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What makes a useful framework example
Most framework examples you find online are either too generic to use (10 leadership words with no definitions) or too specific to your business (80 competencies from one technology firm's internal wiki). The useful middle is an example that shows the structure, names the behaviours at target level, and leaves the vocabulary open for your managers to rewrite.
The examples below follow the structure we use inside Huneety and in the competency mapping guide: 6 to 8 competencies per role family, one behavioural anchor at target level, and an implicit Dreyfus 0 to 5 scale. Your job is to adapt, not to copy.
- 1Scope 6 to 8 competencies per role family. Not 3 (too shallow), not 20 (too wide for one role).
- 2Behavioural anchors One sentence per competency describing the target level. Specific enough that two managers would rate the same person similarly.
- 3Implicit scale Assume Dreyfus 0 to 5. Level 4 (fully responsible, manages complexity) is the usual target for senior individual contributors.
- 4Rewriting room Use your organisation's vocabulary. 'Customer obsession' beats 'Stakeholder Communication' if that is your culture's language. The structure is imported; the words are yours.
Competency only, or all the way down to skills and behaviours
Before picking a framework example, decide how deep your framework will go. A framework can stop at the competency level (a short list of named capabilities), extend to observable behaviours one level below, or go all the way down to the specific hard skills that produce those behaviours. The visual above shows the three tiers side by side.
Most mid-sized organisations sit at Tier 2 (competency plus observable behaviours). It is the sweet spot: ratings become defensible because the anchor is observable, and the 70/20/10 IDP knows what to target. Tier 3 (add hard skills) pays off in technical functions where certifications matter and hiring bars need to be sharp. Tier 1 (competency only) is fine as a year-one starting point, but pressure to move to Tier 2 shows up within two review cycles.
- 1Tier 1 (competency only) A list of 10 to 20 named competencies with a one-line definition. Used in first-cycle frameworks and executive overviews. Easy to build, hard to calibrate.
- 2Tier 2 (competency + behaviours) Each competency has 3 to 5 observable behavioural anchors at the target level. This is what makes ratings defensible and IDPs specific. The sweet spot.
- 3Tier 3 (competency + behaviours + hard skills) Each behaviour is decomposed into the concrete techniques that produce it (e.g. 'pyramid principle writing', 'SCQA slide structure'). Heavy to maintain without AI. Pays off in technical functions and certification-heavy industries.
Competency only
First-cycle framework, small teams, leadership overviews.
Pros
- + Fast to build
- + Easy to discuss
- + Low maintenance
Cons
- - Calibration noise
- - Hard to debate a rating
- - Thin IDP input
Competency + behaviours
Most mid-size organisations. Sweet spot for annual reviews.
Pros
- + Observable evidence
- + Defensible ratings
- + Clear IDP targets
Cons
- - More writing upfront
- - Behaviours need maintenance
Competency + behaviours + skills
Technical functions, regulated industries, skills-based hiring.
Pros
- + Training maps to skill
- + Certifications integrate
- + Hiring bar sharper
Cons
- - Heavy to build
- - Ages faster
- - Needs AI to maintain
Generate your framework from your own job descriptions
Huna AI drafts the competency list, behavioural anchors at 5 levels, and role profiles. HR edits rather than writes from scratch.
Engineering competency framework
Tuned for senior individual contributor (staff-level) engineers. Combines technical mastery with cross-functional collaboration, which is where most engineering frameworks break: they over-index on coding skill and under-index on the behaviours that make a senior engineer load-bearing on a team.
- 1System design Designs end-to-end systems handling growth to 10x current load, writing ADRs for every major decision and validating the design against non-functional requirements before implementation starts.
- 2Code craft Produces code that passes review on first pass more than 80 percent of the time. Raises the review bar for the team without slowing them down. Mentors junior engineers through their first production ship.
- 3Technical mentoring Runs weekly 1:1s with 3 junior engineers. Observable evidence includes at least one engineer on the team promoted within 18 months of joining the mentoring relationship.
- 4Cross-team collaboration Owns dependencies across at least 2 adjacent teams. Represents the engineering organisation in product and design discussions without requiring management translation.
- 5Incident response Leads incidents on the primary oncall rotation. Produces post-mortems that result in at least one systemic fix per incident, not just a follow-up ticket.
- 6Technical strategy Writes a quarterly technical roadmap for their area. Reviewed by the Staff+ group. Links technical decisions to business outcomes in plain language stakeholders can act on.
- 7Documentation and knowledge transfer Creates documentation that engineers outside the team can follow without needing a walk-through. Runs internal tech talks at least once per quarter.
- 8Tool and process improvement Identifies one team-level or org-level bottleneck per quarter and drives an improvement proposal through to adoption. Measures impact after 3 months.
Staff engineer role profile. Purple = required by role, green = illustrative current level. Gaps on Tech mentoring and Cross-team collab become IDP targets.
Sales competency framework
Tuned for enterprise sales directors responsible for multi-stakeholder deals above $500K. Heavy on forecast discipline and deal strategy, lighter on activity metrics, because at the enterprise tier the behaviours that matter are judgment calls, not call volume.
- 1Forecast accuracy and pipeline discipline Produces quarterly forecast within 10 percent of actual. Leads weekly pipeline reviews with direct reports. Deal stages are kept current within 48 hours of activity.
