Leadership Competencies for Queensland: The 11 Competencies and How Panels Score Them

There is a great deal written about Leadership Competencies for Queensland. Almost all of it is about the application: how to address LC4Q in your selection criteria, how to structure a written response, how to get shortlisted.

Very little of it is about the interview. That is a problem, because the panel in front of you is not reading your application again. They are scoring what you say, in the room, against the same framework — and the way they do that is different from how a written response is assessed.

This post covers what changes once you are past the application stage.

The framework in one paragraph

LC4Q sets out 11 competencies grouped into three areas — Vision, Results and Accountability — applied across five leadership streams: individual contributor, team leader, program leader, executive and chief executive (see the Public Sector Commission's Leadership competencies for Queensland page). Each stream has its own behavioural indicators, set out stream by stream in the Leadership competencies for Queensland guide. The competencies do not change as you move up. What changes is what counts as evidence of them.

Worth checking your source: the Public Sector Commission's Leadership competencies for Queensland guide is dated April 2026. A good deal of the advice circulating online still frames LC4Q as a new framework replacing the older Capability and Leadership Framework (CLF) — advice that is several years out of date. Read the current guide, not a summary of it.

The 11 Leadership competencies for Queensland, in plain English

Here are all 11, grouped the way the Public Sector Commission groups them. The first column is the official name. The second is what each one sounds like when a panel hears it in an answer.

The questions are typical examples, not an official list. Panels write their own, usually from the role description. For more, see my Queensland Government interview questions guide.

The five leadership streams

Every competency applies at every stream. What changes is the scale of evidence the panel expects. The official descriptions:

• Individual contributor (Leading self): delivers outcomes through self-management and doesn't supervise others.
• Team leader (Leading others): leads individual contributors to deliver team outcomes.
• Program leader (Leading teams and/or projects): leads team leaders and/or multiple projects.
• Executive (Leading the function): leads a service delivery, policy, regulatory or advisory function, or a geographical area.
• Chief executive (Leading the organisation): leads a government agency to deliver government priorities.

Take your stream from the role description, not from the classification level.

The mistake almost everyone makes: answering at the wrong stream

Most Queensland role descriptions name a leadership stream — if yours does not, ask the contact person which stream the panel is assessing against. Most candidates read it, note it, and then answer as though it were not there.

The result is an answer that is perfectly good evidence of the wrong thing. A Program Leader candidate describes running their own project beautifully — which is Individual Contributor evidence. A Team Leader candidate talks about departmental strategy they had no hand in — which reads as borrowed.

Panels do not read between the lines here. If the example does not sit at the stream the role is advertised at, it does not score, however impressive the work was.

Weak — Program Leader role, Individual Contributor answer:

"I was responsible for the reporting overhaul, so I mapped the existing process, rebuilt the templates and trained the team on the new system. It cut reporting time by about 40 per cent."

This is competent and specific, and it will still score badly. Every verb belongs to one person. There is no evidence of working through others, across boundaries, or of decisions that only a program-level view would surface.

Stronger — same work, Program Leader framing:

"The reporting overhaul crossed three business units with different systems and no shared owner. My judgement call was to sequence it — one unit first as a proof, rather than a simultaneous rollout that would have needed goodwill we had not built yet. I negotiated the delay with the two units going second, which was the harder conversation. Reporting time dropped about 40 per cent across all three, and the two later units adopted it faster because the first unit could vouch for it."

Same project. Same result. The difference is that the second answer shows influence across boundaries, a decision with a trade-off attached, and an outcome that depended on other people. That is Program Leader evidence.

Vision, Results and Accountability are not three questions

Candidates often prepare one story per competency. Panels rarely ask that way. A single question can be scored against two or three competencies at once — the behavioural indicators overlap, so one good example can evidence several.

The practical consequence: a story that only lands one competency wastes an opportunity. When you build examples, check each one against all three:

• Vision: did you see something others didn't, challenge how things were done, or connect the work to a broader purpose?
• Results: did you deliver through other people, build the relationships that made it possible, and own the outcome, including the parts that went wrong?
• Accountability: what does the example show about how you lead yourself? Looking after the people around you, learning from what happened, and keeping to the rules when it would have been easier not to.

Many candidates are strongest on Results and weakest on Accountability, because Accountability asks about you rather than the work: what you learned, how you looked after others, where you held a line. That is the evidence panels find hardest to fake, and the most credible. If the panel asks about a time something went wrong, my guide to answering "tell me about a failure" covers how to own it without underselling yourself.

Behavioural indicators are the scoring sheet

The behavioural indicators for your stream are not background reading. They are close to a literal marking guide. Panels often have them in front of them while you talk.

