# Examples of Behavioral Competencies: What Each Looks Like in Practice Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/behavioral-competencies-examples/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/behavioral-competencies-examples.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving professional behaviors at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Seven behavioral competencies examples, from professionalism to customer focus, with the observable behaviors employers assess and how to evidence each one. ## Key facts - Title: Examples of Behavioral Competencies: What Each Looks Like in Practice - Category: Skills Standards and Frameworks - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Working with Your Manager - Primary keyword: behavioral competencies examples - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/behavioral-competencies-examples/ ## What this page covers - Seven behavioral competencies examples, from professionalism to customer focus, with the observable behaviors employers assess and how to evidence each one. - Practical guidance for behavioral competencies examples - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation Behavioral competencies are the observable ways of working that employers assess alongside what you know. Common examples include professionalism, teamwork, communication, adaptability, planning and prioritization, results orientation and customer focus. Each one is broken into specific behaviors, such as arriving on time and prepared, that an interviewer or manager can actually see and rate. On an application form or a review template, those labels can look vague enough to mean anything, which makes it hard to know what you are supposed to show. They are far more concrete than they sound. Once you can see the behaviors underneath each one, you can also see which of them you already have stories for. ## What makes a competency behavioral A behavioral competency describes how you work, not what you know, and frameworks make it concrete by breaking each one into indicators: specific, day-to-day behaviors that someone else can observe. The framework used by New Zealand's intelligence agencies, GCSB and NZSIS, is a typical example, with six competencies and a set of indicators under each. That structure tells you what is really being judged. Nobody rates the word "teamwork." They rate whether you share information, back a decision the group has made and keep working relationships intact when you disagree. Because a competency is defined by behavior rather than personality, it can be practiced and evidenced. You don't need to be a certain type of person to show it. You need to do certain things, visibly and repeatedly. Most frameworks also describe each competency at more than one level, since the same competency looks different as responsibility grows. The OECD's Core Competency Framework, for instance, uses three levels of mastery: Performing, Inspiring and Leading. For a student or someone in a first job, that is good news. What is expected of you is the first level done reliably, not the leadership version of everything. The exact list varies by employer, role and industry, because each framework is built around what success in a particular job requires. For students, a useful reference point comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which identified eight [career readiness competencies](/knowledge/skills-standards/nace-competencies/) that employers consistently look for across industries and attached sample behaviors to each. Three of the examples below come from NACE's set. Treat the seven as a common core, and when a job posting or review form names its own competencies, work from those. ## Seven examples of behavioral competencies, and what each looks like ### 1. Professionalism In NACE's framework, professionalism means effective work habits, accountability and integrity, at work and in the wider community. Its sample behaviors are deliberately ordinary, starting with consistently arriving on time and prepared for class or work. Day to day, it looks like delivering what you promised by the time you promised it, owning a mistake instead of explaining it away, and keeping confidential information to yourself. The words "class or work" are the detail worth noticing. Professionalism is as visible in a seminar room as in an office, so you already have evidence for it before your first job: the group deadline you never missed, the presentation you prepared properly when nobody would have checked. ### 2. Teamwork NACE frames teamwork around building collaborative relationships and managing conflict so a group can reach shared goals. In practice the label breaks down into behaviors such as collaborating with colleagues, supporting team decisions and sharing information openly. This is where the gap between a claim and evidence is widest. "I'm a team player" proves nothing. Describing how you shared your research notes with the group, then backed the plan it chose even though you had argued for another, shows three indicators in two sentences. One of NACE's sample behaviors names the supervisor explicitly: building strong, positive working relationships with your supervisor as well as your coworkers. The person who assigns and reviews your work belongs inside the competency, not outside it. ### 3. Communication NACE describes communication as clearly and effectively exchanging information, ideas, facts and perspectives with people inside and outside your organization. "Exchanging" is the important word, because understanding someone else counts as much as being understood. Good evidence includes asking a clarifying question before starting a task, condensing a long email thread into two lines a colleague can act on, and explaining your work to someone outside your field without jargon. The reach beyond the organization matters as well. Customers, clients and partners fall inside the competency, which makes a part-time job dealing with the public a legitimate source of examples. ### 4. Adaptability Adaptability is usually defined as adjusting your approach when priorities, instructions or tools change, and staying productive through the change. It is easy to claim and harder to evidence, because "I'm flexible" describes a trait while an assessor is looking for an action. A strong example sounds like this: the brief changed two days before the deadline, you re-planned the work, told the people affected and delivered the revised version. The change itself is only the situation. What counts is what you did next and how it turned out. ### 5. Planning and prioritization This competency covers breaking work into steps, ordering tasks by importance and deadline, and flagging conflicts early. What gets assessed is less the system you use than what it produces: work sequenced sensibly and delivered, and problems raised while there was still time to solve them. The early flag is easy to overlook as evidence. Telling a lecturer or manager on Tuesday that two deadlines collide on Friday is a planning behavior in its own right, and often more convincing than a perfect to-do list. ### 6. Results orientation Results orientation means setting clear outcomes and following work through to completion. It maps directly onto the last part of a [structured interview answer](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/interpersonal-skills-interview/), the result, which is why a story that ends with "and then the project wrapped up" leaves an assessor with nothing to