- 2Enterprise deal strategy Owns close plans for every opportunity above $500K. Multi-threaded across at least 4 stakeholders per deal. Champion identified and verified in every advanced-stage opportunity.
- 3Customer discovery Runs discovery calls that surface 3 or more differentiated pain points in the first meeting. Translates those into a written problem statement the customer confirms before the demo.
- 4Negotiation and commercial terms Closes deals within 85 percent of list price on average across the quarter. Escalates terms creatively (pilot, phased, contingent) rather than discounting as a default.
- 5Team coaching Runs weekly deal coaching with every AE. Produces at least one measurable skill improvement per AE per quarter (for example, discovery depth, negotiation tactics, forecasting accuracy).
- 6Cross-functional partnership Works with marketing on pipeline generation feedback loops, with customer success on handoff quality, and with product on customer insight. Measured by NPS from partner functions.
- 7Strategic account planning Owns annual plans for the top 5 accounts in the territory. Plans reviewed and updated quarterly. Expansion revenue makes up at least 30 percent of annual quota.
- 8Sales process rigour Uses the established sales methodology (MEDDIC, Challenger, or your internal framework) consistently, visible in the CRM. Does not shortcut the methodology under pressure.
Enterprise sales director role profile. The biggest gap is Team coaching (4 vs 2.5), which typically becomes the P1 IDP target for first-year directors.
Leadership competency framework
Tuned for director and above. The leadership framework is where Korn Ferry's 38-competency model is usually adapted down to the 8 that matter most for the organisation's current stage. Startup leadership frameworks emphasise decision velocity; enterprise leadership frameworks emphasise stakeholder orchestration.
- 1Strategic thinking Sets a 3-year direction for their function with quantified tradeoffs. Plans survive contact with quarterly reality rather than being rewritten every OKR cycle.
- 2Talent development Has a documented development plan for every direct report, reviewed quarterly. At least 2 direct reports promoted within 24 months. Succession named for their own role.
- 3Decision quality Documents major decisions in writing with context, options, tradeoffs, and a reversibility assessment. Decisions are made at the level of information, not the level of hierarchy.
- 4Stakeholder orchestration Maintains working relationships with peers across the executive team. No major cross-functional initiative stalls at their function boundary in the last 4 quarters.
- 5Performance conversations Gives direct feedback within 48 hours of observable events. Runs underperformance cases to resolution within one quarter. No feedback surprises in annual reviews.
- 6Change leadership Has led at least one organisation change (restructure, strategy pivot, tooling shift) with measurable adoption within 6 months. Holds the room through the messy middle of change.
- 7Business acumen Reads and discusses financial statements for their P&L unprompted. Makes resource allocation decisions with ROI reasoning visible in decision memos.
- 8Executive presence Communicates with the executive team and board with appropriate density: one-page strategic memos, not 40-slide decks. Handles ambiguous questions without retreating to tactical detail.
Director+ leadership profile. Talent development and Performance conversations are the common gaps for leaders promoted from IC tracks.
How to adapt an example to your organisation
The worst thing you can do with these examples is paste them into a document labelled 'our framework' and share it with the organisation. Your managers will notice the imported language within a week, and adoption will drop with it. The right workflow has three steps.
- 1Start from structure Adopt the competency count (6 to 8) and the Dreyfus scale. Keep the rough categorisation (technical vs behavioural vs leadership). Do not adopt the vocabulary yet.
- 2Run a manager interview round Interview 5 to 8 senior managers per function. Ask what 'good' and 'great' look like in their teams. Capture the phrases they use. These replace the example anchors above.
- 3Write behavioural anchors in manager language The behavioural anchor for 'Strategic Thinking' in your framework should sound like a phrase your VP would use in a review conversation. If it sounds like a textbook, rewrite it.
- 4Pilot before rollout Run the framework through one full review cycle on one department. Expect to revise 10 to 20 percent of anchors after the pilot. Do not skip this step. A framework that skips pilot goes straight to shelfware.
For the complete framework-building methodology, see the competency mapping guide. To generate a first-draft framework from your own job descriptions instead of starting from an example, Huna AI handles the drafting in minutes, leaving HR free to do the calibration work that actually matters.
QUICK ANSWERS
Quick answers
- Can I copy one of these frameworks as-is?
- Technically yes, but managers will notice imported language within weeks and adoption suffers. Use the structure (competency count, scale, categorisation), interview your own managers for the vocabulary, and rewrite the behavioural anchors. The example is scaffolding; the adoption signal is the vocabulary match.
- Why 6 to 8 competencies per role, not 15 or 20?
- A competency framework is a calibration tool, not a taxonomy. Managers can hold 6 to 8 competencies in working memory during a review conversation. Above that, they rate the first few carefully and then pattern-match the rest. If you have 15, the last 7 become noise, which defeats the purpose of the framework.
- How do I know if my framework is working?
- Three signals. Calibration variance drops across managers (two managers rating the same person within 0.5 Dreyfus levels). IDPs become specific (actions target named competency gaps, not generic goals). And succession conversations reference framework data rather than individual opinions. If one or more of those is missing after two cycles, the framework needs revision.
Continue learning
The Dreyfus proficiency scale
Why we default to Dreyfus 0 to 5 as the scale across every competency, and how each level maps to development verbs.
Read the guide
Soft skills vs hard skills in a framework
How to structure frameworks that cover both technical and behavioural capabilities without one drowning the other.
Read the guide