Reviewing Van Wart's Reanalysis of Data from an OPM Survey
Leadership for Intelligence Professionals
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Learn to Lead |
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Welcome |
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Leadership for Intelligence Professionals |
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Course Syllabus |
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Course Topics |
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Introduction to Leadership |
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Leadership Traits |
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The Leader's Character |
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Types of Leaders and Styles of Leadership |
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Leadership Competencies |
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Followership, Leadership and the Staff Officer |
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Leadership in Intelligence Coordination: Leading Teams |
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Leadership in Management |
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Supplemental Materials |
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Supplemental Materials |
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Self-Assessment |
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Self-Assessment Guidance |
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Worksheet |
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Personal Leadership Development Plan |
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Plan Guidance |
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Example |
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Two Student Examples |
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Student Example: Calendar Style |
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Personal Leadership Philosophy |
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Philosophy Guidance and Example |
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Student Examples |
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COMMUNICATIONS |
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Reviewing Van Wart’s “Reanalysis” of Data from an OPM Survey
Definitions
Montgomery Van Wart says that “One important set of distinctions is among traits, skills, behaviors and competencies. The difference between traits, skills, and behaviors is largely one of degree.”
-Traits are “relatively innate or long–term dispositions”
-Skills are “broadly applied, learned characteristics of leader performance”. “Skills are similar to traits in that they are broad; they are similar to behaviors in that they are generally more directly observable than traits.
-Behaviors are “concrete actions that are done in performing work.” “They can be thought of as types of skills but they are more narrow in concept and specific in usage.”
-“For ease, traits, skills, and behaviors can all be called competencies.” “Job competencies are the traits, skills and behaviors most important for a specific position or class of positions.”
Van Wart's "Reanalysis" of OPM Data
Van Wart believed that:
Although it is useful to understand the traits and skills that leaders use in a variety of contexts, the study of leadership is woefully incomplete without an examination of the discrete types of actions [i.e., behaviors, see above] that leaders practice—well or badly.
Like traits and skills, behaviors [all are “competencies”, see above] can be very broadly defined so there are few categories, or they can be very discretely defined with hundreds of items.
Van Wart did it both ways very broadly and also discretely. He undertook a “reanalysis of data generated by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)” in 1997 and did “a content analysis on 150 narrowly defined competencies that supervisors, managers, and executives in the federal government identified as being crucial or very important” and used that to determine the “priorities of public managers”. For “contrast and simplicity” he correlated data from 1,763 executives and 3,516 supervisors because “mangers fall between these two classes in 90 percent of all cases, and the exceptions were relatively minor.” He said that “High priorities are captured by looking at the top 20 discrete competency preferences; medium priority by looking at the top 100….” He then grouped those competencies into three categories and indicated the percentage of the top 20 or top 100 that fell into each category.
Top 20 Competencies Top 100 Competencies
Supervisors Executives Supervisors Executives
Task-Oriented Competencies 44 35 34 31
People-Oriented Competencies 39 26 26 22
Organization-Oriented Competencies 17 39 40 47
Reviewing this data, Van Wart notes that:
Supervisors divide the bulk of their high priority attention relatively equally between people (39%) and tasks (44%); organization-oriented activities get a scant 17 percent. This focus shifts significantly when the top 100 competencies are analyzed. Supervisors attention becomes quite balanced, with task oriented behaviors (34%) now following slightly behind organization-oriented behaviors (40%), and slightly ahead of people-oriented ones (26%).
The profile is quite different for executives. Their top priority attention goes to organization oriented behaviors (39%), followed closely by task oriented behaviors (35%); relatively speaking they give scant attention to people-oriented behaviors. Unlike supervisors whose priorities even out as the competency listing becomes expansive, executives’ focus on organization-oriented behaviors actually increases (47%), task-oriented-behaviors decline to 31 percent, and people oriented behaviors decrease to 22 percent.
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