Create and Communicating Vision

Strategic Thinking and Ability Any skills that enable you to use critical thinking to solve complex problems and plan for the future. These skills are essential to accomplish business objectives, overcome obstacles and address challenges, particularly if they’re projected to take weeks, months or even years to achieve.

Goal and Target Setting Goal: An indicator established to determine whether you have achieved your objective. Goals tend to be two states only: achieved or not achieved.

Target: An indicator established to determine how successfully you are achieving an objective. Targets are more measurement based.

Business Acumen/Political Savvy/Community Awareness Business Acumen: A combination of knowledge and skill informed by experience: knowledge about key business issues, the skill to apply that knowledge and the confidence to act informed by past experiences. The ability to take a big picture view of a situation; to weigh it up quickly; make logical, sound decisions confidently; and influence others to agree with you in order to have a positive impact toward achieving the objectives of the organization.

Political Savvy: The ability to exhibit confidence and professional diplomacy, while effectively relating to people at all levels internally and externally.

Community Awareness: Community is a group of people living or working in the same place and/or people who share characteristics. Being aware of the community is being attuned to the culture (social norms, values, etc.) within the community, issues that affect the community and accounting for how decisions and actions impact the community.

Communication The act of transferring information from one place, person or group to another. Every communication involves (at least) one sender, a message and a recipient. The key word in the above simple definition is transfer—move from one place to another. Communication cannot be considered effective until the sender knows the recipient understands and can act on the message in the way the sender intended; without that, the information has not been transferred. The effectiveness of the transfer is the equal responsibility of the sender and the receiver.

Building Relationships and Trust

Character, Attitude, Behaviors and Work Ethic Describes the attitudes and behaviors driven by an individual’s integrity, safety attitudes and practices, emphasis on quality of work, professionalism, discipline, sense of responsibility, sense of teamwork, ability to yield for the greater good and level of care and concern for ourselves and fellow individuals.

Emotional Intelligence Is the ability to recognize and understand emotions in oneself and others. This ability also involves using emotional understanding to manage reactions and behaviors, make decisions, solve problems and communicate with others.

Relationships A good work relationship requires trust, respect, self-awareness, inclusion and open communication. Strong relationships foster advocacy and sponsorship for others.

Developing People and Cultivating Talent

Inclusion/Diversity/Equity Inclusion: The extent to which various team members, employees and other people feel a sense of belonging within a given organizational setting. Even among the most diverse teams, there is not always a feeling of inclusion.

Diversity: Understanding, accepting and valuing what makes people different.

Equity: Creating fair access, opportunity and advancement for all people.

Talent Selection/Succession The future-focused practice of identifying the knowledge, skills and abilities to perform certain functions and then developing a plan to prepare individuals to potentially perform those functions. Succession planning is different than replacement planning, which is a shorter-termed practice of identifying replacements for personnel in key operating functions.

Motivating Others/Empowerment Motivating Others: Inspires others’ commitment to their work and organizational excellence.

Empowerment: Giving people the authority and responsibility to make decisions and take actions. Empowerment results in decision making being made closest to the front line where work-related knowledge and understanding resides. Empowerment is aimed at enabling people to satisfy customers on first contact, to improve processes and increase productivity and to improve the organization’s performance results. An empowered workforce requires information to make appropriate decisions; thus, an organizational requirement is to provide that information in a timely and useful way.

Feedback: Coaching/Mentoring Feedback: Input designed to develop and implement strategies that optimize individual performance within the organization.

Coaching: Providing guidance to others to make the most of their available skills.

Mentoring: Help others, regardless of reporting relationship, to acquire the awareness, confidence and resources necessary to fulfill their potential.

Teaching/Training Teaching: More theoretical and abstract with the intention of imparting knowledge and providing information. Training: More hands-on and practical with the intention of developing abilities.

Generating Alignment

Customer Focus Internal Customers: Colleagues working together for delivering a service or product for the external customer.

External Customers: For organizations that make “external customer” synonymous with “client,” they include vendors and suppliers in the working definition of “internal customer” due to their necessary contributions to delivering final products and services to clients. For organizations using a full customer chain approach to define external customers, external customers will include:
• Clients (any entity procuring goods or services)
• Vendors and suppliers
• End users (the client’s customers)
• Surrounding communities
• Regulatory agencies
• Etc.

Focus: Center of interest or activity

Change Leadership Takes responsibility for leading, directing and managing organizational change.

Analytical Thinking Problem Solving: Identifies problems and uses logic, judgment and data to evaluate alternatives and recommend solutions to achieve the desired organizational goal or outcome.

Decision Making: A course of action purposely chosen from a set of alternatives to achieve organizational or managerial objectives or goals. The decision-making process is continuous and an indispensable component of managing any organization or business activities. Decisions are made to sustain the activities of all business activities and organizational functioning.

Negotiation: Negotiation is the process of people or groups resolving their conflicts or issues and reaching an acceptable solution. Negotiation skills are an integral part of soft leadership, because soft leadership involves the use of persuasion and negotiation with an intention to achieve a win-win outcome.

Consensus: Consensus decision making is a process in which a group or team arrives at a decision that all can support. All members, including the leader, have an equal share or stake in the decision and can support or block the decision.

Collaboration: Working with others to produce or create something.

Innovation: Making meaningful change to improve products, processes or organizational effectiveness to create new value for stakeholders. Innovation involves the adoption of an idea, process, technology, product or business model that is either new or new to its application. The outcome of innovation is a discontinuous or breakthrough change in results, products or processes.

Time Management Time Management: The process of planning and controlling how much time to spend on specific activities. Good time management enables an individual to complete more in a shorter period, lowers stress and leads to career success.

Prioritization: “Put first things first,” narrow down tasks, goals and objectives to what is most worthy of maximum time and effort to achieve the best overall results.

Delegation: Where a leader empowers an individual to exercise autonomy. Employing this approach entails providing the individual with the big picture, then trusting them to deliver agreed-upon results

Execution Execution: Get the job done. Capacity: A person’s talent, skills, abilities, time and knowledge.

Capable/Capability: When someone has the capacity, he or she is capable of doing the work that needs to be done.

Hazard: Something that has the potential to cause a detrimental effect. This term applies not only to safety.

Risk: The likelihood of detrimental effect taking place based on exposure to a hazard(s). This term applies not only to safety.