The responsibility areas
Each responsibility area defines a core area of workplace responsibility. Within each, we develop the specific competencies people need to fulfil that responsibility well.
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Exlpore the competencies
Curious about the specifics? Expand any responsibility area below to explore the competencies we cover.
Flourishing at work starts with knowing where you fit — your role, your organisation, and how the two connect. This responsibility area helps people in every role align their work to organisational purpose, operate confidently within their role, and contribute to ways of working that help everyone succeed.
Here are the Organisational Alignment competencies we cover:
Organisational and Role clarity
- Articulating organisational purpose, principles and priorities
- Connecting your role to organisational purpose
- Describing how your work contributes to team and organisational outcomes
- Operating confidently within your role
- Understanding where responsibilities and authorities start and end
- Clarifying responsibilities, authorities and accountabilities when uncertain
- Integrating organisational values and purpose into daily decisions and actions
Organisational ways of working
- Demonstrating awareness of organisational systems, processes and structures
- Applying organisational policies, procedures and guidelines with care and consistency
- Speaking up when something is misaligned with organisational purpose or priorities
- Adhering to agreed ways of working
- Contributing ideas and actions that improve how the organisation works together
- Implementing processes that support organisational purpose, principles and priorities
Day to day alignment
- Clarifying expectations and accountabilities to stay connected and on track
- Tracking progress against agreed plans
- Reviewing work to ensure it remains aligned with organisational needs
- Seeking feedback on how contributions support organisational outcomes
- Adjusting focus as organisational priorities evolve
- Collaborating with others to create alignment and organisational success
Additional Leadership responsibilities
- Modelling commitment to the organisation’s purpose, principles and priorities
- Connecting individual and team work to organisational purpose and priorities
- Translating organisational direction into meaningful team or individual actions
- Communicating clearly about changes that affect direction, priorities or practices
- Identifying when something is misaligned and taking steps to realign
- Facilitating alignment conversations across teams or functions
How we manage our own thinking, energy and time shapes everything else we do at work. This responsibility area develops the competencies that help people lead themselves well — so they can fulfil their role effectively and still have enough left for the rest of their life 😊.
Here are the Self Leadership competencies we cover:
- Self-determination
- Presence
- Self awareness (Emotional Intelligence)
- Self management (Emotional Intelligence)
- Inner compass and integrity
- Role and organisational alignment
- Professionalism
- Goal setting and achievement
- Time and task management
- Maintaining focus
- Reducing interruptions
- Habit management
- Energy management
- Personal organisation
- Perspective and complexity awareness
- Cognitive flexibility
- Critical and analytical thinking
- Creative and innovative thinking
- Strategic thinking
- Decision-making
- Taking action
- Addressing procrastination
- Learning, adapting and developing
- Stress management and resilience
Communication sits at the heart of everything we do at work. This responsibility area develops the competencies to express yourself clearly and authentically, understand others well, and navigate the differences that make every workplace unique.
The more people across an organisation have these competencies, the less leadership needs to step in to resolve what communication could have prevented.
Here are the Communication and Influence competencies we cover:
- Communicating assertively
- Choosing useful times and places to communicate
- Choosing useful methods to communicate
- Tailoring communication to suit others
- Expressing your perspective
- Using clear, specific language
- Using appropriately weighted language
- Speaking clearly and confidently
- Relating to others (in our sameness and diversity e.g. personality, culture, motivation)
- Rapport building
- Growing relationships
- Listening and confirming understanding
- Reading nonverbal communication
- Empathising
- Identifying motivations and needs
- Asking useful questions
- Making requests
- Giving instruction
- Providing feedback
- Saying no
- Dealing with interruptions
- Leading meetings
- Contributing to meetings
- Impromptu presenting
- Formal presenting
- Navigating communication dynamics to facilitate open, respectful, and effective communication with others
The power of collaboration is often under-valued and under-utilised. When people have clarity about what is needed, the parameters to work within, and strong collaborative competencies, a great deal can be accomplished — including things that no one person could achieve alone.
