Competences and Developing the Leader

All courses / AI Leader / Module 6 / Chapter 27

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Describe the five competence groups and the leadership functions each serves.
• Classify kinds of evidence of competence by what each shows, what it cannot show and when it expires.
• Draft a leader's competence record that separates assisted from unaided evidence and states purposes and readers.
• Explain how the route into leadership is kept when entry tasks are automated.

Key concepts

Five competence groups

The book's own synthesis: sense-making and independent sources; verifying AI advice and decision hygiene; delegation design; conversation; and AI literacy for the role. Together they are the conditions of the five leadership functions.

Attendance is not competence

A meta-analysis of 335 samples found leadership training effective on average, with effects depending on practice, feedback and spaced, face-to-face delivery. What separates training that works from training that is completed is what a completion record cannot show.

Evidence with an expiry

A seeded-error exercise and an unaided reconstruction typically expire after 90 days, an observed conversation after six months, a record review and a stop drill after a year. Self-assessment is a starting point and is not evidence, because confidence is not competence.

The lower of assisted and unaided

In the competence record the level of a group is set by the lower of the assisted and the unaided evidence. An approval at Level 2 Supervised is only as good as the check behind it, so a delegation profile rests on the approver's verification competence.

From tenure to evidence

The early-career route survives where the organisation designs the exposure that automation removed and moves the gate to the next rung from time served to evidence of judgement exercised, assessed by a second leader.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. The test of delegation design is whether a leader can explain, without the profile open, why a class stands at Level 1 and not Level 2 and what evidence would move it. Who in your leadership could pass that test today?
2. A common framework gives comparability and risks a poor fit to a local post; a sector programme fits the post and risks uneven standards. Which trade-off has your organisation made, knowingly or not?
3. If the approver cannot find half of the seeded flaws, the Reach test is not met in practice whatever the profile states. What follows for the delegation level of the system being approved?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. Which of the following does the chapter's table say is not evidence of competence?

   1. A stop drill in which the leader uses the stop outside the agent
   2. An unaided reconstruction of the reasons for a past decision
   3. A self-assessment in which the leader rates their own competence
   4. A review of the leader's decision records by a second leader
   Show the answer

   C. A self-assessment in which the leader rates their own competence
   Self-assessment gives the leader's view and is a useful starting point, but confidence is not evidence. The other three are evidence, each with a typical expiry.

2. What does Mikael Strand's competence record attach to the finding that roster approval is his weakest group on the evidence?

   1. A ranking of unit managers by verification score for the sector director
   2. The point that an approval at Level 2 Supervised is only as good as the check behind it
   3. A proposal to reduce his pay grade until the next assessment
   4. A recommendation to raise the scheduling system from Level 2 Supervised to Level 3 Bounded
   Show the answer

   B. The point that an approval at Level 2 Supervised is only as good as the check behind it
   The record does not rank him. It connects the competence record to the delegation profile: the system's level rests on the leader's verification competence as well as on the system's own tests.

3. What does Hansa Mutual's leadership academy report to the executive board?

   1. The number of leaders with current evidence and the age of the oldest evidence
   2. The completion rate of each module by entity and by country
   3. The individual scores of leaders in each seeded-error exercise
   4. The number of hours each leader has spent on the learning platform in the quarter
   Show the answer

   A. The number of leaders with current evidence and the age of the oldest evidence
   Each module ends in an exercise assessed by a second leader from another entity. The report follows the principle that attendance is not competence and that evidence has an age.