rate. Evidence here is specific: the event that filled every seat, the backlog you cleared, the report delivered on the date agreed. A mixed outcome still counts, as long as you say what happened and what you would do differently. ### 7. Customer focus Customer focus means understanding and responding to the needs of the people who depend on your work, inside or outside the organization. The notable detail is who counts as a customer. Often it is the colleague who needs your spreadsheet by noon, or the team that builds on your analysis, as much as anyone paying for a product. Evidence starts with noticing a need before being told about it: checking which format the next person wants, or following up to make sure what you delivered actually solved their problem. ## How assessors tell a strong example from a weak one Behavioral competencies are assessed in three main ways: competency-based interviews, 360-degree feedback gathered from several colleagues, and [performance reviews](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/performance-review-preparation/). Interview questions usually start with "Tell me about a time when...", and the expected shape is STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. The logic behind it is that past behavior is the best available evidence of future behavior. That logic sets the standard. A strong example is specific, centers on your own actions rather than the team's, and ends with a result you can state plainly. A weak one describes a trait ("I'm very organized"), hides inside "we," or stops before the outcome. Dramatic stories are not required. A seminar group, a weekend job or a volunteer role can supply evidence for several of the seven once you look at it from more than one angle. Once you are in a job, the stakes shift from the interview to the review, and not knowing what good looks like has a real cost. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described his first professional project this way: > I was sent abroad for a four-month project that had been described as something important, challenging, and high-profile. But once I was there, it wasn't always clear what I was actually expected to achieve. > > I kept wondering: What does success look like here? What are they really expecting from me? They would tell me something, but I was never entirely sure whether I had understood it the way they intended. > > Because of that uncertainty, I found myself looking for a lot of reassurance. I wanted some kind of confirmation that what I was doing was at least roughly right, so I asked a great many questions. > > At the same time, I worried that I might simply be wasting people's time by asking so much. I spent far too much energy on that uncertainty, and it became much more emotional than it needed to be. > > Looking back, I think I would have been a much more effective employee if I had had a clearer understanding of what was expected of me, what good performance looked like, and how things were generally done in that environment. The way out is to get hold of the indicators before you are rated on them. Ask whether your organization has a [competency framework](/knowledge/skills-standards/company-competencies/), read what it says for your level, and ask who on the team is a good example of it in action. Knowing your own pattern helps too, before that conversation or an interview, because you can lead with the competencies where your evidence runs deepest. The Job Skills Test takes a few minutes and can help you [spot your strongest areas](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), and the thinner ones are simply behaviors you can start practicing this week. ## What helps you show these behaviors consistently Look back across the seven and none of them is a talent you either have or lack. Each comes down to what you actually do, how well you know your own pattern, and whether the person rating you sees the same picture. **Professional Behaviors** is the conduct that many of these labels point at. Being open to change is what "adaptability" looks like on an ordinary day, and treating everyone impartially, showing humility and steering clear of passive, arrogant or negative habits sit underneath both "professionalism" and "teamwork." The small signals count as well: being on time, keeping confidential information confidential, speaking about colleagues as if they were in the room. Seen this way, each label turns into a handful of actions you can practice without changing who you are. **Building Self-Awareness** decides which of the seven you can evidence honestly. Looking at how you work, how it feels and what results it produces shows where your natural strengths lie, and those are usually the competencies with the richest stories behind them. The other half is asking people who have watched you work for specific, future-focused feedback. Their view will confirm part of your own picture and correct the rest, which is exactly what you want to know before an interviewer or reviewer tests it. **Working with Your Manager** becomes central the moment the competencies appear on a review form, because your manager is usually the one doing the rating. Agreeing early on which behaviors matter in your role, making your results visible as the year goes on and asking for feedback in regular one-on-ones mean you arrive at the review with your own examples ready. That turns the review from a verdict you receive into a conversation you help shape, including asking for what you want next. The **free Job Skills Test** gives you a reading on all three and shows [which skill to practice first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). It covers the rest of the set too, **twelve work skills in all**, and since each one is learnable, a weak score just marks where the work begins. ## Where your own stories start Some of the seven may already read like a description of an ordinary week for you. If you have re-planned a group project after someone dropped out, or tidied up a handover so the next person could pick it up without asking, you already hold a STAR story for adaptability or customer focus. The competencies you can't yet evidence are not missing parts of your personality. They are behaviors you haven't had a reason to practice, and they can be built one situation at a time, in your own style. The weight placed on this kind of evidence tends to grow with each step up in responsibility, so it pays to know your pattern while the stakes are still modest, and every gap you find is one you can close. ## Find the competencies you can already back up What remains is a clear look at your own starting point. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that takes 7 minutes. It maps you across all twelve skills and shows which ones would add the most to the examples you bring to your next interview or review. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Seven behavioral competencies examples, from professionalism to customer focus, with the observable behaviors employers assess and how to evidence each one. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Professional Behaviors. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Working with Your Manager. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/behavioral-competencies-examples/ Preferred summary: "Seven behavioral competencies examples, from professionalism to customer focus, with the observable behaviors employers assess and how to evidence each one." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.