Articles / Leadership Skills Model: Building Frameworks That Transform
Development, Training & CoachingMaster leadership skills models with proven frameworks, implementation strategies, and real-world examples that drive performance and development.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 7th November 2025
What separates organisations with consistently exceptional leadership from those perpetually disappointed by underperforming managers? The answer increasingly lies in leadership skills models—structured frameworks that define, measure, and develop the capabilities required for leadership excellence. These models transform abstract notions of "good leadership" into concrete competencies that can be assessed, taught, and improved.
A leadership skills model is a strategic framework that identifies the specific behaviours, knowledge, skills, and attributes leaders need to succeed within your organisation. Think of it as a leadership blueprint—a detailed specification of what effective leadership looks like in your particular context. When implemented thoughtfully, these models create a common leadership language that aligns leaders at all levels, shapes organisational culture, and reinforces strategic business goals.
A leadership competency model defines the characteristics, skills, attitudes, and behaviours that enhance leadership performance within a specific organisational context. Unlike generic leadership theory, these models are tailored instruments that reflect your organisation's unique values, strategy, and culture.
At its core, a competency is any characteristic that enables superior performance. Leadership competencies specifically enhance the ability to guide, influence, and develop others. These might include strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, change management, or decision-making—though the precise mix varies dramatically based on organisational needs.
Effective leadership models typically contain between seven and fifteen competencies, each defined with behavioural indicators that specify what the competency looks like in practice. For instance, "strategic thinking" might include observable behaviours such as "identifies emerging market trends," "connects current decisions to long-term consequences," or "allocates resources aligned with strategic priorities."
The most useful leadership skills models share several structural characteristics:
Think of Sir Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition. His leadership competencies—improvisation under crisis, team cohesion maintenance, optimism cultivation—weren't abstract concepts. They manifested in specific behaviours: rationing resources fairly, maintaining daily routines despite chaos, personally checking on each crew member's wellbeing. A leadership model codifies these behaviours so they become teachable and replicable.
Organisations investing in leadership competency frameworks report measurable returns across multiple dimensions. These models create alignment that transforms leadership development from random acts of training into strategic capability building.
Performance improvement represents the most obvious benefit. When leaders understand precisely what's expected—not vague exhortations to "be strategic" but concrete behaviours like "conducts quarterly competitive analysis"—performance improves. Research consistently demonstrates that organisations with clearly defined leadership competencies outperform those without them.
Beyond performance, these models profoundly impact talent decisions. Recruitment becomes more effective when you're selecting against defined criteria rather than vague impressions. Promotion decisions gain objectivity and transparency. Development investments focus on capabilities that actually matter rather than whatever training happens to be fashionable.
Perhaps most valuable, leadership models create cultural consistency. When every leader from team supervisor to chief executive operates from the same competency framework, it reinforces shared values and expectations. This consistency compounds over time, creating distinctive organisational cultures that become competitive advantages.
One underappreciated benefit of leadership models is the common vocabulary they establish. Without shared language, leadership discussions devolve into Tower of Babel confusion—one person's "strategic thinking" is another's "big-picture orientation" and a third's "visionary leadership."
Competency models solve this problem by defining terms precisely. When your organisation says "inspirational leadership," everyone knows it means the specific behaviours your model articulates. This linguistic precision makes feedback clearer, development goals more specific, and performance discussions more productive.
The British civil service has long exemplified this approach, with meticulously defined competency frameworks ensuring consistency across departments. Whether you're leading in the Ministry of Defence or the Department for Work and Pensions, "managing a quality service" means the same things expressed through standardised behavioural indicators.
Rather than building from scratch, many organisations adapt proven frameworks to their contexts. Several models have achieved widespread adoption and research validation.
The Society for Human Resource Management organises leadership competencies into three intuitive categories:
This three-tiered approach acknowledges that effective leadership operates simultaneously at organisational, interpersonal, and personal levels. The framework's elegance lies in its simplicity whilst maintaining sufficient specificity for practical application.
