Richard Boyatzis Quotes

Understanding the concept of competency is a prerequisite to understanding his integrated model of management.

Models of management sometimes come from task and function analyses of management jobs. Someone studies what managers do, or what duties and responsibilities they are expected to perform, and then develops a model or image of what competent management is (Mintzberg, 1973). Typically, task and function analyses result in detailed descriptions of what activities must be performed in the job. Often these are not arrayed in any order of importance or relevance to the particular job or to the desired output from someone performing the job. Such models have been tested, in that systematic research is conducted to determine if the dentified activities are part of the job. Unfortunately, models based on task or function analysis focus on the job and do not address the person in the job. In doing so, the models include many specific and detailed descriptions of activities, but no mention is made of the characteristics that enable or increase the likelihood of a person performing those activities. These models do not establish a casual link between characteristics of people and performance in a job.

The models of management which individuals and organizations use come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the model comes from a theory. The theory may emerge from someone's thoughts about the desired characteristics of a manager, or about the characteristics of competent managers. Sometimes the model comes from a panel. A group of people, possibly in the job or at levels above the job within the organization, generates a model through discussion of what is needed to perform a management job competently.

The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance offers an empirical, total system approach that determines which characteristics of managers enable them to be effective in various management jobs.

It's depressing to realize how few of the teams in our lives use their human capital and opportunities well, when it comes to sustaining performance, innovating, or adapting. That's true whether we're talking about families, sports, projects, management, or research.

It’s that feeling when you make it home Friday night and pour yourself a drink or a glass of wine and feel like the blood has drained out of you... I actually think is the wrong description of it. I think it’s ‘burn up. Physiologically, that is what you are doing because of the chronic stress being placed on your body.

There are many leaders, not just one. Leadership is distributed. It resides not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at every level who, in one way or another, acts as a leader to a group of followers - wherever in the organization that person is, whether shop steward, team head, or CEO.