# Examples of Professional Competencies, and How to Show Each One at Work Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/example-of-professional-competencies/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/example-of-professional-competencies.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 Examples of professional competencies, from communication and teamwork to professionalism and adaptability, and how to back each one with real evidence. ## Key facts - Title: Examples of Professional Competencies, and How to Show Each One at Work - Category: Soft Skills at Work - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Working with Your Manager - Primary keyword: example of professional competencies - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/example-of-professional-competencies/ ## What this page covers - Examples of professional competencies, from communication and teamwork to professionalism and adaptability, and how to back each one with real evidence. - Practical guidance for example of professional competencies - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation Examples of professional competencies include communication, teamwork, professionalism, self-development, adaptability and leadership, alongside the technical competencies of your own field. Each one is described as behavior other people can observe at work, such as listening actively or following through on a commitment, rather than as a qualification you hold or a personality trait you were born with. When a job ad, an application form or a review template asks you to name your competencies, the word can sound like an exam you never sat. It is less mysterious than it looks. Once you see how a competency is actually written, you can read any list, recognize what you already do, and describe it with evidence instead of adjectives. Almost everything depends on the way each one is phrased. ## What makes something a professional competency The U.S. Office of Personnel Management defines a competency as a measurable pattern of knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors and other characteristics that a person needs to perform a work role successfully. The important word is measurable. A competency is described in terms of what can be seen in the work, not in terms of what someone says about themselves. That is why "good communicator" on its own says very little, while "asks questions until the brief is clear" says a lot. Organizations collect their competencies in a competency model: a set that together defines successful performance in a particular setting. A model can be built for one job, a group of jobs, a whole organization or an entire industry, and it is used for hiring, training and evaluation alike. In practice, the list that appears in a job ad tends to come back during onboarding and again as headings in your performance review. If your employer has a competency model, it is the most relevant set of examples you will ever get. Most models sort competencies into three tiers. **Core competencies** are expected of everyone in the organization, with communication and teamwork as the standard examples. **Functional competencies** belong to a specific role. **Leadership competencies** apply to people who lead teams and make strategic decisions. Early in a career, you are judged mainly on the first two. Each competency in a model usually comes with behavioral indicators: short descriptions of what the competency looks like in practice, often graded into several proficiency levels. These indicators are the useful part. They show what a beginner does and what an expert does, which tells you both what to practice and what evidence to point to. ## 7 examples of professional competencies, and what each looks like at work A widely used reference point for graduates comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the U.S. body that defines career readiness. NACE describes career readiness as the attainment and demonstration of the competencies that prepare college graduates for a successful transition into the workplace, and it names eight: Career & Self-Development, Communication, Critical Thinking, Equity & Inclusion, Leadership, Professionalism, Teamwork and Technology. The examples below draw on that list and on how competencies are written in workplace frameworks, with one entry for the technical side of your job. ### 1. Communication NACE defines communication as clearly and effectively sharing information, ideas and perspectives. It then lists the behaviors that show it: using active listening, communicating in an organized manner and asking appropriate questions. This is a model example of how a competency should read: one sentence of definition, followed by things a colleague could actually watch you do. If you want to claim communication as a competency, those behaviors are what your example needs to show, such as the meeting where you summarized the decision before anyone left, or the email that put the main point in the first line. ### 2. Teamwork NACE's earlier framework described teamwork as building collaborative relationships with colleagues and customers from different backgrounds and viewpoints, working within a team structure, and being able to negotiate and manage conflict. That last part is easy to miss. Teamwork as a competency is not the same as enjoying group work or being easy to get along with. It covers what you do when the team disagrees: raising the issue without making it personal, and helping the group reach a decision it can act on. ### 3. Professionalism Professionalism is one of NACE's eight, and it sits firmly in the core tier that every role is judged on. Because the word sounds abstract, it helps to translate it into behavior: arriving on time, treating everyone with the same respect whatever their role, handling confidential information carefully, completing administrative tasks without being chased, and speaking about colleagues as if they were in the room. None of these behaviors stands out on a single day. Over a few months, they decide whether people see you as someone they can rely on. ### 4. Career and self-development Career & Self-Development is the competency of developing yourself on purpose. Because competencies are graded into proficiency levels, every one of them is something you move through rather than simply have or lack. In practice, this competency shows up as knowing which of your strengths to build on, asking for specific feedback, and acting on it. An example might be the time you asked a supervisor what would make your next report more useful, and the change you made afterward. ### 5. Adaptability One university HR framework writes its adaptability statement like this: adapts behavior or methods as appropriate to suit a new or changing environment, the needs of the situation or to achieve a goal. It is a good illustration of the grammar most competency statements follow: a verb describing behavior, then the conditions under which it is shown. You can use that grammar for any competency you describe. Start with what you did, then add the situation that called for it. ### 6. Leadership and influence Leadership