Based on extensive research analysing thousands of leaders, Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman developed their "leadership tent" metaphor. Five tent poles support leadership effectiveness:
| Tent Pole | Core Competencies |
|---|---|
| Personal Capability | Technical expertise, problem-solving ability, innovation |
| Focus on Results | Drive for achievement, bias for action, strategic perspective |
| Character | Integrity, honesty, ethical standards |
| Interpersonal Skills | Communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence |
| Leading Change | Vision, courage, change management |
The model encompasses nineteen specific competencies distributed across these pillars. Its metaphorical structure makes it memorable—remove any tent pole and the structure collapses. This visually reinforces that leadership requires balanced strength across multiple dimensions rather than excellence in a single area.
Wilson Learning distinguishes between leadership essence (character, values, purpose clarity) and leadership form (skills, knowledge, execution). This duality recognises that effective leadership requires both who you are and what you do.
The Essence components address questions of identity and motivation: What values guide your decisions? What purpose drives your leadership? What character traits define your approach? These are harder to develop but provide the foundation for authentic leadership.
The Form components address practical capabilities: Can you conduct difficult conversations? Do you understand financial statements? Can you facilitate productive meetings? These skills are more readily teachable and provide the execution capability that transforms good intentions into results.
This comprehensive framework identifies thirty-eight behavioural leadership skills organised into clusters. Its granularity appeals to large organisations requiring precise differentiation between leadership levels and roles.
The Leadership Architect's strength lies in its research foundation—decades of data identifying which competencies correlate with leadership success across industries and cultures. Its weakness mirrors its strength: thirty-eight competencies risk overwhelming users with complexity.
Whilst established frameworks provide valuable starting points, the most effective models are customised to organisational realities. Cookie-cutter competency frameworks often languish unused because they fail to reflect what actually matters in your context.
Begin by clarifying your organisation's strategy, values, mission, and culture. Your leadership model should directly support these foundational elements. If innovation drives your strategy, "creative problem-solving" likely merits inclusion. If customer service excellence defines your competitive advantage, "customer-centric decision-making" belongs in your framework.
This alignment ensures your leadership model reinforces rather than contradicts your organisational direction. Too many competency frameworks are developed in HR vacuums, disconnected from actual strategic priorities. The result is generic models that could apply to any organisation—which means they're optimised for none.
Ask yourself: What leadership behaviours would most powerfully advance our strategic objectives? If we could magically enhance three leadership capabilities across our organisation tomorrow, which would create greatest competitive advantage? Let these answers guide competency selection.
Engage stakeholders at every level. Interview high performers to understand what actually drives their success. Conduct focus groups with emerging leaders to identify capability gaps they experience. Survey employees about leadership behaviours they most value. Involve senior executives to ensure the model reflects their vision.
British retailer John Lewis exemplifies stakeholder engagement through its partnership structure, where employees (partners) genuinely influence organisational decisions. When developing leadership frameworks, this inclusive approach ensures models reflect ground truth rather than executive assumptions.
This research phase often reveals surprises. The competencies senior leaders believe are most important may differ significantly from what employees value or what actually predicts success. Data beats assumptions every time.
Whilst your model should be unique to your organisation, examining established frameworks and industry benchmarks provides valuable context. What competencies do competitors emphasise? What emerging skills are gaining prominence in your sector? Where might you be missing important capabilities?
Use resources like SHRM competency research, consulting firm frameworks, and academic literature to inform your thinking. Look particularly for competencies that predict success in environments similar to yours.
This research prevents you from reinventing wheels or missing critical capabilities. However, resist the temptation to simply adopt another organisation's model wholesale. Your goal is informed customisation, not imitation.
For each selected competency, articulate clear behavioural indicators—observable actions that demonstrate the capability. Vague descriptions like "demonstrates strategic thinking" provide little practical guidance. Specific indicators like "regularly analyses competitor moves and adjusts strategy accordingly" enable assessment and development.
Effective behavioural indicators follow the pattern: [observable action] + [context] + [measurable outcome]. For example: "Facilitates team meetings that address conflict directly, resulting in agreed action plans within scheduled time."
This specificity transforms abstract competencies into practical guidelines. Leaders understand what's expected. Evaluators can assess performance objectively. Development programmes can target specific behaviours.
Most organisations benefit from tiered competency levels that define progression from foundational to advanced capabilities. Three to five levels typically suffice: basic, developing, proficient, advanced, expert.