Collaboration also reduces the need for leadership coordination and intervention. Increased collaboration also frees up leadership roles to focus more on the sense-making, coordinating, strategic, systems thinking and synergising parts of their role.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to work with others to achieve both individual and shared goals.
Note: collaboration competencies build on strong Self Leadership and Communication & Influence competencies.
Here are the Collaboration competencies we cover:
- Supporting and helping others
- Influencing others – (e.g. modelling, inspiring)
- Persuading others – (e.g. convincing)
- Teamwork
- Co-creation
- Resolving disagreement
- Addressing conflict
- Negotiating
- On the job training
- Off the job training
- Coaching
- Mentoring
Despite what an org chart might suggest, humans choose who they follow and for what. Effective leaders know this — and they know when to lead, when to step back, and when to let others take the lead.
This responsibility area develops the social competencies to influence others and achieve individual and shared goals, whatever your role.
Note: Dynamic Leadership builds on significant Self Leadership, Communication & Influence and Collaboration competencies.
Here are the key Dynamic Leadership competencies we cover:
- Understanding the leadership role
- Defining your unique leadership role
- Adjusting your leadership approach to suit the situation
- Creating clarity of direction and required outcomes
- Enabling others to contribute and succeed
- Utilising your technical expertise effectively
- Clarifying decision-making processes and authorities
- Communicating as a leader
- Increasing your influence as a leader
- Facilitating followership
- Transitioning to a leadership role
- Working effectively with other leadership roles
- Being an effective leadership team member
- Working cohesively as a leadership team
Leading a team well is about more than getting work done — it’s about creating the conditions where your team can do their best work, grow their competency, and take genuine ownership of their responsibilities.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to plan, coordinate and oversee work effectively, and to cultivate a capable, engaged team.
Here are the Team Leadership competencies we cover:
- Job/work planning and organisation
- Job/work oversight and troubleshooting
- Job/work completion and closeout
- Clarifying job/work expectations and requirements
- Assigning work
- Facilitating ownership and engagement
- Stimulating thinking and problem-solving
- Facilitating remembering of work
- Addressing reluctance
- Growing team member capability
- Providing feedback
- Delegating
- Facilitating teamwork and collaboration
Operational leadership is about growing the capability of your unit — through your people, your systems and your resources — while keeping the work moving.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to plan, coordinate and improve how your unit functions, and to create a workplace climate where people can contribute and flourish.
Note: We partner with other providers for specialist operational areas e.g. Lean, Agile, Procurement, Health and Safety, Sales and Customer Service.
Here are the Operational Leadership competencies we cover:
- Work planning and scheduling
- Capacity planning
- Resource management
- Creating an effective workplace climate (psychological safety)
- Facilitating unit learning
- Process improvement
- System design and development
- Stakeholder management
Organisational leaders are responsible for defining direction, creating the conditions for sustained success, and ensuring the organisation can adapt and flourish over time.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to lead with clarity and purpose — from strategy and risk through to change and long-term sustainability.
Here are the Organisational Leadership competencies we cover:
- Managing the stages of business development
- Business model management
- Business portfolio management
- Clarifying desired organisational impact and achievable outcomes
- Managing and mitigating risk
- Harnessing and growing organisational capability
- Ensuring alignment and synergy
- Planning and preparing for the longer term (strategic planning)
- Growing organisational capability
- Environment monitoring
- Scenario planning
- Growing organisational change capability
- Leading and supporting aligned change
- Addressing resistance to change
- Innovating
- Facilitating longevity and sustainability
How an organisation is designed and managed — its structures, systems, processes and culture — shapes how well people can work together to fulfil its purpose.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to design, coordinate and continually improve the ways people work together, so the organisation can function well and grow its capability, aka flourish!
Here are the Organisational Management competencies we cover:
- Maximising organisational design
- Consistently clarifying organisational terminology
- Communicating organisational purpose and direction
- Designing effective work coordination
- Ensuring policies, processes and systems are useful and followed
- Improving policies, processes and systems
- Organisational information management
- Organisational communication
- Creating an effective workplace climate (psychological safety)
- Ensuring inclusion and facilitating belonging
- Increasing cultural competency
- Influencing organisational culture
- Facilitating organisational learning
- Managing stakeholder and partner relationships
- Facilitating alignment and synergy
- Creating a sustainable organisation
- Creating a regenerative organisation
- Restructuring
Managing the employment relationship well — from recruitment through to exit — requires both legal knowledge and good practice.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to fulfil your responsibilities as an employer with confidence, care and clarity, in accordance with New Zealand law.
