Customer Reviews

Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance

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This book gives a comprehensive competency dictionary using behaviorally anchored rating scales for each competency. It also gives step by step guidelines on how to use the dictionary in all types of HR decision making. It is clearly written and is based on years of extensive research. Using this book eliminates the need to use expensive and dependency creating consulting services. Every HR professional should have it on their shelf. Moreover, as a training professional, if I had to choose 2 books to have on my bookshelf, I would choose this book and Performance Consulting by Dana Gaines Robinson.

This book provides detailed information on a number of useful techniques for developing competency models for human job performance. These models can then be used, in turn, as a basis for personnel assessmen, training and career pathing. The book also contains a number of pre-established and well-researched generic job models which can be adapted and used as a basis for further competency development.

Lyle Spencer has written a book that is lucid, well-organized, and a concise reference on human competence. If this was history, you would know that he had been there and had not merely interviewed those who were. This is so because his work is informed by original research. Spencer begins the presentation within a framework of competence that is criterion-referenced. The competence dictionary is organized around competency clusters that are well-defined and behaviorally anchored. But theory is not left to wrestle with the reader's experience. Spencer provides the practioner with a guide that takes the user through all steps in the conduct of a competency study. Spencer closes with a set of generic competency models that the practioner can tailor to his or her client before drawing the reader's attention to the variety of applications that study data may serve. Though a bit pricey, you can purchase it with the knowledge that it will stand up well as your single source of reference.

I have studied and used dozens of books on the topic of competencies, and many are useful, but this is the one I return to most often. My copy of this book is ragged, dog-eared, coffee-stained, and marked by many colored tabs for quick reference. Competence at Work changed my approach to human resources, and I actually earned some national honors and recognition for innovations in assessment and workforce planning by using it as a guide. It yields an effective understanding of competencies and how to apply them in processes such as recruiting, selection, development, performance management, succession, and workforce planning.

Some insights and tools in the book are particularly valuable:

Criterion sampling:
Compare high performers to average performers in order to understand how each performance group achieves their different levels of success.

Operant measures:
Measure how people operate in the real world as opposed to how they respond to a list of multiple-choice items. It describes Behavioral Event Interviewing (BEI) as the preferred approach, but you might have to access other sources for a complete understanding of the BEI.

Competency definitions and scales:
These alone are worth the price of the book. Based on behaviors that are empirically related to performance in a wide variety of jobs, they provide a quick-start to comparing performance groups and developing competency models, and they provide a framework for both assessing and developing competencies in people.

The principles and methods outlined in this book allow one to construct and apply competency models and human resource practices that get results. If I could have only one book on human resources, it would be this one! If I could have only three, the other two would also be by Spencer: Reengineering Human Resources and Calculating Human Resource Costs and Benefits.

This early work on competency modeling describes the McClelland/McBer job competence assessment (JCA) methodology that heavily influenced much of subsequent practice. Readers of Lyle and Signe Spencer's book will gain an historical perspective on current competency work in human capital and organizational psychology.

The several competency models included in the book are well-documented and cover a variety of occupational families, including technicians, professionals, salespeople, service workers, managers and entrepreneurs. The multi-chapter Competency Dictionary is a helpful starting point for current modeling in some occupations, but is too dated to be used without revision. Readers should compare the book's leadership models with contemporary products such as those in FYI: For Your Improvement, A Guide for Development and Coaching. Many competencies remain relatively unchanged with time while others have evolved with technological and social changes in the workplace. Such comparison yields insight about which competencies may represent basic human abilities and which are defined more in response to the demands of work and its organizational setting.

The book's description of JCA methodology includes an introductory chapter on Behavioral Event Interviewing. Much of the advice in this chapter is general to all interviews that elicit job-related information. The chapter may be helpful to practitioners collecting critical incidents for job analysis or developing questions for a structured hiring interview. The book also describes how to conduct Thematic Content Analysis that captures key concepts from volumes of interview-generated text data. This disciplined application of content analysis set the stage for later innovations in text mining and computer-aided content analysis. All of this is fascinating as part of the history of job analysis methods. Readers less interested in historical roots than in current best practices might be better served by A Practical Guide to Job Analysis.

It is unfortunate that the second and third companion books planned to create a competency modeling series did not materialize. In their absence, competency modeling and job analysis have continued to evolve, with subsequent innovations described largely in professional and HR journals. Interested readers will find these authors' influences in the emotional intelligence literature, such as Working with Emotional Intelligence and The EQ Interview: Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence.

I recommend borrowing this book from the library and reading sections of it if you are interested in the history of competency modeling and job analysis.

I purchased this book in 1993 after I had read an obscure newspaper article that The Hay Group had tried prevent the book from being imported into Australia.
My HR savvy told me that it must be good.
I have used it constantly ever since.
It has been my defense when arguing with Union Officials about what is and what isn't a Competency.
It enhanced a propriety Recruitment System
I have used in Sales Mangers coaching
I have used in Sales Training programs
It supports a a new and different way of designing Position Descriptions
It supports a behavioral based Performance Management System
It is a question I ask when interviewing aspiring HR professionals
It helped my daughter obtain a number of HD's in her University course

It is now 15 years since I bought the book and I am still using it

Highly recommended

Michael Minns Australia ++ 64 2 98991564

The phrase "essential reading" is a cliché, however, this is truly essential reading for anyone seeking to understand competencies.

Not bed-time time reading; this is a technical book for HR professionals. Detailed and lucid (although the neophyte may prefer to start with something a little lighter, eg some emotional intelligence work by Goleman).

A good index and bibliography.

If you want to do some research on compentence ,then this one must come first on your reference list. But for a book publised 19 years ago ,170 bucks is just so expensive!!

This book present the components of the job competence assessment approach,including the competency dictionary, which lists, defines, and provides scoring criteria that can help you predict superior performance for most jobs,It's provided to step by step guidelines on how to use the dictionary in all types of
job.
You will understand what is competence from this book!I strongly recommendation!

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