For each competency, describe what each proficiency level looks like behaviourally. This creates clear development pathways and differentiates expectations for various leadership roles.
Consider "Strategic Thinking" across levels:
These distinctions enable targeted development. A first-time supervisor needs basic strategic thinking; a divisional director requires advanced capabilities.
Before full implementation, pilot your model with selected groups. Do the competencies resonate with leaders at different levels? Can evaluators reliably assess the behaviours? Do the descriptions make sense to people who'll use them?
Gather feedback and refine accordingly. This testing phase often reveals ambiguous language, missing competencies, or unhelpful distinctions. Better to discover these issues before investing in full-scale rollout.
Consider this validation phase as similar to product beta testing. You're not seeking perfection immediately but rather identifying major flaws before widespread adoption creates resistance to necessary changes.
Leadership competency models realise their value through integration with core HR processes: recruitment, performance management, succession planning, and development programmes.
Recruitment: Incorporate competencies into selection criteria, interview questions, and assessment centres. Rather than hiring based on vague "culture fit," evaluate candidates against defined leadership capabilities.
Performance management: Use competencies as evaluation criteria for leadership roles. Provide feedback linked to specific competency behaviours rather than general impressions.
Succession planning: Assess high-potential employees against leadership competencies to identify development needs before promotion. This prevents the common mistake of promoting excellent individual contributors into leadership roles they're unprepared for.
Development programmes: Design training, coaching, and stretch assignments to build specific competencies. Link development activities directly to capability gaps identified through assessment.
This integration ensures your model becomes a working tool rather than a dust-gathering document.
Despite good intentions, many leadership competency models fail to deliver expected value. Understanding common failure modes helps you avoid them.
Traditional models often provide too much information—dozens of categories and competencies taking months to develop but remaining difficult to understand and nearly impossible to execute. When your framework requires a training session to comprehend, you've overcomplicated it.
The solution: narrow down to seven to ten core competencies. This manageable number facilitates performance management and training initiatives without overwhelming users. Every additional competency dilutes focus and reduces practical utility.
Ask whether each proposed competency is truly distinctive and essential. If two competencies substantially overlap, consolidate them. If a competency isn't important enough to influence actual decisions, remove it.
Competency frameworks developed in isolation from organisational strategy risk irrelevance. When the model emphasises capabilities that don't actually advance strategic objectives, it creates confusion rather than clarity.
This typically occurs when HR teams build frameworks without sufficient senior leader involvement or when organisations adopt generic models without adequate customisation. The result: leadership models that could apply to any organisation, which means they're optimised for none.
The solution: ensure explicit connections between each competency and strategic priorities. If you can't articulate how a competency advances your strategy, question its inclusion.
Many organisations invest heavily in creating competency models but fail to provide adequate development support. Defining required competencies is only valuable if you help leaders build them.
Without supporting development programmes, competency models become merely evaluative tools that identify shortcomings without enabling improvement. This generates cynicism as leaders are judged against standards they have limited means to meet.
The solution: simultaneously develop the model and supporting development infrastructure. For each competency, identify specific development activities—training programmes, coaching approaches, stretch assignments, reading materials—that build capability.
Competency models fail when applied inconsistently across the organisation. When some departments embrace the framework whilst others ignore it, or when it's rigorously applied at lower levels but senior leaders escape scrutiny, credibility erodes rapidly.
The British class system's historical persistence partly reflected its rigorous consistency—everyone understood their position and the behaviours expected. Similarly, competency frameworks require consistent application to establish legitimacy and drive behavioural change.
The solution: senior leader modelling and accountability. When executives demonstrably use the framework for their own development and hold themselves accountable to the same standards, organisational adoption follows naturally.
How do you know whether your leadership skills model is delivering value? Effective measurement combines leading indicators (adoption and usage) with lagging indicators (business outcomes).
These indicators reveal whether your model is being used—a prerequisite for delivering value.
These outcomes reveal whether your model is driving actual performance improvement.
The challenge lies in attribution—isolating the competency model's impact from countless other variables affecting these outcomes. Longitudinal tracking that compares performance before and after model implementation provides the strongest evidence, though perfect causal inference remains elusive.
