The global skills and competency framework for the digital world

#85 New Skill - Coaching/Mentoring change request deferred

Transfer of skills and knowledge through hands-on mentoring/coaching is an important part of the professional environment. At present this kind of skills/knowledge transfer is not well articulated by a skill in SFIA.

This could perhaps be better covered through making the expectations of mentoring/coaching clear in the Business Skills part of the LoRs, however there are clearly some people who are better at coaching/mentoring others, and at the senior level this is a recognised skill for managers/executives. Much as Performance Management (PEMT) has been identified as a specific skill, this change suggests consideration of adding Coaching/Mentoring as a specific skill.

Note that this is not the same as the development/exploitation/sharing of expertise found in Technical Specialism (TECH) and not the same as Learning Delivery (ETDL).

An outline description as follows:

Overall description: The transfer of knoweledge/skill to others through shared experiences.

Level 3: Able to transfer own knowledge to support others working at a similar or junior level in the same skill to develop that skill.

Level 4: Leverages own knowledge, and that of others (including the coachee/mentee) to assist in the develop of knowledge and skill related to their own area of competence.

Level 5: Can oversee and coordinate mentoring/coaching. Able to help others develop generical capabilities (e.g. as described by the LoR) as well as in their own and related area of competence.

Level 6: Works with managers, including peers and seniors to support the development of generic and specific capabilities critical to organisational success.

Current status of this request: deferred

What we decided

Changes have been made to the generic attributes and levels of responsibilities.

Employee experience and professional development provide some coverage. 

We can keep under review to see if they address the need.

Ian Seward (General Manager)
Jun 25, 2020 11:51 AM

Mentoring is mentioned a few times throughout SFIA but I support the idea of making it more explicit. Here are some thoughts for discussions:

Mentoring could be brought out as a 'People Development' skill (MENT?) - this does have the benefit that it makes it absolutely explicit and plays to the greater. interest in mentoring throughout organisations and it being part of some roles.

Add it to TECH - not sure that work so well as you can be a specialist without mentoring others ... and some TECH may prefer not to share their knowledge ...

We could bring out mentoring or staff development in the generics ... either within Business Skills (too overloaded as it is) or explicitly as a "people development' generic ... the disadvantages with this might be that the old view of having to have all generics at L4 to be Level 4 might have to explicitly change to you use have sufficient and substantiol coverage at L4 to be L4 . But this does help with establishing development plans.