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The term managerial assessment of proficiency (MAP) describes a methodology for the assessment of managerial competence in human resource and training applications. MAP is designed for evaluation of a manager's proficiency in 12 prescribed competencies, and other criteria. Assessments can be generated for an employee, as well as for a department or the organisation as a whole. Normative values, used for comparative purposes in each assessment, are based upon the performance of over 110,000 managers, across 17 countries, in more than 600 organisations that have used MAP, according to the UK-based company, Development Processes Group plc, that licenses the tool into organisations. The Managerial Assessment of Proficiency - (MAP2), copyright 2012, 2014, HRD Press, Inc. is an assessment tool published by HRD Press, Inc. Amherst, MA USA, and is available throughout the world. "Development Processes Group plc" is the exclusive representative in the United Kingdom.
The 12 competencies are fundamental in determining the proficiency of an effective manager, according to the methodology. Implicit in the approach for developing managerial excellence is the definition of the competencies: a "group of related skills, knowledge, and attitudes that correlate with success in one’s job and can be improved through training."
Dr. Scott Parry, founder of Training House, Inc.,creator of the tool and 1999 inductee into the ASTD (ATD) and, Academy of Resource Development, Halls of Fame, developed the MAP competency framework by first analysing the results of a series of large competency studies conducted by a number of major organisations. Dr. Parry, sold Training House in 1999 to HRD Press, Inc. who authorized Development Processes Group, plc as the exclusive representative and developer of the MAP assessment within the United Kingdom. Cliff Lansley leads the further development of MAP with fellow Director Cameron Robertson has used the tool in studies across hundreds of major public and private sector organisations and he says' "we now have powerful benchmarking data of leadership competencies across most organisational sectors. What is unique here, is that MAP is the only objective diagnostic tool for managerial and leadership compenece measurement that exists in the world. All other tools are based merely on self-report, 360 degree opinion or subjective judgement by an assessor".
The studies looked at a number of leading corporations to identify the competencies and attributes that were important to the performance of managers. IBM, AT&T, Henley Management College, Ford and Kodak came up with very similar managerial competencies and these were analysed. The developers of MAP selected 12 of the most frequently mentioned competencies, those common to most frameworks, and arranged them in 4 clusters and 2 broad categories: task-handling (left column) and people-handling (right column).
administrative(managing your job) | communication(relating to others) |
time management and prioritising, setting goals and standards, planning and scheduling work | listening and organizing, giving clear information, getting unbiased information |
cognitive(thinking clearly) | supervisory(building a team) |
identifying and solving problems making decisions and weighing risk, thinking clearly and analytically | training, coaching, delegating appraising people and performance, disciplining and counselling |
Dr. Scott Parry, developer of the MAP Assessment competency framework and tool, defines competencies as "a group of related skills, knowledge, and attitudes that correlate with success in one’s job and that can be improved through training”.
The assessment involves studying a series of real-life management situations covering a week in the life of a typical manager and his team and answering a series of questions about your judgement of what you've seen.
The situations covered include:
Following each short scene the delegates answer a series of questions based on what they have been watching. They are then asked if, in their opinion, the management behaviour they have seen is good or bad practice.
The scenarios are very effective in getting managers to be a part of the assessment process because they are based on the real situations that they regularly have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, resulting in high face validity scores.
There are also two paper-based questionnaires that help determine their preferred styles of managing and communicating and the impact that can have in the workplace.
At the end of the day the assessment is scored online and a personal profile produced within minutes. This is in readiness for Day 2 of the MAP Assessment process.
The second day of the process is the interpretation of the assessment scores providing delegates with a development ‘road map’ for their ongoing development.
If a team is being assessed then a group profile is also produced to take into account the department or team's training and development needs.
Before making the assessment available to clients, Cliff Lansley, one of the developers of MAP validated the methodology in 11 organisations. Managers were selected to cover the full range of proficiency at work from ‘excellent’ to ‘below average’. Working independently, three senior managers assigned ratings on a 5-point scale to each manager being assessed, thereby establishing a rank order.
