The New SES ECQs (2026): All 5 Qualifications, All 15 Competencies

TL;DR: OPM's Executive Core Qualifications page is marked updated October 1, 2025, and the five ECQs are now Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding, Driving Efficiency, Merit and Competence, Leading People, and Achieving Results, with 15 sub-competencies (three per ECQ). If the guide you are reading lists Leading Change, Results Driven, Business Acumen, or Building Coalitions, it describes the previous framework.

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Table of Contents

• What changed
• ECQ 1: Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding
• ECQ 2: Driving Efficiency
• ECQ 3: Merit and Competence
• ECQ 4: Leading People
• ECQ 5: Achieving Results
• How to evidence an ECQ
• The essay questions do not apply to SES
• Check the announcement for format
• Sources

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What changed

OPM identifies five executive core qualifications. They are required for entry to the Senior Executive Service, and many departments and agencies also use them in selection, performance management, and leadership development for management and executive positions. SES vacancy announcements and SES Candidate Development Program (CDP) announcements generally include them.

The current set, per OPM's page marked updated October 1, 2025:

The previous framework, documented in OPM's own earlier SES qualification guides, used Leading Change, Leading People, Results Driven, Business Acumen, and Building Coalitions.

Only Leading People carries over by name, and its definition changed. Everything else is new. This matters practically: a large share of SES coaching material, agency intranet pages, and resume guides still describe the older five. If you prepare against those, you are preparing against a framework OPM no longer lists.

OPM's framing is unchanged in one respect worth noting: successful performance in the SES requires competence in each ECQ, and the ECQs are interdependent, so executives are expected to bring all five.

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ECQ 1: Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding

OPM's definition: requires a demonstrated knowledge of the American system of government, commitment to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, and commitment to serve the American people.

Sub-competencies:

• Knowledge of the American System of Government. Demonstrates understanding and appreciation of the American system of government, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, separation of powers, federalism, and the historical development of the American Nation.
• Commitment to the Rule of Law. Upholds the principles of the American Founding, including equality under the law and democratic self-government, and ensures the law is applied fairly and consistently.
• Civic-Mindedness. Stays current on important developments in American government and aligns organizational objectives and practices with presidential and public interests, demonstrating a commitment to serve the American people.

What evidences it: statutory or regulatory implementation you led, decisions made under legal constraint, compliance and oversight programs, consistent application of policy across cases, and public service delivery outcomes.

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ECQ 2: Driving Efficiency

OPM's definition: involves the demonstrated ability to strategically and efficiently manage resources, budget effectively, cut wasteful spending, and pursue efficiency through process and technological upgrades.

Sub-competencies:

• Fiscal Responsibility. Strategically manages, allocates, and monitors financial resources. Aligns priorities and initiatives to justify budget proposals. Monitors expenditures, cuts unnecessary costs, and uses cost-benefit analysis to set priorities.
• Managing Resources. Manages resources efficiently and effectively based on current and projected organizational goals, skills, budget considerations, and staffing needs.
• Leveraging Technology. Explores emerging technology and potential applications, incorporates technology to enhance efficiency and achieve results, and ensures access to and security of technology systems.

What evidences it: budget size owned, cost reductions with dollar figures, contract restructuring, process cycle-time improvements, systems modernization, and consolidation decisions.

This is the ECQ where numbers matter most. A claim of efficiency without a figure reads as an assertion.

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ECQ 3: Merit and Competence

OPM's definition: involves the demonstrated knowledge, ability, and technical competence to effectively and reliably produce work that is of exceptional quality.

Sub-competencies:

• Technical Skill. Possesses the requisite technical knowledge and subject matter expertise to consistently produce timely, high-quality work, and is considered a strong contributor in their domain.
• Problem Solving. Engages in critical and data-driven thinking when diagnosing root causes and evaluating options. Identifies and promptly addresses the most pressing, high-priority problems.
• Agility and Resilience. Anticipates and adapts to change, new ideas, new information, and new conditions, is committed to continuous improvement, and deals effectively with pressure.

What evidences it: domain credentials and recognized expertise, root-cause analyses you led, high-stakes problems resolved under deadline, and performance sustained through reorganizations or crises.

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ECQ 4: Leading People

OPM's definition: involves the demonstrated ability to lead and inspire a group toward meeting the organization's vision, mission, and goals, and to drive a high-performance, high-accountability culture. This includes, when necessary, the ability to lead people through change and to hold individuals accountable.

