Manufacturing Leadership Journal

WeChat, the Chinese social media app, to roll out their competency models -- educating their leaders, increasing their leadership literacy, and creating engaging conversations about how the behaviors in the model define future success.

Others are mandating the use of the competencies and finding that initially skeptical leaders are embracing them once they understand how competencies can improve day-to-day operations.

• Addressing the quality of young leaders who are promoted very quickly and yet remain immature in their skill set is an active challenge for the leaders we talked to. What takes a western leader up to six years to achieve, many Chinese leaders are able to achieve in two or three years.

Young leaders are receiving simulation assessment feedback or development learning or both tailored to the way Chinese leaders want and need to learn.

Clearly, Chinese auto makers are ag-
gressively preparing their operations and
talent for M4.0. But what constraints
or hurdles will they need to overcome
when it comes to talent in order to build
and sustain growth? At DDI, one of our
core competencies is executive and senior
leader “day in the life” behavioral assess-
ment centers, similar to those mentioned
above as being key tools to improve leader
quality for M4.0. We consolidated the last
two years of our senior leader assessment
data for China to look at trends and gaps
relative to M4.0 key competencies. In this
analysis, we found a clear strength and two
critical gaps, outlined below.

Strength: Drive for Execution. First, in figure 1 below shown in blue, it is clear that the passion for results and executional competencies are strengths of Chinese leaders. But, these competencies alone are not enough to carry Chinese leaders in to and through M4.0 or China 2025.

Gap: Employee Engagement Skills. Similar to manufacturing leaders the world over, the findings below in the orange circle indicate that Chinese leaders received low scores on groups of competencies relat-ing to “engagement” and “involvement.” Competencies like coaching, leading

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Many Chi-
nese manu-
facturing
companies
are com-
pletely over-
hauling their
competency
models to in-
clude a more
futuristic fo-
cus on Manu-
facturing 4.0.

Cultivating NetworksInfluence Coachingand

DevelopingOthers Empowerment/ Delegation LeadingChangeEstablishing StrategicDirection Entrepreneurship DrivingExecution BuildingOrganizational Talent FinancialAcumen BusinessSavvy CustomerFocusOperational DecisionMaking PassionforResults