Competence

Hi there,

Competencies are skills. They are not character traits.

They are What you do, and how well you do it.

Competencies are the skills you are determined to acquire and improve. Improvement comes through focused effort—choose to focus on developing complementary competencies that leverage each other.

They are things like project management and financial planning and the many skills underlying those disciplines. They are technical and quantifiable in nature.

They are requirements for roles, not desirables.

Skills are fungible. They can develop and grow over time. You need to be clear on what you need and what you don't, and progress in the direction of the skills you need. What does the market need? What makes an impact? What gets noticed?

You need to be clear on what you need and what you don’t need and progress in the direction of the skills you require to be accomplished and, therefore respected and valued in your field.

It is more important to be clear on what is required and desired than it is to assess whether it is better or worse to have one skill or another. Everyone has innate skills, abilities, and gifts, the question is whether the development and exercise of them creates career satisfaction for you.

Pursuing a career that requires skills that you struggle to cultivate will generate frustration for you.

Assessment

• What skills do you have, and in what degree of capability do you have them?

• Are you good enough at them for the roles you want to play?

• What skills don’t you have that you need, now?

• Are there obvious gaps in your current set, that you need to address?

• Do you have the right skills for the future of your work?

Planning 

• What do you need to do more of? Less of?

• What skills do you not need in the future?

• What needs to stop and what needs to start (eg. Do you need to stop taking project manager roles because you don’t need those skills for your future work?)