Sub-competencies:

• Accountability. Ensures employees are appropriately recruited, selected, appraised, trained, and retained. Takes swift action to address performance-based or conduct-based deficiencies in employees supervised. Holds self and others accountable for measurable high-quality, timely, and cost-effective results.
• Developing Others. Recognizes and rewards outstanding achievement, develops the ability of others to perform and contribute through formal and informal methods, and cultivates an environment in which employees are not afraid to make mistakes.
• Executive Judgement. Makes well-reasoned, timely, and effective decisions, considers short-term and long-term implications, and communicates effectively with stakeholders across all organizational levels, sharing and guarding information where appropriate.

What evidences it: headcount led, retention and hiring outcomes, formal performance actions taken, succession and development programs built, and decisions made with incomplete information.

Note the shift in emphasis. The current definition explicitly names holding individuals accountable and addressing performance or conduct deficiencies, so an example that is purely about inspiration and morale addresses only part of it.

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ECQ 5: Achieving Results

OPM's definition: involves the demonstrated ability to achieve both individual and organizational results, and to align results to stated goals from superiors.

Sub-competencies:

• Operational Mindset. Effectively translates strategies into actionable steps and processes, partners with stakeholders to drive adoption, and addresses blockers to ensure successful implementation.
• Innovation. Applies creativity to improving products and processes, challenges convention, takes measured risks, and considers ways to simplify and remove unnecessary requirements.
• Strategic Thinking. Formulates objectives and priorities and implements plans consistent with the long-term interests of the organization by evaluating conditions, resources, capabilities, constraints, and organizational goals and values.

What evidences it: goals delivered against a stated target, programs taken from strategy to implementation, requirements you removed or simplified, and multi-year plans you set and then met.

Note the phrase "align results to stated goals from superiors." Alignment is part of the qualification, so name whose goal it was.

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How to evidence an ECQ

Write at the sub-competency level, not the headline level. There are 15 named sub-competencies, and they are far more specific than the five ECQ titles. An example built for "Driving Efficiency" in the abstract usually satisfies none of Fiscal Responsibility, Managing Resources, or Leveraging Technology cleanly. An example built for Fiscal Responsibility does.

A workable structure for each example:

1. Scope. Your authority, budget, headcount, and the organizational level. Executive assessment starts with scope.
2. Challenge. The specific problem, with its constraint (statutory, budgetary, political, or technical).
3. Action. What you personally decided and did. Executive examples fail most often here, by describing what an organization did rather than what the candidate decided.
4. Result. Numbers, and the timeframe.
5. Alignment. Whose stated goal this served.

Two practical cautions:

• Do not recycle old ECQ narratives unedited. Material written for Leading Change, Results Driven, Business Acumen, or Building Coalitions maps only partially onto the current five.
• Do not stretch one example across all five. The ECQs are interdependent in performance but assessed distinctly on paper.

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The essay questions do not apply to SES

Federal competitive service announcements at GS-05 and above now carry four short essay questions. Those do not apply here: OPM guidance states agencies should refrain from using the four essay questions when filling Senior Executive Service, teacher, seasonal, and Wage Grade positions.

If you are applying to both SES and GS roles, treat them as separate processes. The GS applications carry the four essay questions, capped at 200 words each with a certification that you did not use a consultant or AI. See the federal essay questions guide for those rules.

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Check the announcement for format

Application format for SES varies by announcement and has been in flux. What OPM currently publishes is the ECQ framework itself, which is what this page documents.

What it does not publish in one place is a single universal submission format, so verify against the specific announcement:

• whether separate ECQ narratives are required, and any page limit
• whether the ECQs are to be addressed within the resume instead
• the resume page limit that applies to this announcement
• Qualifications Review Board (QRB) certification requirements

Do not assume the format from a guide, including this one. Read the announcement, and check OPM's SES reference materials for the current version of its qualification guide.

For the resume itself, the federal resume example shows a compliant structure, the federal resume keywords guide covers terminology, and the GS levels guide maps grades to expected scope. Leaving federal service instead? See federal to private.

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Sources

• Executive Core Qualifications, OPM, page marked updated October 1, 2025. Source for all five ECQ definitions and the 15 sub-competencies above.
• SES Reference Materials, OPM, index including its Guide to SES Qualifications.
• Updated Merit Hiring Plan Guidance on the Four Short Essay Questions, OPM, April 30, 2026. Source for the SES exclusion from the essay questions.
• Previous ECQ framework as documented in OPM's earlier Guide to SES Qualifications editions, still hosted on opm.gov.

Verified August 2026. Federal hiring policy changes, so confirm against OPM and the announcement before relying on any summary.

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Take the next step

Before you submit, make sure the resume carrying your ECQ evidence actually matches the announcement's stated requirements. Scan your resume against the announcement to see which required phrases are missing.