas Bray at AT&T
wherein they presented evidence that competencies can be assessed though assessment
centres and on-the-job success can be predicted to some extent, laid foundation for the
competency movement. Bray implemented the first industrial use of assessment centres in 1956
as part of his research study. He and his fellow researchers published the long-term effects of
the AT&T programs where their findings show that assessments done early in a manager’s
career are still valid predictors of performance and valid indicators of strengths and weaknesses
twenty years later. (Bray, et al., 1974) (American Psychological Association, 2004)

One of the latest trends of modern day is to develop leadership qualities at all levels in an
organisation that can enhance worker’s performance. For this, it becomes quite important to
profile and map the competencies required to optimally perform at a job-level. Major business
houses assess and improve the organisational competencies in order to enhance the impact of
their businesses (Suresh, 2004).

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References
American Psychological Association, 2004. Assessment Centers Help Companies Identify
Future Managers. [Online]
Available at: https://www.apa.org/research/action/managers
[Accessed 19 August 2019].

Bray, D. W., Campbell, R. J. & & Grant, D. L., 1974. Formative years in business: A long-term
AT&T study of managerial lives. 1st ed. New York: Wiley.

Hoge, M., Tondora, J. & Marrelli, A., 2005. The fundamentals of workforce competency:
implications for behavioral health. Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 32(5/6), pp. 509-
531.

Interview Edge, 2019. Conducting the Behavioral Event Interview. [Online]

Available at: https://www.interviewedge.com/articles/Conducting-the-Behavioral-Event-
Interview-BEI.htm
[Accessed 17 09 2019].

Sanghi, S., 2007. The Handbook of Competency Mapping. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Sage Publication
.

Spencer, L. M., McClelland, D. C. & Spencer, S. M., 1994. Competency assessment methods:
history and state of the art. 1st ed. USA: Hay/McBer Research Press.

Suresh, T., 2004. Promise to Performance. In: R. R. Sharma, ed. 360 degree feedback,
competency mapping and assessment centres. New Delhi: Tata Mcgraw-Hill Publishing
Company Limited, pp. 152-158.

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