A leadership capability framework outlines the capabilities required of leaders to achieve key business objectives. It creates a common language around what 'good' and effective leadership looks like in an organisation.

Leadership capability frameworks allow you to assess leadership potential, manage ongoing leadership capabilities and give strategic weight to L&D.

It's important to have a leadership capability framework for 3 key reasons.

• External changes can bring new skills to the forefront and outdate others.
• The job market can flip easily between a job seeker and employer market, meaning talent can be scarce at any time.
• A lack of available talent or misinformed talent can force budding leaders and ill-prepared or unwilling individual contributors to assume responsibilities faster than usual.

A leadership framework allows you to evaluate talent for promotion and development using markers of skills and proficiency. Without one, you could fall into the trap of highly subjective selection processes or promoting high-achieving individuals that don't always have great people management skills right out of the gate.

You'll always have managers in your organisation, particularly in leadership teams. But if you want them to truly step up to the leadership plate, you need to measure and track capabilities. Having a variety of leaders who excel in a few key capabilities is the fastest path to business growth.

Aligning L&D with a leadership capability framework differs from L&D that isn't informed by business strategy in that it is owned by business leaders who decide what is crucial. This allows L&D to become a self-motivated process that isn't just about advancing knowledge but building capabilities at scale to ensure your workforce can perform in strategic business areas. 

Capabilities represent the alignment between people, resources and processes. They aren't easily replicable but are found within nearly every leading and disruptive company. Strong leadership capability frameworks are broad but in-depth, clear and comprehensive, unique to your organisation, and promote successful skill development.

A leadership capability framework is different to other strategic business staples.

• Capability Frameworks: This is a separate but complementary entity. It's normally broken down by job role or job family, defining what knowledge, skills and abilities are fundamentally important to a role. Conversely, a leadership capability framework serves almost the same purpose for management roles. Ultimately, you should implement both in your organisation to help guide learning and development programs.
• Role Descriptions: These usually provide information for job seekers to evaluate their skills against expectations and decide if they're interested in applying. On the other hand, the purpose of a leadership capability framework is to create a shared picture of success and effective performance. It establishes a baseline and gives guidance for aspiring and existing leaders.

So, how do you go about implementing one? Developing a leadership capability framework for your business is a 3-step process.

1. Refine business priorities: If you don't know what you're doing and why you're doing it, then you can't have the how. Reflecting on successes and failures are equally important. If you can figure out what drives success, you'll be better able to define the leadership capabilities you need.
2. Conduct a capability audit: This entails assessing your current workforce against your business goals. Identify the characteristics that are critical for leaders. Understanding how and why people are promoted to or hired for leadership positions in your organisations will help paint a full picture.
3. Decide key leadership capabilities: Leaders often set values, culture and goals for an organisation. If leaders go off course, organisations follow. This step is where you define the core capabilities leaders need to drive business outcomes. Some basic capabilities that research has shown great leaders display include ethics and standards, growth nurturing, cultural intelligence, thought leadership, and results delivery.

Much like its sister the capability framework, leadership capabilities should be derived from business values, goals and strengths. Defining core competencies through both hard capabilities (change management, stakeholder engagement) and soft capabilities (communication, nurturing potential) gives your entire organisation an achievable, not just aspirational, measure of effective leadership.

For a more in-depth look at leadership capability frameworks, have a read of the full article.