The Thin Book of Trust An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work nodrm by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 6 / COMPETENCE

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Often the desire to appear competent impedes our ability to become competent, because we are more anxious to display our knowledge than to learn what we do not know.

— Magdeleine Sable

Competence is the assessment that you have the ability to do what you are doing or propose to do. In the workplace this usual y means the other person believes you have the requisite capacity, skil , knowledge, and resources to do a particular task or job.

Here are three examples of how people have referred to competence:

• “I brought Linda in to run the office after Ron left so suddenly because I trust her ability as a leader to get the best out of people even in the most difficult situations. I know she’l come through for them and for us.”

• “I’m putting Raj on this project because I trust that if anyone can fix this mess, he can. He is my most competent engineering manager. What I ask is that you trust his lead and do what he asks.”

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Chapter 6 / COMPETENCE

• “Paul may have been a competent salesperson, but he certainly wasn’t a competent district manager, so I don’t know how he got promoted to regional incompetent he is. Which kind of begs the question, how competent is our senior VP?”

Being judged as competent means doing what you do well enough to satisfy the standards of the person who is judging you. Someone assesses you as or leading people.

People judge us as competent in one domain but not in others. However, sometimes the

can cause people to confer an assessment of

competence on you in an area where you don’t claim competence. For example, a highly competent engineer is promoted to a management position because people assume his competence in engineering means he will be competent at If this has happened to you, the best thing you can do is be clear about what you know you can do, and what you have yet to learn.

Being competent does not mean being perfect. Part of doing something well is knowing what you don’t know, being willing to learn, and ask for help when you need it. For example, Luisa was a highly competent engineer who had been director of development engineering. She had seven direct reports and oversaw a team of 28 engineers. Luisa knew her competence as a development engineer still granted her some credibility with the engineers who worked for her.

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