What is Required to Build a Competency-Based Leadership Development Program? Copyright © 2023-2024. Every Officer Is A Leader. All Rights Reserved. Page: 3 of 6 In the early 1980’s Dr. Anderson was contracted by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) to develop a training program for Living Unit Officers (who helped inmates to develop many of these skills). The CSC asked Dr. Anderson to train a cadre of 10 national trainers who adopted and adapted this training program to fit their needs for future staff training. This was the first time a government agency used the skills training approach to prepare officers to work more effectively with inmates. A few years later, the CSC asked Dr. Anderson and Dr. Darryl Plecas to develop a Skills for Living Program for inmates that contained many of the same competency-based skills. What professions have taught the 1st three skills sets (36 Skills) of self-management, interpersonal communication and problem-solving? Social Work, Counselling and Psychotherapy and some Graduate Leadership Programs (Leadership Challenge) have graduate programs that teach many of these skills. Carkhuff, Egan and Ivey have all developed competency-based skills training books and programs for counsellors and organization development at the graduate level and have laid a strong foundation for all of us to build upon. The Outline of the Skills in the Credible Leadership Program can be reviewed here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl229dle7ouojns/The%20Meaning%20of%20Credible%20Leadership%20Certification.pdf?dl=0 1.4 What is Required to Build a Competency-Based Leadership Development Program? We have learned there are three necessary components to building a competency-based leadership development program. First, we must agree on what effective performance targets are to be able to demonstrate leadership competence (think of physical fitness or weapons training). We know from research what these BIG Five Skill Sets are – and – no one has said to us that we should forget these parts of the job of policing: 1. Self-Management 2. Interpersonal Communication and Conflict Management 3. Problem-Solving 4. Team Leadership 5. Organizational and Community Leadership Secondly, competency-based training must occur. Learning about theory doesn’t transfer to becoming competent in the leadership skills. Teaching theory is important and valuable to learn how to think ABOUT leadership but, in our view, the ideal scenario would be that officers receive training in their academies, and that training would be followed up with on-the-job coaching (think about Field Training Officers performing and evaluating recruit performance based on the Big Five Skills Sets). How? 1. Start with end in mind! If our goal is to have every officer demonstrating leadership skills on an ongoing basis, initiate skills training from the beginning and build on it throughout one’s career. 2. Each trainee agrees on 2-3 skills at a time to work on developing. 3. Coach the trainee (who has already been introduced to the skills in their initial training) to better perform those skills for a few weeks at a time. 4. Move on to the mastery of 2-3 more skills the next week or two.
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