Developing competency and leadership models
that are effective internationally:
ITAP's special focus on 'Cross Cultural Competency'

and the concept of 'Behavioral Diversity'

Defined as "the personal capabilities, underlying characteristics and behaviors that drive superior performance at work across national boundaries' - there is no doubt that for today's global organization, 'cross-cultural competence' is critical. It is a simple and obvious truth that success in cross-cultural roles requires cross-cultural competency. International roles are complex, challenging and demand a wider range of capabilities than domestic roles. Most critically, they demand flexibility in the means by which objectives are achieved - even if those objectives may be 'universal'.

Yet most organizations design and implement - even impose - competency and leadership models that are in effect mono-cultural in the behavioral indicators they contain, so that 'diversity' is by default limited to those who at least behave like the home-culture authors of those models. But what is 'best practice' in one culture might be wholly ineffective (or even offensive) in another. There is no universal "global competency" that can be limited to the same behavioral indicators for every culture. While the competency may be global - such as Leadership - the behavioral indicators will differ from culture to culture if that Leader is to be effective in delivering what the organization needs internationally.

This illustrates what we mean by 'Behavioral Diversity' - enabling an organization to recognize the value and validity of a range of behavioral alternatives that will produce what the organization needs - but not just in the way is done at head-office.

ITAP offers a thorough and effective methodology for:

• Auditing and assessing existing competency and leadership models against the organization's international needs
• Creating internationally viable and inclusive competency and leadership models
• Enabling an organization to focus on maximizing output, rather than limiting output to those who 'behave like us.'

For more information on ITAP's Global Competency Development services, click here.

For information on the applications ITAP uses in our competency work, click here to go the Competency Tools page, where you will find more information on the Competency Transcriptor, the Competency Profiler, and the Competency Assessor.