The BT+ Leadership Framework is a shared vocabulary for leadership development, designed to complement the language your organization already uses. It's built around 5 domains that capture leadership areas shaping business outcomes. Within each domain sits a set of competencies that name the specific skills leaders need to build.
What are the 5 domains and their competencies?
Character & Integrity
Leading with ethics, accountability, and resilience
- Integrity — Making ethical decisions, keeping commitments, and role-modeling company values consistently.
- Self-Awareness — Understanding one's own strengths and limitations, admitting mistakes, and staying open to feedback without defensiveness.
- Composure — Maintaining self-control under pressure so that stress or difficulty does not compromise performance.
- Trust-Building — Establishing and maintaining trust-based relationships, creating psychological safety and space for authenticity.
- Resilience — Persevering through adversity and holding steady through change and disruption.
- Ownership — Taking initiative, acting decisively, and delivering business results with rigor and attention to detail.
- Wellbeing — Balancing work and personal priorities, and supporting mental health and sustainable performance.
People & Culture
Building inclusive, collaborative environments across internal and external teams
- Collaboration — Working effectively across teams, breaking down silos, and building toward a shared purpose with candor.
- Motivation — Energizing self and others, recognizing contributions, and fostering an engaged workplace.
- Team Development — Growing people through coaching, mentoring, and empowerment, and building a pipeline of talent.
- Communication — Conveying ideas concisely in writing and in person, listening actively, and giving and receiving feedback well.
- Emotional Intelligence — Reading and responding to others' needs with candor, compassion, and genuine interest, adapting approach to context.
- Respect for Differences — Valuing people of varying backgrounds and cultures, and leading inclusively with cultural competency.
- Navigating Conflict — Addressing disagreement constructively and facilitating productive debate of ideas.
Execution & Outcomes
Delivering high-quality outcomes with a focus on customer needs
- Execution — Translating vision into plans, setting priorities and objectives, and delivering on time and to standard.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making — Making timely, objective decisions grounded in data and analysis rather than assumption.
- Customer Focus — Seeking first-hand insight from internal and external customers, and acting with their needs in mind.
- Accountability — Holding self and others to commitments, and owning the quality of deliverables.
- Productivity — Managing time and personal organization to meet deadlines consistently.
- Problem Solving — Applying rigorous logic under ambiguous conditions, looking beyond the obvious, and finding resourceful solutions.
Growth & Change
Adapting, learning, and leading through evolution and uncertainty
- Continuous Learning — Learning nimbly from experience and mistakes, staying curious, and challenging existing knowledge.
- Feedback — Seeking, offering, and acting on feedback to develop self and others.
- Critical Thinking — Exercising sound judgment in complex or ambiguous situations, questioning assumptions and weighing consequences.
- Change Management — Championing change, overcoming resistance, and removing systemic barriers to build momentum.
- Adaptability — Adjusting thinking, approach, and plans as conditions shift, with flexibility in tone and style.
- Innovation — Generating original ideas and better ways of working, and managing the creative process of others.
- Experimentation — Learning actively by testing ideas at small scale and taking measured risks.
- Continuous Improvement — Championing new methods, systems, and processes that improve performance over time.
Vision & Strategy
Keeping focus on the big picture, aligning others, and charting a clear path forward
- Strategic Thinking — Seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into strategies aligned to the mission.
- Visioning — Developing an inspiring vision for the business, and setting clear direction and goals behind it.
- Foresight — Thinking ahead and anticipating future consequences, trends, and potential challenges.
- Business Acumen — Understanding the market, the industry, and the financial drivers behind the organization's strategy.
- Systems Thinking — Understanding how organizations work, and getting things done through formal and informal channels.
- Stakeholder Management — Anticipating and balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders with organizational and political savvy.
- Risk Management — Anticipating risk and taking calculated risks with a clear view of the trade-offs.
- Influencing — Persuading and aligning others around a shared purpose, adapting the approach to each audience.
How can I browse content by domain or competency?
Click Browse at the top of the site, or apply domain/competency filters after a search.
What if I don't see the browse option?
If you don't see the option to browse by domain or competency, reach out to Big Think + Partner Services at partnerservices@bigthink.com to have it turned on for your organization.