6 Leadership Competencies

At the recent Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute Annual conference (this year held in Madison, Wisconsin) Peter Scholtes gave an excellent speech on the 6 Leadership Competencies from his book: The Leader’s Handbook. Those competencies are:

• The ability to think in terms of systems, and knowing how to lead systems.
• The ability to understand the variability of work in planning an problem solving
• Understanding how we learn, develop and improve. Leading true learning and improvement.
• Understanding people and why they behave as they do.
• Understanding the interdependence and interaction between systems, variation, learning and human behavior. Knowing how each affects the other.
• Giving visions, meaning, direction and focus to the organization.

As those familiar with Dr. Deming will immediately note those are very closely tied to Deming’s 4 areas of management. I am a friend (and manage Peter’s website so I am biased) but as I have said before anyone interested in management should read his book (the competencies are discussed in chapter 2).

The photo shows George Box, John Hunter and Peter Scholtes (from left to right) at the MAQIN reception the night before the conference. Two previous mayors of Madison introduced Peter’s talk: Paul Soglin and Joe Sensenbrenner.

Related: ASQ Deming Medal to Peter Scholtes – Using Books to Ignite Improvement – Management Improvement Leaders – Performance Without Appraisal

[update] the embedded webcast shows a portion of Peter’s presentation (watch the full presentation)