Here are the Employee Management competencies we cover:
- Understanding employment behaviours (e.g. commitment, performance, engagement)
- Understanding legal employment-related responsibilities
- Defining employee roles and requirements
- Sizing a role to ensure it is realistic
- Recruiting a new employee
- Onboarding a new employee
- Assigning work
- Delegating
- Facilitating employee ownership
- Facilitating employee commitment
- Growing employee capability
- Providing feedback to employees
- Facilitating psychological safety
- Managing pay and leave
- Conducting an employee review
- Employee development planning
- Remuneration management
- Succession planning
- Employee exit management
- Conducting a disciplinary process
- Employee performance improvement planning (PIP)
- Employee performance management
You don’t need to be a finance expert to make sound financial decisions — but you do need to understand the numbers that matter.
This responsibility area develops the competencies to manage and optimise your organisation’s financial resources, so you can lead with confidence whatever the economic conditions.
Note: We can incorporate your own financial processes and reports into workshops, helping your team apply financial management principles directly to your organisation.
Here are the Financial Management competencies we cover.
- Understanding financial management fundamentals
- Cost management
- Sales invoicing
- Increasing productivity
- Quoting and pricing
- Increasing profit
- Risk management
- Maximising cashflow
- Forecasting
- Using KPIs
- Using the Profit & Loss report
- Using the Balance Sheet report
- Budget management
- Increasing ROI
- Capital expenditure
We can include your financial processes and reports in the workshop, to help ensure your team know how to best apply financial management principles to your organisation.
“We choose to work with Lisa and Equip as over the years (and many training sessions) they have consistently delivered excellent value for money.
It is apparent that Lisa has a wide and diverse knowledge and that important ability to be able to connect with people. Additionally, Lisa has always been very generous and accommodating with her time and resources: whether it be the initial meeting to discuss my teams’ training needs and distilling those conversations into a customised course, to following up post training and having a touch base session with participants to see how they are progressing.
In recent times Equip have been a great help with improving our training we deliver to customers. We are a software company and while we are very knowledgeable on our product, we are not professional trainers. The Train the Trainer course provided us with very valuable information, tools and tips for delivering training. And even better, we received very positive feedback from our customers after incorporating this learning into our courses.”
“Financial literacy is really important for our people—both those who work with numbers, like QSs, and those responsible for financial results. The training has definitely improved awareness, sparked great questions, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
People are getting a lot out of it—it pulls together the many different pieces of finance in a way that makes sense, helping them see how everything connects. An unexpected bonus is the increased appreciation for what our finance team does, and how each person’s role impacts the wider business. We’ve seen improved compliance as a result.
Working with Equip is easy—they’re flexible, open, and great at tailoring the programme to suit our industry and business. I really enjoy working with them.”
We had identified that our managers needed training as we were having issues with delegation of work, team engagement and core leadership skills such as emotional intelligence. I reached out to Lisa as I had previously attended a course that was facilitated by her and had really enjoyed her training style and hands on approach. Lisa was very accommodating and came up with a tailored solution for our business.
The workshop style course was a great mix of theory and practical activities which really helped our team to understand and apply the concepts that were taught.
We received very positive feedback from the team and we can see the difference in our managers post training. They have actively been applying the skills and have been pleased to add a few techniques to their ‘toolbelt’ especially around self leadership.
I would definitely recommend Lisa to anyone who wants a hands-on approach to training!
“Equip consistently design and deliver excellent training – our members love them! They learn practical business skills that work, from facilitators who understand them, their industry and their business.
Working with Equip is great – they’re flexible, professional, and nothing is ever too much trouble. They fit in with what we need and provide real value. It’s more than a service – it’s a partnership.”