A total of 253 managers from 11 organisations went through the video-based assessment. Their overall proficiency percentiles (average of the 12 competency scores) were compared with their senior managers’ ratings of their performance at work, using the Spearman's rank order correlation analysis.
Correlations were positive, ranging from .71 to .92. This supported the following assumptions:-
Cliff Lansley, Director and owner of Development Processes Group plc, the lead organisation for MAP across the UK, is undertaking an extended research and validation exercise and the results will be referenced on completion.
The construct validity can be measured by the degree to which the developers’ assessment data agrees with the actual performance of managers at work. But participants are also concerned with face validity, the degree to which they can identify with the video episodes and accept their proficiency profile as accurate. On the post-assessment evaluation sheet, 92% said they had no difficulty relating to the episodes, and 86% said that the scores they received were probably accurate.
A further examination of the list of 12 competencies will support the assumption that they can all be improved via training. This is in contrast to the characteristics, qualities, and attributes that appear in some organisations’ lists of competencies¼ self-confidence, initiative, flexibility, ambition and so on. These are best defined as personality traits, not competencies, according to Dr. Scott Parry. They are typically formed early in life and, short of clinical intervention, are not subject to significant change through participation in a training programme. The developers of MAP restricted the assessment to competencies that can be developed through training.
Famous chef, Raymond Blanc , experienced the tool himself and he outlines in the link below how he used MAP within his organisation and found it to be a good predictor of managerial performance.
MAP has also been used as a central part of qualifications accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management and the Chartered Management Institute .
MAP has been deployed across the UK by a range of Licensed Delivery Centres by Development Processes Group PLC. One of its centres, Metricate Ltd, have supported its work in assessing and researching competencies in the construction, engineering and logistics industry sectors. The goal was to identify the implications of any deficiencies for the businesses concerned and assess how and where they impacted upon the organisation. (‘Understanding the Real Skills Gap: Management and Leadership’ 2008, Metricate Ltd).
The specific management competencies in deficit on this study, according to a MAP analysis, were identified as:-
From follow-up interviews with managers at Company Board level, there were a number of strategic and operational problem areas for companies stemming from the deficit in the management competencies described:-
The work of Metricate Ltd went on to confirm in their study that development programs were most effective in resolving the deficiencies in competence where they met the following program design specifications:-
Industrial and organizational psychology, an applied discipline within psychology, is the science of human behavior in the workplace. Depending on the country or region of the world, I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of technology. In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, training may continue beyond initial competence to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within some professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development. Training also refers to the development of physical fitness related to a specific competence, such as sport, martial arts, military applications and some other occupations.
A skill is the learned ability to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of work, some general skills would include time management, teamwork and leadership, self-motivation and others, whereas domain-specific skills would be used only for a certain job. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used.
ISO/IEC 15504Information technology – Process assessment, also termed Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (SPICE), is a set of technical standards documents for the computer software development process and related business management functions. It is one of the joint International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards, which was developed by the ISO and IEC joint subcommittee, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7.
Recognition of prior learning (RPL), prior learning assessment (PLA), or prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR), describes a process used by regulatory bodies, adult learning centres, career development practitioners, military organizations, human resources professionals, employers, training institutions, colleges and universities around the world to evaluate skills and knowledge acquired outside the classroom for the purpose of recognizing competence against a given set of standards, competencies, or learning outcomes. RPL is practiced in many countries for a variety of purposes, for example an individual's standing in a profession, trades qualifications, academic achievement, recruitment, performance management, career and succession planning.
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. The term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by R.W. White in 1959 as a concept for performance motivation. In 1970, Craig C. Lundberg defined the concept in "Planning the Executive Development Program". The term gained traction when in 1973, David McClelland wrote a seminal paper entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence". The term was used by McClelland commissioned by the State Department, to extract characteristics common to high-performing agents of embassy, and to help them recruit and develop. It has since been popularized by Richard Boyatzis and many others, such as T.F. Gilbert (1978) who used the concept in relationship to performance improvement. Its use varies widely, which leads to considerable misunderstanding.
Skills management is the practice of understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills. Well-implemented skills management should identify the skills that job roles require, the skills of individual employees, and any gap between the two.
