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Optimally, competencies are broad enough that student pathways and demonstrations of proficiency can be vastly different, organized to encourage and nurture student passions and questions.

Competencies sit above standards in terms of grain size.

competencies tend to encompass an interrelated set of skills, knowledge, aptitudes, and/or capacities.

competencies are often constructed as groupings of related skills or attributes that are purposefully designed to be explicit, measurable, transferable, and empowering to students

Competencies define skills that are practiced and developed continuously. They are not “one and done,” like many standards, which are course-based and attached to specific grade levels or bands.

in truly competency-based systems, PLDs are not attached to specific grade levels

we believe strongly that we must guard against tying PLDs to age-based grades or cohorts.

PLDs are guideposts to mastery

When learning outcomes are defined in terms of the application of skills or the synthesis and creation of new knowledge, we’re then talking about a much more sophisticated assessment type

competence is about successful application of skills and knowledge to achieve a particular purpose, not simply to show basic levels of understanding

In a true competency-based system, students can’t fail. Instead, students receive concrete and specific feedback on their work, and are provided with opportunities for additional practice and support in order to develop and demonstrate growth in their competencies.

As competency-based education gains ground in formal K-12 schooling, there is a very real chance that the movement could lose the “spirit” of its intent and become yet another, albeit more refined, form of standards-based learning

Quite differently, competency-based models reach back centuries, with early apprenticeship learning that created pathways for mastery and gainful employment. Think: Medieval craft guilds, masonry, baking, carpentry, shoemaking.

by finally being able to see dynamic, ephemeral, local teams, we would better fight the real war for talent: not just attracting the best people, but getting from them the best that they, uniquely, have to offer.

the biggest differentiator between high- and low-performing teams: trust in the team leader.

we discovered that strong agreement with two statements from our survey, “At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me” and “I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work,” corresponds with a high level of trust in the team leader. This suggests that despite the fluidity of today’s working world, the best team leaders can help each team member feel both understood and focused. Know me for my best, and then focus my work around that: These are the fundamental needs of every team member, and the foundation of any high-performing team.

frequent attention to the work of each team member is what we might call the anchor ritual of team leadership. These organizations have all instituted a simple weekly conversation between team leaders and each of their team members and have been able to measure increases in engagement as a function of the frequency of these check-ins.

The fundamental lesson of the research is that work happens on teams, whether they are overlapping, dynamic, spontaneous or designed, long-lived or short-lived. The real world of work is messy. We must push into the richness of real teams doing real work, and we must ask new questions: Do large successful teams have the same habits and rhythms as small successful teams? In how many ways do teams start? Do the best ways for team members to share information vary according to the type of team they’re on? Are some ways demonstrably better than others, in terms of their impact on team engagement? Do virtual teams adopt a cadence different from that of colocated teams?

frequency of conversations is critical

The research reveals that for people to be engaged, the span of control must allow each team leader to check-in, one on one, with each team member every week of the year. Any relayering, delayering, or org redesign that prevents such frequent attention will ultimately lead to disengagement, burnout, and turnover.

to engage your people, you should avoid mandating that they show up at the office every day, and also that all the time you spend helping your remote workers join, get to know the other members of, and feel supported by their teams will pay off in the form of more-engaged workers. Engagement is about who you work with, not where.

Employees should have more control over their work and a greater chance to do work they love. They should have the best of both worlds: one predictable, stable role with a “home team” (more often than not, the static team depicted on the org chart) and one “side hustle” — a series of opportunities to join dynamic teams inside the same organization. Their greatest value to any of these teams may well be the particular, wonderful, and weird set of strengths they possess.

Thus we should select, train, reward, and promote leaders not on the basis of an abstract list of generic leadership competencies but, rather, on their appetite for team leadership and their demonstrable track record as team leaders.

What are your priorities this week, and How can I help?

For team leaders, the emphasis needs to shift from the generic to the specific. We need to be clear that the job of a team leader is simply, and challengingly, this: to create, day in and day out, an experience on the team that allows each person to offer his or her unique best, and then to meld those contributions into something no individual could do alone. We need to anchor this job in rituals and measures, all designed to help magnify what the best teams do: the weekly check-in; frequent discussion with each person and with the team as a whole about where people can employ their strengths; and use of the eight items in our methodology to gauge progress, not for the purpose of accountability but, rather, for illumination and course correction.

nd here, finally, we see the core purpose of teams: They are the best method we humans have ever devised to make each person’s uniqueness useful. We know that the frequent use of strengths leads to high performance, and we know that strengths vary from person to person. High-functioning teams are essential to a high-functioning organization because they create more opportunities for each person to use his or her strengths by enabling the tasks at hand to be divided according to the strengths on offer. Teams make weirdness useful. They are a mechanism for integrating the needs of the individual and the needs of the organization. If we can get them right, we solve a lot of problems. Ultimately, then, to help our people become fully engaged, we need to help our team leaders see that they are our weirdness orchestrators, our quirk capturers — that theirs is the most important job in our companies, and that only they can do it.