This does not mean reciting them. An answer stuffed with framework language sounds rehearsed and, worse, sounds like it could belong to anyone. It means making sure that for each competency you can point to a moment in your example that a panel member could tick against an indicator without having to interpret it generously.

A useful test: read your example aloud, then read the indicators for your stream. If you have to argue for the connection, the panel will not make it for you.

To rebuild an example so it shows your reasoning and what you learned, not just what happened, use the free STAR Method for Leaders worksheet.

Leadership competencies for Queensland examples

Demonstrates sound governance: the brief that didn't add up

In a coaching session, I asked a client preparing for an interview with a Queensland integrity agency a hypothetical question: "You're preparing an Estimates brief. Your director wants a result presented one way; your data supports something less favourable. Talk me through what you do."

She described it as a grey area and said she would have to accommodate what the director was suggesting. An AI tool had advised her to sound more compromising in answers like this.

I explained that at an agency built on integrity and accountability, where the brief supports Estimates hearings, a panel hearing "grey area" and "accommodate" will mark you down. Not because you lack integrity, but because those are the words of someone who would yield.

What was missing was the middle ground between yielding and refusing. The answer panels usually want is neither "I'd comply" nor "I'd refuse". It's a professional escalation sequence:

"My advice goes in the brief based on the evidence, and I'd say plainly what the data shows. If the director wanted it presented differently, I'd set out the specific risks of doing that. The brief supports Estimates, so an inaccurate presentation is a risk to the agency, not just to the document. Then I'd look for a legitimate way to meet the concern: additional context on why the result looks the way it does, or a different framing of the same facts. What I wouldn't do is change the figures or the methodology to produce a more favourable picture. If the director still directed a particular approach, I'd record my advice and the risks in writing. That's the accountability trail, and it's what the organisation relies on."

That one answer carries Demonstrates sound governance (the written record and the line it holds) and Makes insightful decisions (an ethical call with the broader context in view), while still working with the director rather than against them. It's also a good example of why generic AI advice can backfire in a government interview.

Fosters healthy and inclusive workplaces: a team leader example

This one is a composite rather than a real candidate, but it reflects the pattern I hear most often.

The question: "How do you support the wellbeing of your team?"

Weak:

"I have an open-door policy, and I always tell my team they can come to me with anything. I think it's really important that people feel supported."

Nothing happens in this answer. There's no person, no problem and no action, so there's nothing for the panel to tick.

Stronger:

"One of my team, who was usually on top of everything, started missing small deadlines and going quiet in meetings. I didn't wait for her to come to me. I booked a ten-minute catch-up and asked how her workload was sitting, rather than asking about the deadlines. She'd picked up work from a vacant position and didn't want to say no. We went through her list together, I moved two pieces of work to others in the team, and I raised the vacancy with my manager so it was backfilled. Within a month she was back to her usual standard. I now check workload in every one-on-one as a standing item, rather than waiting for warning signs."

This answer names a person, shows the leader noticed early and acted, fixes the cause rather than the symptom, and ends with a change in the leader's own practice, which also evidences Pursues continuous growth.

What to do in the week before

• Find the leadership stream in the role description and write it at the top of your prep notes.
• Pull the current behavioural indicators for that stream from the Public Sector Commission guide.
• Build four to six examples, and mark which competencies each one can carry. Aim for at least two that carry Accountability.
• Rewrite any example where the verbs are all first-person singular and nobody else appears.
• Say them out loud. Written LC4Q evidence and spoken LC4Q evidence are not the same skill.

If your process includes more than a panel interview, see the Queensland Government selection activities nobody prepares for.

If you want to pressure-test your examples before the panel does, the Interview Practice Lab will run you through behavioural questions and give you feedback on whether your answers actually show what you think they show. For the wider public sector picture, including APS and NSW, see our guide to government interview questions. And if you would rather work through your stream and your examples with someone who has sat on the other side of these panels, interview coaching in Brisbane is available weekdays.

What does LC4Q stand for?

LC4Q is short for Leadership competencies for Queensland, the Queensland public sector's leadership framework, published by the Public Sector Commission. It sets out 11 competencies across Vision, Results and Accountability, applied at five leadership streams.

Do the leadership competencies apply if I don't manage anyone?

Yes. Individual contributor is one of the five streams, for people who deliver through managing themselves rather than supervising others. Panels still assess the competencies; they look for evidence at the scale of your own work.

What is the Competency Compass?

A free self-evaluation tool from the Queensland Government, linked from the official Leadership competencies for Queensland page. It takes about 10 minutes, doesn't capture personal data, and shows where your current behaviours sit against the competencies and what to prioritise. It's worth doing before you build your interview examples. If you're going for a leadership role, my Leadership Interview Playbook walks you through building those examples.