Sometimes your confidence is buried in feelings of incompetence. The hope today is you can move past that, by understanding competence and creating a new paradigm.
So what is competency?
The ability to do something successfully or efficiently
Oxford Dictionary 2023
Therefore, incompetency is an inability to do something successfully or efficiently. Often our confidence is lacking because we feel we can’t do a particular activity. But is that the truth? And what is the activity I struggle with? Generally, people don’t move from general feelings of ineptitude and clumsiness to objectively analyse specific problems. We are left feeling hopeless, a bit like this photo . . .
OK, time to take some courage and ask the hard questions. Let’s confront the brutal facts of our reality – have a go at answering these questions (on paper – let’s get objective and out of our head):
- Where specifically did I demonstrate incompetence?
- Were there other factors that impacted by inability to perform?
- How far off the mark was my performance?
- How do I KNOW I didn’t hit the mark?
- Is this task in my job description?
- Can I get some training to improve in that area?
We’re not interested in ‘who’ questions today, just ‘what’ and ‘how. If you really want to deal with this and move on, can i encourage you to share this analysis with your upline (eg Manager or Supervisor). See if you missed anything. The feedback will undoubtedly be brutal, but when you’ve done the forensics, you can move on with greater self-awareness and insight and you have just said volumes to your upline. You have demonstrated your hunger.
But i think we can play a better game. What if we were not to focus on just being competent but on something greater? Achieving great outcomes? You see, competency is just a pass mark . . . it only measures competency. What makes your mark in a role? Great outcomes.
If you can achieve great outcomes, then competency doesn’t really come into question, your value increases and your confidence can build on the measureable achievement of goals (no feelings of incompetency, you’re playing a higher game now). Competency is just the core of your role that enables you to demonstrate good outcomes. Trump competency!
So, how do we make the paradigm shift to an outcomes focused perspective? First, go back to your role description and employment contract and see if there is anything there that indicates exactly what you need to achieve. We are looking for activities that are MEASUREABLE. Once you have gathered that, go back to your upline and see if they concur on the measures you have identified and if there are any others they expect of you. Get these down on paper, because this will form a quarterly conversation you’ll have with your upline as you share your progress and blockers toward those outcomes. Yep that’s right . . . YOU will be initiating a quarterly conversation with your upline to share your progress. They may not know what you are doing, but that’s OK – you’re playing a different game where confidence comes from knowing you are on the right track as you implement small incremental habits. The ones we spoke about in Blog 2. It’s time to be weird! Be disciplined and implement small incremental habits that produce compounding results.
And that’s the next step. Now you have those clear measureable outcomes expected of you, your targets are set. Now it’s time to consider what are the small actions (or habits) you can implement in your workplace rhythm that will achieve that outcome. This might mean you need to restructure your work routines and rhythms or gain some extra support.
And what about your confidence from the picture above? Your paradigm has now shifted from playing a negative game of ‘trying not to do anything wrong’ to a proactive, positive approach focused on achieving agreed outcomes for the organization. Your measures of success will not be based on a competency – ‘what you didn’t do’ but on the accumulation of small positive actions that accumulate to achieve outcomes.
This new perspective is going to take some work and won’t come naturally. You’ll need to be forgiving (to yourself) as you try to change the paradigm. Step it out. Go for gradual improvements, under-promise to yourself and over-deliver in implementing your habits, routines and rhythms.
©Linked in
Focus on the outcomes, not being more competent – you’ll become more competent on the way.
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