Arts-based training is a form of employee training.
A job description or JD is a written narrative that describes the general tasks, or other related duties, and responsibilities of a position. It may specify the functionary to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications or skills needed by the person in the job, information about the equipment, tools and work aids used, working conditions, physical demands, and a salary range. Job descriptions are usually narrative, but some may comprise a simple list of competencies; for instance, strategic human resource planning methodologies may be used to develop a competency architecture for an organization, from which job descriptions are built as a shortlist of competencies.
Clark L. Wilson was an American industrial psychologist who introduced the concept of 360 feedback surveys for management training and development applications. From 1970-1973 he developed his first 360-degree feedback survey, the "Survey of Management Practices". It was based on a learning sequence he called the Task-Cycle-Theory. Today, 360 feedback surveys of many types are standard tools for management training and development worldwide.
Talent management (TM) refers to the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs. The field has been growing in significance and gaining interest among practitioners as well as in the scholarly debate over the past 10 years, particularly after McKinsey's 1997 research and the 2001 book on The War for Talent. Michaels, Ed; Handfield-Jones, Helen; Axelrod, Beth (2001). The War for Talent. Harvard Business Press. ISBN 9781578514595. Talent management in this context does not refer to the management of entertainers. Talent management is the science of using strategic human resource planning to improve business value and to make it possible for companies and organizations to reach their goals. Everything done to recruit, retain, develop, reward and make people perform forms a part of talent management as well as strategic workforce planning. A talent-management strategy should link to business strategy and to local context to function more appropriately
A training package is a set of nationally endorsed training standards, qualifications and guidelines in Australia.
Management due diligence is the process of appraising a company's senior management—evaluating each individual's effectiveness in contributing to the organization's strategic objectives.
Elwood F. "Ed" Holton III is the Jones S. Davis Distinguished Professor of Human Resource, Leadership and Organization Development in the School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development at Louisiana State University where he coordinates their B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degree programs in Human Resource and Leadership Development.
A competency dictionary is a tool or data structure that includes all or most of the general competencies needed to cover all job families and competencies that are core or common to all jobs within an organization. They may also include competencies that are more closely related to the knowledge and skills needed for specific jobs or functions.
Competency-based recruitment is a process of recruitment based on the ability of candidates to produce anecdotes about their professional experience which can be used as evidence that the candidate has a given competency. Candidates demonstrate competencies on the application form, and then in the interview, which in this case is known as a competency-based interview.
An assessment day is usually used in the context of recruitment. On this day, a group of applicants who have applied for a particular role are invited to an assessment centre, where a combination of selection techniques are used by the employers to measure the suitability of an individual for the job role. These selection technique usually include exercises such as presentation, group exercise, one to one Interview, role play, psychometric test etc. Most large organisations like banks, audit and IT firms use assessment days to recruit the fresh talent in their graduate programmes. With an increase of popularity of assessment days, several training institutes have been formed that prepare candidates for assessment days, for example, Green Turn is a famous institute that prepares candidates for assessment days of big 4 accountancy firms.
The Cambridge English Teaching Framework is a professional development framework, designed by Cambridge English Language Assessment, which is used by English language teachers to self-assess and plan their own development.
NOTECHS is a system used to assess the non-technical skills of crew members in the aviation industry. Introduced in the late 1990s, the system has been widely used by airlines during crew selection process, picking out individuals who possess capable skills that are not directly related to aircraft controls or systems. In aviation, 70 percent of all accidents are induced from pilot error, lack of communication and decision making being two contributing factors to these accidents. NOTECHS assesses and provides feedback on the performance of pilots' social and cognitive skills to help minimize pilot error and enhance safety in the future. The NOTECHS system also aims to improve the Crew Resource Management training system.
Competence assessment is a process in which evidence is gathered by the assessor and evaluated against agreed criteria in order to make a judgement of competence. Skill assessment is the comparison of actual performance of a skill with the specified standard for performance of that skill under the circumstances specified by the standard, and evaluation of whether the performance meets or exceed the requirements. Assessment of a skill should comply with the four principles of validity, reliability, fairness and flexibility.