competencies belong to the third tier, covering people who lead teams and make strategic decisions, with influence as a typical example. Early in a career, you will rarely be evaluated against this tier directly. But the behaviors behind it start small: volunteering to prepare the agenda, taking responsibility for a piece of work nobody owned, or building support for an idea before you present it. These are the first visible signs that you can [affect outcomes without a title](/knowledge/influence/leading-without-authority/). ### 7. Technical competencies of your field Technical, or functional, competencies are specific to a profession: software development in IT, mechanical design in engineering, financial analysis and reporting in finance. This is the part your education and training mostly build, and the part a job ad lists most explicitly. The workplace competencies above are different. They apply across roles, are rarely taught directly, and are mostly learned on the job, which is why they are often the half of a competency list that feels hardest to fill in. ## How to describe your own competencies with evidence Competencies are demonstrated, not declared. Writing "teamwork" [on a resume](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/career-skills-resume/) or in a [self-assessment](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/self-assessment-performance-review/) carries weight only when it is backed by a concrete situation in which you showed the behavior. So the useful preparation is to collect evidence rather than adjectives. For each competency a role asks for, find one real example from a job, a project, a volunteer role or a group assignment, and note what you did and what changed because of it. The behavioral indicators tell you what that example has to contain. Some competencies will come up empty, and that is useful information, not a verdict. Each one describes behavior, and behavior can be practiced. Before you decide which competencies to put forward in an application, it helps to [map where your strengths already are](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so the ones you lead with are ones you can genuinely support. The other half of the work is learning what "good" means where you are. Because competencies are judged through behavior, the most direct way to find out which ones matter in your role, and what a strong level looks like, is to ask the person who evaluates your work. If [guessing at expectations](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/how-to-align-expectations-with-your-manager/) has ever cost you energy, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work told us: > I think it would help me a lot to sit down with my direct manager and really understand what I need to do to be successful in their eyes. > > That would make it much easier to go to work without constantly second-guessing myself. In the end, my manager is the person assessing whether I am doing a good job, so I need to understand their expectations and work within them. > > That may also mean doing something I'm not always very good at: simply taking their direction, doing the work well, and finding satisfaction in that — even when I don't necessarily agree with everything or find it slightly frustrating that they get to decide. > > The important thing is to keep that dialogue open and be honest. Ask direct questions instead of circling around the issue, because trying to guess what people really mean simply takes too much time. What he describes is exactly what a competency list with clear indicators is meant to provide: a shared picture of success. Where your organization has one, read it with your manager. Where it does not, the same conversation builds one. ## What makes professional competencies easier to show Knowing the list is rarely the hard part. The difficulty sits underneath it: behaving in the ways the list describes, seeing your own pattern clearly, and agreeing on the standard with the person who rates you. **Professional Behaviors** is where much of any competency list becomes concrete. Showing respect to everyone, staying humble about what you do not yet know, being on time and following the organization's policies are the everyday behaviors that "professionalism" and much of "teamwork" are made of. Seen this way, professionalism stops being a vague virtue and becomes a short set of habits you can practice and point to. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you map yourself against a list instead of copying it. Working out what you are genuinely good at, by looking at how you work, how the work feels and what results it produces, shows which competencies are real strengths. Asking for specific, future-focused feedback fills in what you cannot see yourself. The goal is an honest picture, not a perfect one. **Working with Your Manager** is where competencies get judged. Your manager usually rates you against the framework, so regular one-on-ones, a habit of making your results visible and a performance review prepared with specific examples turn an abstract list into expectations you both understand. That is how a competency moves from a word on a form to something you are recognized for. These three belong to a wider group of **twelve skills** that run through almost every role, and the **free Job Skills Test** [scores the behaviors behind each one](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so you get a starting point to practice from instead of a guess. A lower score points to a habit you can begin working on this week. It is not a limit on where you can go. Some of this may already sound like how you work. If you have ever stared at a competency column on a form and then found one real example after all, a disagreement you helped settle or a process you quietly fixed, you have already done the core move: turning a word into evidence. The competencies you have not built yet grow the same way, through practice and in your own style, without having to become someone else. They also carry more weight as your responsibilities grow, which makes it worth knowing your starting point early. The next step is simply to see it. ## Start with an honest picture of your competencies All that is left is to see where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in about 7 minutes, it scores you across all twelve skills behind competencies like these and shows which ones would make the biggest difference to your next application, interview or review. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## 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? Examples of professional competencies, from communication and teamwork to professionalism and adaptability, and how to back each one with real evidence. ### 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/soft-skills-at-work.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/soft-skills-at-work/example-of-professional-competencies/ Preferred summary: "Examples of professional competencies, from communication and teamwork to professionalism and adaptability, and how to back each one with real evidence." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.