7 WAY TO INCREASE YOUR COMPETENCY

Tanzanian marathon runner Juma Ikangaa said, "The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.” No one ever gets to the next level without preparation. The issue is competency: the ability a person has that enables him or her to do a job successfully. Core competencies are those basic, essential skills an individual must have that are vital to success. Without them, any ascent to the next level will be short-lived and failure is almost guaranteed.

Abraham Lincoln said “If I had ten hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first nine sharpening my ax.” Competence is not merely swinging an ax hard and fast, it is preparing the ax so that each swing makes the greatest impact. Unfortunately, many people disqualify themselves from the next level because they fail to sharpen their edge—rather than maximizing their impact by upgrading their competencies, they become complacent in a comfort zone, retract their diligence and diminish their value. They allow themselves to become “dull.” Preparation is not a one-time-thing, limited to one’s graduate or post graduate studies. Preparation is perpetual. It must occur at every level. The danger is to become complacent and neglect to stay sharp. The following are several points to guard us from a dull edge.

1. Don’t get stuck in a comfort zone. It’s possible to become so comfortable in our accomplishments that we have forget the importance of upgrading ourselves. Skill sets have a shelf life. Technology is always improving, culture is always changing, fads and trends are constantly in flux. Those who fail to upgrade themselves become obsolete before their own eyes.

2. Don’t be a typewriter person in a laptop world. I once had a secretary who refused to learn computer skills and data base protocols. She was great on a typewriter and taking shorthand, but had no idea how to set up or use the new data base established for our office. She was content to remain a typewriter person in a laptop world. Unfortunately, her refusal to upgrade her skills, forced others to do work that she should have been able to do. That meant her value diminished and she became more of liability. In a very short time, I had to “restructure” our office, demote her to lower position, cut her hours and hire an office manager with the skills we needed.

3. Don’t make yourself obsolete by failing to upgrade. Read books, take classes, volunteer to gain experience, build your resume; do what is required to improve yourself mentally, professionally, physically and even spiritually. Competent people are prepared. They continually improve their competency through a personal determination to excel beyond the level presently they are currently at. Too many people are content to maintain status quo. They are happy to simply hold a title and go through “the motions.” What they don’t understand is that their complacency is diminishing their value. Their edge is getting dull.

4. Don’t depreciate your value. Be an appreciating asset; add value to yourself. In terms of profit and loss, you are an asset to the organization you serve. In finance, when assets appreciate, they gain value and are worth more. When they lose value, they depreciate; when that happens we relieve ourselves of them. In other words, we fire them. It’s amazing how many people get fired and never saw it coming. They thought everything was fine but didn’t realize they had failed to upgrade themselves, lost value, became obsolete and depreciated in value.

5. Don’t withdraw value from yourself. Too often, people withdraw value from themselves. They get disappointed and discouraged in their work and withdraw value from themselves. When they started out, they were excited. They worked hard, volunteered for projects, put in overtime. But in time, their expectations were not met, perhaps a boss offended them or the company disappointed them and they lost motivation. As a result, they developed a bad attitude, started complaining and became resentful. They stopped working hard, stopped coming in early, stopped volunteering and have become a depreciated asset. In fact, they become a performance problem and are now fighting to keep their job.

6. Don’t expect to be paid more than you are worth. Diligent people understand they don’t get paid by the hour, they get paid for the value they bring to the hour. When you stop bringing value to the hour, you depreciate. I had one employee who kept pressing me for more compensation. However, I knew he was already being compensated commensurate to the value he was bringing to the organization. I helped him to realize that if he wanted to be paid more, he should bring more value to the hours he was working and demonstrate his increased value. If you are negotiating for a raise, don’t whine about your pay; remind the decision maker of all you do, all you’ve done, all you plan to do, how much value you add to the business, and how you are an essential asset.

7. Don’t become low hanging fruit. “Low hanging fruit” is the fruit lowest on the tree that is the first to get plucked. When the time comes for cutbacks, restructuring, or layoffs, you should not to be the first person that management thinks of. Don’t be the one that everyone knows has a bad attitude, complains about conditions, spreads gossip and has a sloppy, poor work ethic. Managers, very quickly, get an idea of who adds value and who doesn’t; you don’t want opinions to be formed about you that present you as a dangling fruit. Instead, be diligent. Make yourself indispensable; make sure you’re not the first person they talk about when talk about cutting staff comes up.

For more practical advice on increasing your competence, check out my newest book, Upward: Taking Your Life to the Next Level.

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