The eight statements (taken verbatim from the ADPRI study) capture the emotional and attitudinal precursors to engagement and the productive employee behaviors that flow as a result. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company. At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me. In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values. I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work. My teammates have my back. I know I will be recognized for excellent work. I have great confidence in my company’s future. In my work, I am always challenged to grow.

Well if you look at the skills employers constantly cry out for: empathy, communication, teamwork, agility, flexibility, and the ability to design and make solutions to multidisciplinary problems

chief among their soft skills is a sense of confidence in their abilities to tackle problems and communicate with adults and each other.

deprivation sensitivity—recognizing a gap in knowledge the filling of which offers relief. This type of curiosity doesn’t necessarily feel good, but people who experience it work relentlessly to solve problems.

joyous exploration—being consumed with wonder about the fascinating features of the world. This is a pleasurable state; people in it seem to possess a joie de vivre.

social curiosity—talking, listening, and observing others to learn what they are thinking and doing. Human beings are inherently social animals, and the most effective and efficient way to determine whether someone is friend or foe is to gain information. Some may even snoop, eavesdrop, or gossip to do so.

stress tolerance—a willingness to accept and even harness the anxiety associated with novelty. People lacking this ability see information gaps, experience wonder, and are interested in others but are unlikely to step forward and explore.

thrill seeking—being willing to take physical, social, and financial risks to acquire varied, complex, and intense experiences. For people with this capacity, the anxiety of confronting novelty is something to be amplified, not reduced.

we all seek the sweet spot between two deeply uncomfortable states: understimulation (coping with tasks, people, or situations that lack sufficient novelty, complexity, uncertainty, or conflict) and overstimulation.

people become curious upon realizing that they lack desired knowledge; this creates an aversive feeling of uncertainty, which compels them to uncover the missing information.

nstead of asking, “How curious are you?” we can ask, “How are you curious?”

How can organizations help people make the leap from curious to competent?

complexity and breadth of the opportunities they’d been given,

It enhances intelligence

It increases perseverance, or grit

And curiosity propels us toward deeper engagement, superior performance, and more-meaningful goals

leaders can encourage curiosity

when our curiosity is triggered, we are less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports our beliefs rather than for evidence suggesting we are wrong) and to stereotyping people (making broad judgments, such as that women or minorities don’t make good leaders). Curiosity has these positive effects because it leads us to generate alternatives.

My own research confirms that encouraging people to be curious generates workplace improvements.

When we are curious, we view tough situations more creatively. Studies have found that curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation.

curiosity encourages members of a group to put themselves in one another’s shoes and take an interest in one another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own perspective. That causes them to work together more effectively and smoothly: Conflicts are less heated, and groups achieve better results.

he groups whose curiosity had been heightened performed better than the control groups because they shared information more openly and listened more carefully.

Hire for curiosity.

most people perform at their best not because they’re specialists but because their deep skill is accompanied by an intellectual curiosity that leads them to ask questions, explore, and collaborate.

“What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?”

hen we demonstrate curiosity about others by asking questions, people like us more and view us as more competent, and the heightened trust makes our relationships more interesting and intimate.

But focusing on learning is generally more beneficial to us and our organizations,

A body of research demonstrates that framing work around learning goals (developing competence, acquiring skills, mastering new situations, and so on) rather than performance goals (hitting targets, proving our competence, impressing others) boosts motivation. And when motivated by learning goals, we acquire more-diverse skills, do better at work, get higher grades in college, do better on problem-solving tasks, and receive higher ratings after training. Unfortunately, organizations often prioritize performance goals.

rewarding people not only for their performance but for the learning needed to get there.

Leaders can also stress the value of learning by reacting positively to ideas that may be mediocre in themselves but could be springboards to better ones.

Organizations can foster curiosity by giving employees time and resources to explore their interests.

Employees can also broaden their interests by broadening their networks. Curious people often end up being star performers thanks to their diverse networks,

Leaders can also boost employees’ curiosity by carefully designing their teams.

What if…?” and “How might we…?”

To encourage curiosity, leaders should also teach employees how to ask good questions.

Organizing “Why?” days, when employees are encouraged to ask that question if facing a challenge, can go a long way toward fostering curiosity.

5 Whys