What is competence?

That’s easy. It’s having ability. It’s having knowledge and skill. It’s knowing your work. It is about pushing the right buttons at the right time. It’s wiring the house so the lights work, nothing burns down, and no one gets killed. It. Is. Important with a capital I, maybe even a bold capital I.

If you cannot do the job, you cannot provide value, you cannot deliver, all you can do is waste people’s time.

Ever been to a counter to get help in a store and the person did not know the answers, couldn’t find the answers, and couldn’t even locate someone who knew the answers? Frustrating, right? In fact, maddening is more like it. It is a waste of time and requires a lot of emotional effort. Why did the store put a person in a position where they need to know things and they don’t know anything?

This leads you to question the company’s integrity and overall ability; you may even walk away to search for another option. That’s really bad for the company…unless of course, they are too big to fail which means there is another customer to take your place in line. But that only lasts for so long. Enough incompetence and many walk away. And if too many walk away, the company goes out of business.

And, as if that’s not bad enough, this type of competence is only half the competence story. There is another type of competence. You see, it is not just about pushing the right buttons, it’s not just about doing the job. No matter how you slice it, you are, at some point, going to have to deal with people. This requires human competence, the ability to interact and work with others. So, you need to learn this, practice this, and pay as much attention to it as you do to technical skill.

You see, customers want people who know what to do but they also want people who know how to deliver what they do. You may be able to get the job done, but without courtesy, empathy, compassion, and consideration, you become unbearable and exhausting.

The nice thing is that these human skills can be learned and practiced just like technical skill. They are not something genetic. They are not something you either have or not.

However, I won’t lie, if these skills were demonstrated at home by your parents, you have a leg up. You have a slight advantage. But fear not, even if you weren’t a winner in the parental lottery, you can still pick these skills up. You can practice them. You can begin looking for opportunities to display them, to work on them, to make them habits. You can get better at being a good human if you apply yourself.

So, the bottom line is this. Do not think that just because you know your craft, you are competent; that, as I have shown, is just half the story. You are simply good at what to do. You need to be equally good at how you deliver what you do. While you may be good at making the thing, maybe even great at making the thing, being a pain when it comes to presenting it will just put you second at best to someone who is competent on both sides of the competence coin.

So, that settles it. To be known as truly competent, you must not only be solid with technical skills but also with human skills. There is no room for discussion here. Get to work. Be a master of both. Be a professional who can not only do what needs to be done but can deliver it so that it is received with open arms.

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