SHRM-CP / SHRM-SCP Certification Exam: Behavioral Competencies - Leadership and Navigation

Behavioral Competencies
SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) and SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) identify and detail eight behavioral competencies that will be tested for both the SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP. They make up a whopping 50 percent of both exams. The eight behavior competencies are segregated by SHRM into three clusters: Leadership, Business, and Interpersonal.

A competency is a cluster of interrelated attributes that includes knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that lead to behaviors that have been identified as needed to perform a specific job effectively. Competencies can be either technical (the knowledge required to perform a specific job) or just behavioral in nature. A behavioral competency is the application of knowledge to job-related behavior. Thus, technical competencies for HR professionals reflect what knowledge they are expected to apply to their jobs, and a behavioral competency is about how they apply the knowledge.
In each of the eight behavioral competencies, we have included the outline of SHRM’s Body of Competency and Knowledge (BoCK) key concepts (foundational knowledge), which are a description of what HR professionals are expected to know to perform their job. It’s important to learn and know the distinction between what SHRM has identified and detailed versus what your organization may have culturally expressed with expectations of behavior because they may be different.

Leadership Cluster
The Leadership cluster represents 13 percent of both exams’ weighted scores. There are two competencies that fall within the Leadership cluster:
- Behavioral competency 1—Leadership and Navigation
- Behavioral competency 2—Ethical Practice

Regardless of experience level or job title, all HR professionals need to demonstrate and display strong leadership skills and ability, keeping in mind the focus of a strategic mind-set.

Behavioral Competency 1—Leadership and Navigation
The first competency in the SHRM-identified behavioral competency model is Leadership and Navigation. This competency focuses on understanding leadership and the knowledge/skills needed to be an effective HR leader, along with being an HR business partner in your organization and contributing to initiatives and processes for the organization. Additionally, an effective HR professional builds trust, influences, motivates and has the required level of emotional intelligence to demonstrate those behaviors.

Four subcompetencies comprise the Leadership and Navigation competency. They are defined by SHRM2 as follows:
- Navigating the organization Working within the parameters of the organization’s hierarchy, processes, systems, and policies
- Vision Defining and supporting a coherent vision and long-term goals for HR that support the strategic direction of the organization
- Managing HR initiatives Executing the implementation and management of HR projects or initiatives that support HR and organizational objectives
- Influence Inspiring colleagues to understand and pursue the strategic vision and goals of HR and the organization

Key Concepts
- Leadership theories (e.g., situational leadership, transformational leadership, participative leadership, inclusive leadership)
- People management techniques (e.g., directing, coaching, supporting, delegating)
- Motivation theories (e.g., goal-setting theory, expectancy theory, attribution, theory, self-determination theory)
- Influence and persuasion techniques (e.g., personal appeal, forming coalitions, leading by examples, rational persuasion)
- Trust- and relationship-building techniques (e.g., emotional and social intelligence)

Definition
According to SHRM, “Leadership and Navigation is defined as the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) needed to navigate the organization and accomplish HR goals, to create a compelling vision and mission for HR that aligns with the strategic direction and culture of the organization, to lead and promote organizational change, to manage the implementation and execution of HR initiatives, and to promote the role of HR as a key business partner.”

Proficiency Indicators for All HR Professionals
The Leadership and Navigation competency for all HR professionals focuses on understanding leadership and the skills and knowledge needed to be a leader: influencing, building trust, emotional intelligence, and motivation. Yet first there needs to be an understanding as to the difference between managing and leading. Both are needed to get work done through people. Knowing when and how to lead and when to manage is the key to effective leadership and navigation. All HR professionals are expected to conduct themselves according to these expectations.

Conforming to Organizational Culture
Organizations create their own models of leadership, creating a set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that become the leadership norm for the organization to fit in with the organization’s mission and strategies. The result is a leadership culture. Managers/leaders are then expected to conform to that identified model, a norm, to guide their interactions in managing people.
Organizations desire to identify the type of leadership that is most effective in their workplaces. This self-awareness can then be used to identify individuals with the potential for leadership and to create leadership development programs and use these identified norms when sourcing new hires via branding the leadership culture.

Collaborating Among Stakeholders
There are basically five steps to apply to gain collaboration with stakeholders:
1.   Know the stakeholders. The first step toward any collaboration process is identifying stakeholders and their roles. Understanding who you are working with is critical to collaborating effectively.
2.   Identify what is at stake. Every stakeholder has involvement for a specific reason. Use their role and motivation to your advantage. For example, if you are working on an office reconfiguration for HR, consider including the IT manager in every conversation that relates to the new room design, not just those explicitly regarding the movement of PCs. Why? Because they may be affected by the decisions made in those conversations pertaining to the location of cables, connectivity, and other associated matters such as overtime for IT personnel.
3.   Understand each stakeholder’s issues and language. Communicating effectively with stakeholders is linked to their motivation. For example, for decision-makers, every project is an investment because they are normally responsible for their share of the resources. To collaborate effectively, you should discuss plans in relation to the planned outcomes or ROI.
4.   Set the specific expectations. Once you know who stakeholders are, what their challenges and issues are, and how to talk to them, you can better express your expectations for their involvement, such as when they are expected to provide input for the project and how to provide feedback.
5.   Value their input. One reason stakeholders can become frustrated is they don’t feel “heard.” Helping stakeholders to see how their input was incorporated or even why it was not used is essential. It makes them an active part of decision-making without letting them make the decision.

