Most communication skills training in organizations follow a one-size-fits-all approach. As a result, a Java developer, who is hunched over lines of codes, and a data scientist, who is lost in probabilities, are often ushered into the same training environment — regardless of their vastly different roles and daily responsibilities. After sitting through such generic programs, they return to their desks under-equipped to effectively meet the communication demands of the functional side of their work.

How are these professionals under-equipped despite sitting through programs that might have been designed by reputable instructional designers and curriculum planners? The answer lies in competency mapping — or rather, the lack of it.

A Misaligned Reality

Let’s define the rather elusive word “competency” before delving into the concept of competency mapping. In their book, “The Art and Science of Competency Models: Pinpointing Critical Success Factors in Organizations,” Anntoinette D. Lucia and Richard Lepsinger define a competency as “a cluster of related knowledge, skills and attitudes that affects a major part of one’s job (a role or responsibility), that correlates with performance on the job.”

This definition highlights a fundamental truth: that individuals need the right skills to perform a job effectively. And it is a given that these skills can be developed through learning programs. Organizations, therefore, expend considerable time and resources in upskilling employees on a range of technical capabilities aligned to their roles. They also devote a fair amount of time to developing the technical employees’ communication and professional skills. And yet, here lies a yawning chasm. While technical training is tailored to the specific requirements of each role, communication skills training is often bundled under a single umbrella — delivered uniformly, regardless of function, context or role.

Competency Mapping: The First Step Toward Fixing a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

To bridge this gaping chasm, organizations must approach communication skills training with the same intent and precision as they do technical training — making it tailored, specific and relevant to the role. Competency mapping is the essential first step to making that happen.

Companies that do this well are able to CRAFT memorable learning programs. Let’s look at how:

• Customize: A competency mapping exercise customizes communication skills training based on the specific competencies required for each technical role.
• Refine: Once the training design is customized, the exercise can further refinethe learning strategy to ensure the offering is targeted and role-relevant.
• Align: With this level of customization and refinement, the learning program is clearly alignedwith the skills, attitudes and behaviors needed to perform effectively on the role.
• Facilitate: This alignment empowers the learning and development (L&D) teams, including curriculum developers, instructional designers and facilitators, to facilitate clear, contextualized and relatable training.
• Transform: As these steps come together, the training intervention has the potential to transform how organizations approach communication and professional skills training — leading to elevated return on investment (ROI) and meaningful on-the-job impact.

Competency Mapping: Where Strategy Meets Skill

To put competency mapping into action, learning leaders can look to the five Rs: Research, Retrieve, Refine, Reinforce and Reflect (see Figure 1).

Research and Retrieve

This is the first crucial step in competency mapping. To ensure a strong foundation, L&D teams must:

• Review the job description of the targeted technical role to infer expectations and deliverables.
• Engage with subject matter experts (SMEs) or practice leads to gain invaluable insights into role-specific communication and professional skills required for success.
• Consult senior professionals in the role to garner information on real-world challenges, perspectives and their experiences.

When reviewing the official job description of a technical role, inference becomes an important skill. Most job descriptions do not explicitly articulate communication or professional skills expectations. Instead, the L&D team must extrapolate those requirements by analyzing the listed responsibilities and deliverables. It’s about reading between the lines — translating tasks into interpersonal and communication competencies needed to perform them effectively.

For instance, one job description for a senior software engineer on LinkedIn lists under requirements: “Collaborate with a world-class team of software and systems engineers, data scientists and other stakeholders.” This single line hints at a vast range of communication and professional skills, such as the ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams, listen actively, manage stakeholders effectively and present complex ideas succinctly. While these skills are not explicitly listed, they become evident upon closer examination.

Refine

L&D teams should use what they learn in the first two steps to then refine the communication and professional skills training design. Consider the following strategies:

• Create a mapping document

Begin by preparing a document for each key deliverable listed in the job description. A competency mapping document can include, but is not limited to, the following components: key deliverables, communication and professional skills competencies, exemplar behaviors, development activities, and content aligned to the development activities.

The curriculum design should flow from left to right, with each element logically evolving from the one before it and ensuring that every activity is coherently and strongly anchored to the previous one.

What’s more, creating varying degrees of proficiency for the same behavioral or communication trait is something that L&D teams might need to consider when preparing the competency mapping document. This increases the framework’s scalability.

For instance, consider the skill of problem management. If it is a principal behavioral trait for a business analyst, the team can outline varying levels of proficiency. At level one, an entry-level analyst might be expected to ask the right questions and articulate problems in clear language. At level two, an experienced analyst might be expected to explore potential solutions and adopt a problem-solving approach. Such staggered classification allows teams to build a rich repertoire of content that addresses the developmental needs of employees across experience levels.

• Embed context in content

To truly elevate the impact of communication and professional skills training programs, L&D professionals need to walk the extra mile by creating content that is hyper-relevant to the role. For instance, problem-solving as an expected behavioral trait can be common to most roles, but when training a data analyst in problem-solving, you may use contexts, examples and use cases drawn from the data analytics domain. This contextual approach will not only foster stronger buy-in from the learners but will also result in memorable learning experiences.

At this stage, if the outcomes are not satisfactory, the teams can go back to the first stage of the process and evaluate the decisions for better outcomes.

Reinforce and Reflect

As the old adage says, “The proof is in the pudding,” and the fourth stage of competency mapping truly echoes this. Designing a training plan that is curated specifically for a role can take significant time and resources — but the work is not done. It is now essential to train the employees, collect feedback, observe how well they are responding to the content and reflect on the decisions. The final two steps, reinforce and reflect, ensure that the program is not just well-designed but genuinely impactful, ultimately contributing to greater business goals around growth, employee development and retention.