Once organizational needs, goals, and challenges have been clarified, the next logical step in developing a leadership pipeline is to connect those strategic requirements with the organization's leadership competency model. A competency model defines the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attributes leaders are expected to demonstrate at different levels of responsibility.

Applying the competency model enables the TD professional to identify what future leaders must be capable of doing, assess current leadership capability against those requirements, and establish development priorities. It also creates consistency across selection, assessment, succession planning, development programs, and promotion decisions.

The 70/20/10 model addresses how development experiences may be distributed among experiential learning, developmental relationships, and formal learning. It becomes useful after the required leadership capabilities have been identified. Depth and breadth strategies can also form part of leadership-pipeline planning, but they should be guided by the competencies the organization needs.

The appropriate sequence is therefore to clarify organizational requirements and then translate those requirements into required leadership capabilities through the organization's competency framework.

Study Guide Topics: Career & Leadership Development; leadership pipelines; competency models; succession planning; organizational capability.

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