Accomplishing Tasks
Leaders get things done through people, which means managing people and their tasks for producing desired outcomes. 
Managers do the following with groups:
- Plan activities
- Organize and identify resources required, including people
- Direct work in a way that ensures the best use of resources
- Coordinate to achieve efficiency
- Control resources and activities through monitoring, measuring, and correcting as needed

Leaders perform the following roles with groups:
- They model desired values in all their actions.
- They challenge the status quo and harness the talent in the organization to solve problems, accept change, and move in a new direction.
- They inspire and influence people toward achieving a common vision and goals.
- They maintain employees’ motivation and focus.
- They foster growth and develop people to their full potential.

If an organization has ineffective management, it will fail to meet goals. On the other hand, if organizations lack leadership, they often lack innovation and the ability to adapt to change.

Demonstrating Agility and Expertise
concept of learning agility may have always been important, it seems even more so now given the constant turmoil of today’s business environment. This can explain why some of the world-renowned management experts are saying now is the time to put your bets on learners.

Setting the Vision
Leaders create energy. They inspire, empower, and support others. And they set vision. Setting a vision of what can be serves as a powerful inspiration, a North Star of sorts for a leader, to move everyone in an organization in the same direction toward that vision’s achievement. That vision needs to be clear and achievable—something that inspires others to want to be a part of it. Leaders must continually point to this North Star and remind everyone that this is where we are all headed. The behavior that is most essential with this leadership ability is going to involve inspiring and motivating others.

Leading the Organization Through Adversity
“The best developer of a leader is failure,” said Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Airlines. Business history is full of examples of leaders whose organizations ran into adversity and bounced back to become more successful than before. It was through the leadership that created the survivors. A great example is Steve Jobs who was fired from Apple Computer and then rehired when it was on the brink of despair. When he came back to Apple, he had a new view of the market that caused him to lead Apple with products like the iPod, which ended up redefining the industry. It was through his vision and ability as a leader to paint the picture of what could be, design the strategy, and send in the resources. The rest is history.

Promoting Consensus
Getting people to move together as a unified team toward a common goal has always been challenging. However, with consensus building, management can ensure they have the support of the entire team as they steer the organization in the chosen direction.
This concept is known as consensus management. It is not a new concept (Native Americans have been utilizing it for hundreds of years), and now organizations like Starbucks have successfully incorporated it into their management processes. Consensus management is the process where team members work as a group to develop a solution and agree to support whatever decision is made in the best interests of the whole. It requires asking for input from each person on the team, carefully considering that feedback, and making an earnest effort to address any concerns that are raised. This is most commonly accomplished by holding a consensus meeting where staff is empowered to voice their support and concerns. The key to success here is that everyone agrees to support the consensus decision once it is made, regardless of how they feel about it.

Serving as a Transformational Leader
Leadership today is associated with a group role, placing value on behaviors characterized as authentic leadership or transformational leadership.
The following are key elements of this type of approach to leadership:
- Power Leaders can be recognized as formal or informal. They often exercise the power to empower other team members, act as their champion, and support their efforts.
- Orientation Transformational leaders think in terms of vision, strategy, and values rather than short-term objectives. They believe in challenging and developing for the long term.
- Emotional intelligence They have the knowledge and skills that allow transformational leaders to be self-aware of their actions and emotions and to understand others’ perspectives and the drivers of other people’s behavior.
- Ethical grounding They walk the talk of the organization’s values, encouraging others, and will sacrifice for those values.

Proficiency Indicators for Senior HR Professionals
Senior HR professionals are expected to be able to do and say the following behaviors over and above the basic behaviors already reviewed.

Leading HR Staff
Leading the HR staff to become a true business partner is one of the most important leadership roles for HR professionals. Demonstrating the behaviors to be a strong HR leader is one of the best training tools for the HR leader. In their book The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders,4 Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman studied the strengths and weaknesses of HR leaders and concluded the following:
 

Strong HR leaders demonstrate the following behaviors:
- Develop and coach others
- Build positive relationships
- Model their values and fulfill their promises and commitments
- Have functional expertise
 

Weak HR leaders display these behaviors:
- Focus internally rather than externally, failing to look outside the HR function to the organization’s internal and external stakeholders
- Lack strategic perspective, focusing on short-term objectives and daily tasks
- Do not anticipate or react well to change
- Resist “stretch” goals and act as a drag on the organization’s attempts to innovate
As an HR professional, consider what your own leadership style is and where you may need to shore up a leadership skill to lead the HR department more effectively so that you and HR can have a more significant role in your organization.