Leadership competency frameworks are evolving in response to workplace changes and emerging research insights.
Dynamic models that update regularly rather than remaining static for years are gaining favour. In rapidly changing environments, the leadership capabilities required three years ago may differ from today's needs. Treating competency models as living documents that evolve with strategy makes them perpetually relevant.
Strengths-based approaches are supplementing traditional development models that focus primarily on remediating weaknesses. Research by Gallup and others demonstrates that developing natural strengths generates more significant performance improvements than fixing weaknesses. Forward-thinking models increasingly identify and leverage individual leadership strengths rather than enforcing uniform capability profiles.
AI-enabled assessment is transforming competency evaluation. Natural language processing can analyse communication patterns; sentiment analysis can gauge emotional intelligence; data analytics can assess decision-making quality. These technologies enable more frequent, objective, and comprehensive competency assessment than traditional methods allow.
Personalised development pathways are replacing one-size-fits-all training programmes. With clearer competency definitions and better assessment, organisations can prescribe highly targeted development activities matched to individual capability gaps and learning preferences. This precision dramatically improves development efficiency.
A leadership skills model (also called a leadership competency framework) is a structured framework that defines the specific behaviours, knowledge, skills, and attributes leaders need to succeed within an organisation. It typically includes seven to fifteen core competencies, each with behavioural indicators showing what the competency looks like in practice and proficiency levels defining progression from basic to advanced capabilities. These models guide recruitment, development, assessment, and succession planning for leadership roles.
Most effective leadership models contain seven to ten core competencies—enough to provide meaningful differentiation without overwhelming users with complexity. Traditional models often include dozens of competencies, but research consistently shows simpler models achieve better adoption and practical application. Each additional competency dilutes focus and reduces usability. The key is selecting competencies that are truly distinctive, essential, and strategically aligned rather than comprehensively cataloguing every possible leadership capability.
Competencies are broader than skills—they encompass the complete package of knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviours, and attributes that enable superior performance. A competency like "strategic thinking" includes multiple skills (analysis, synthesis, forecasting), relevant knowledge (industry dynamics, competitive positioning), and attributes (curiosity, pattern recognition). Skills are the discrete capabilities you can demonstrate, whilst competencies represent the integrated application of multiple skills, knowledge, and characteristics in context. Most leadership models use "competencies" rather than just "skills" to capture this fuller picture.
Successful implementation requires integration with core HR processes rather than treating the model as a standalone document. Incorporate competencies into job descriptions and recruitment criteria so you're selecting for defined capabilities. Build them into performance management systems to provide competency-based feedback. Use them for succession planning to identify development needs before promotion. Design training programmes targeting specific competencies. Most importantly, ensure senior leaders model the framework and hold themselves accountable to it—nothing undermines adoption faster than leadership hypocrisy.
The most effective approach typically involves adapting rather than purely adopting or building from scratch. Established frameworks like SHRM, Zenger Folkman, or Korn Ferry Leadership Architect provide research-validated starting points that save development time. However, generic adoption without customisation rarely succeeds because every organisation's strategy, culture, and competitive context differs. Study proven frameworks, select competencies most relevant to your context, add organisation-specific elements, and customise behavioural indicators to reflect your culture. This balanced approach combines research validity with contextual relevance.
Most organisations benefit from minor annual reviews and major revisions every three to five years, though the appropriate frequency depends on your environment's stability. Rapidly changing industries may require more frequent updates to keep competencies aligned with evolving strategic needs. Review triggers include significant strategy shifts, major organisational changes, emerging skill requirements, or feedback indicating the model no longer reflects leadership reality. Avoid excessive revision—constant change prevents the model from embedding into organisational practices—but update when competencies no longer align with what's required for success.
The most common failure modes are excessive complexity (too many competencies to practically use), strategic misalignment (competencies disconnected from actual organisational priorities), implementation inconsistency (applied rigorously to some but not others), and development neglect (identifying capability gaps without providing means to address them). Models also fail when they're developed without stakeholder input, adopted generically without customisation, treated as static documents never updated, or not visibly championed by senior leadership. Success requires simplicity, strategic alignment, consistent application, development support, and executive modelling.