Facilitating Strategic Change
Facilitating strategic change as an HR leader involves employing the three Cs of change leadership.
- Communicate Unsuccessful leaders tended to focus on the “what” behind the change. Successful leaders communicated the “what” and the “why.” Leaders who explained the purpose of the change and connected it to the organization’s values or explained the benefits created stronger buy-in and urgency for the change.
- Collaborate Bringing people together to plan and execute change is critical. Successful leaders worked across boundaries, encouraged employees to break out of their silos, and refused to tolerate unhealthy competition. They also included employees in decision-making early on, strengthening their commitment to change. Unsuccessful change leaders failed to engage employees early and often in the change process.
- Commit Successful leaders made sure their own beliefs and behaviors supported change, too. Change is difficult, but leaders who negotiated it successfully were resilient and persistent and willing to step outside their comfort zone. They also devoted more of their own time to the change effort and focused on the big picture. Unsuccessful leaders failed to adapt to challenges, expressed negativity, and were impatient with a lack of results.

Serving as the Voice for HR
There is a new agenda for HR in today’s business environment, and it is a radical departure from the status quo. It used to be that HR was charged with mainly playing policy police and regulatory watchdog, handling the volumes of paperwork involved in hiring and firing, managing the bureaucratic aspects of benefits, and administering compensation decisions made by others. HR’s activities were often disconnected from the real work of the organization. Today HR is defined not by what it does but by what it delivers—results that enrich the organization’s value to customers, stakeholders, and employees.

Serving as the voice for HR, more organizations have dispersed their staff as HR business partners in the business units to be closely aligned with the needs of that particular business unit so that HR can help deliver organizational excellence in the following four ways:
- Become a true business partner within the unit with line management in strategy execution
- Become an expert in the way work is organized and executed, delivering administrative efficiency
- Become a champion for employees, representing their concerns to line management and at the same time working to increase employee contribution and engagement
- Become an agent of continuous transformation, shaping processes and a culture that together improve the organization

Ensuring Accountability
As an HR leader, modeling desired behavior and outcomes with the HR staff is vitally important to other employees and management in the organization. When leaders are visibly holding their own direct reports accountable, this sends a powerful leading-by-example message. People struggle to be accountable when roles and processes are ambiguous; thus, having clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations is a vital step in holding others accountable. As an HR professional, how well are you measuring up to doing what you say you are going to do and by when? Holding yourself accountable to delivering the outcomes and the outlined leadership behavior norms is just as important.

Changing Organizational Culture
When embarking on changing organizational culture, the first step is in defining the values and behaviors you’re seeking to change. Culture is defined as the beliefs and behaviors that govern how people act in an organization, and it is now believed to be a major determinant of a company’s success or failure. Culture is considered a potential competitive advantage, if it is perceived as a positive strong culture.

According to the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 20165 report, here are ten tips for driving a culture change:
- Define desired values and behaviors.
- Align culture with strategy and processes.
- Connect culture and accountability.
- Have visible proponents.
- Define the non-negotiables.
- Align your culture with your brand.
- Measure your efforts.
- Don’t rush it.
- Invest now.
- Be bold and lead.

Championing the HR Function
To champion the HR function, HR professionals must build relationships that are known as a reliable expert partner that champions high performance from the workforce.
To champion high performance from the workforce, HR’s functions must be deliberately designed to support and be directly linked to the organization’s mission, vision, strategy, and goals. When HR is seen as the lever that drives performance upward, then HR lives up to its potential as the most important function in every organization.

Creating Buy-In for Organizational Change
When you’re enacting an organizational change, organizational executives most likely already gave a green light for the change you’re heading up. You need to create more buy-in for other levels in the organization to help proceed with the change. The following are steps to take to create buy-in.
Working from the Top Down   In addition to obtaining buy-in from the C-suite, consider bringing in mid-level management into the change plans early on. Gaining support from leaders at different levels in the organization will make your pitch stronger and ensure managers have time to prepare for questions from employees from the get go.
Being Transparent   Communication is key to prevent unfounded concerns and gossip about how the change is going to affect people. Be open and transparent early and often. This includes being clear about what’s going well and what’s not working. Be up-front and specific about what failed throughout the process and was learned.
Asking for Input   It’s vital for employees to know their opinions and ideas are being acknowledged when voiced. It can prove to be a challenge to collect and address feedback and questions from everyone. Think of having a task force within each unit to help you communicate details and gather feedback at certain phases of the change process.

Change is key to helping organizations innovate and grow, and your organization’s workforce is the needed component for helping changes take place. Ensuring they’re informed and can provide input throughout the change transition is essential in earning their support.