We naturally expect our leaders to be competent. We should actually demand it. But when you examine what it actually means to be a competent leader, it becomes clear that outstanding leaders are rare, mediocrity is the norm, and incompetent leaders can be spotted everywhere. From CEOs to elected officials, from scout leaders and schoolteachers, to priests and even top military leaders, we don’t have to search to hard to find people incompetent in their given roles. It would seem reasonable that competence would be a prerequisite for leadership. Why would anyone voluntarily follow in incapable leader? But competent leadership is not the norm and the acceptance of incompetence in all forms of performance has sadly become the status quo. It’s not just leadership where there is a performance gap – but if we can improve the ability of leaders to lead more effectively, we might have a better chance of improving the performance of everyone and everything else.
Leadership is often either assigned or assumed based on criteria that has nothing to do with one’s ability to perform competently in a leader’s role. Leaders may be chosen based on tenure or seniority within an organization, successful performance in a role that offers little or no leadership experience, having a presumed right to the position due to family or organizational lineage, or even based simply on charisma and popularity. But none of these qualities speak to having the preparation required to become a fully competent leader. The cause of problem might be that most people don’t know how to recognize competence in anyone’s performance, much less leadership. Fortunately, if we want to learn to search for competent leadership, there are clues to be found.
Incompetence and Competence Both Leave Clues…
Clue #1)
Evidence of competence is found in the wake of leadership…
It may be easier to recognize incompetence in leadership than to catalogue what it is that makes a leader competent. In either case, the clues won’t be found by observing the leader, but by observing the organization they lead. Competence is left in the wake of leadership. Competence is a result of having what it takes to accomplish the aims you choose or are charged with. Competence is more a matter of who you are or who you make yourself; it is a state of being not a form of action. Competence informs both how and why we do things.
“Competence is not what you CAN do… it is what you actually accomplish by what you do.”
The role of a leader is necessarily defined by the organization you lead. You might be an organization of one, by simply taking full responsibility for how you lead your life. And how you lead your life will be determined by the feelings, meaning values and beliefs that determine why you choose one way to live your life over another. When looking at larger organizations, the basis of a leader’s role becomes seemingly more complex – but it is actually no different. A competent leader feel a sense of duty to the organization she leads – and acts the role accordingly.
Clue #2.
Competence is Progressive With Five Identifiable Stages of Development
Nobody is born a leader: leadership must be both learned and earned. Some people seem to be born with a degree of talent or inclination, but without cultivation raw talent rarely comes to meet its full potential. And while people may have the best intentions surrounding their performance in life or a particular duty they have taken on, unless they develop the ability to perform competently they will accomplish very little.
The Five Stages of Competence:
- Ability: We generally think of competence as having the talent or skills required to accomplish something acquired through training and or experience. Nobody can accomplish anything they are unable to. While being prepared to accomplish what we aim for is necessary, it is not in itself sufficient. A great many enormously talented people are incapable of performing competently in their given roles, just as a top-flight education does not qualify most graduates for real-world jobs. In order to be competent they need to be able to apply their talents and training to solve problems of either their choosing or other’s directions. This speaks to the need for internships and on-the-job training those graduating college.
- Application: Being able to understand how to apply our talents and skills to solve the problems of the world is how we transform what we know into what we can accomplish. The problem is the bridge between what we are capable of accomplishing and what we actually accomplish. Crossing that bridge requires more than know-how. It requires being conscientious – which amounts to having the beliefs and values that inform us as to what is important (or not), providing a reason and drive to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. Without conscientiousness, those with talent and the ability to apply their skills to accomplish worthwhile things – typically languish in unrealized potential, and sometimes worse– and their failure to perform makes them the most insidious incompetents.
- Basic Competence: The ability to perform and accomplish is what defines competence. Basic competence is realized when we connect a sense of purpose and make what we do a matter of who we are. When the meaning we make of what we feel driven to do translates into contributing to what we apply ourselves in some meaningful way, we are competent at what we are doing. And we generally know that based on a personal sense of accomplishment, a feeling of satisfaction that often trumps most other sources of happiness in life.
- Mastery: This is where basic competence becomes reliable to our selves and others. When we can repeatedly demonstrate competence on demand we become valuable contributors to our personal needs, our organizations and to society. This the standard that designates the threshold to creating value at a rate that expands beyond what we consume. Mastery is the level of competence that sets us and society moving towards high performance of what we do – based on who we have caused ourselves to become.
- Virtuosity: Mastery can become a trap. We often see people whom we believe to be fully competent go careening off course and even lose their way. No level of required performance, just like no level of success in life is ever static. If we fail to grow in our ability to perform, we will either struggle just to keep up or more likely be overtaken by whatever is aiming to replace us. Genetically this natural selection shows up over multiple generations, but when it comes to human performance we can be selected out at blinding speed. The stasis point is constant of learning and growth. When we become masterful in our accomplishments there’re is a tendency to want to preserve the sense of accomplishments and suspend ourselves in the glory of our achievements. This, of course, is the “kiss of death” for competence. When we feel we know what we need to know, and don’t need to learn, we don’t. But virtuosos are the people who never stop learning, even when they reach a level of mastery that provides very few options to learn from others more masterful. The inner drive to improve transcends the need for teachers. The virtuoso is continuously dissatisfied with their performance, even while perhaps knowing that the world views them as the top of their game. This is the fullest expression of true competence. It is hard-wired and hard driven accomplishment-based performance.
Clue # 3.
Competence is Best Measured by the Value of the Contribution We Make
So how do we define accomplishment in terms of being competent?
Accomplishing nothing is still accomplishing something. Clearly there is a qualitative standard we apply to our accomplishments. Staying in bed all day doesn’t accomplish much for my teenage daughter, but complying with a doctor’s orders for bed rest might. And something might even be said for aiming to set a new world record for consecutive days, months, even years spent in bed – though I’m not sure what that something said might be.
Modern America is obsessed with winning. Society views competitiveness as a necessary virtue and winning as the reward. But winning is not always the most meaningful accomplishment. In fact, as we will see below, sometimes we accomplish more when we don’t win. The thing that distinguishes the quality of accomplishment always comes down to a matter of meaning. Some accomplishments are clearly, though in many cases subjectively more meaningful than others.
Winning Does Not Equal Meaningfulness.
You wouldn’t know this from looking at our deep cultural infatuation with competitive professional sports. Spoiled fans of dynasty sports teams (the New York Yankees would be a good example) are perennially disappointed or disillusioned because to them not winningmakes a season meaningless. But not to the athletes who are competing. Win or lose, professional athletes are rewarded handsomely, some might argue obscenely for simply entertaining us – even if it leaves us miserably unhappy. Highly paid athletes are actually extremely competent. It’s what and how they contribute – which to the team’s interest may simply mean attracting more fans. It’s just that what they might accomplish isn’t necessarily what some or most of their fans want or pay to watch. But when they are no longer competent they are quickly exited from the game, and the many of the most competent players actually put themselves out to pasture – with plenty of means to make that a quite comfortable, five-star paddock.
Winning isn’t not only everything, it sometimes takes a backseat to not winning…
A “winners take all” mentality distorts what is meaningful and who is competent or not. And by the very nature of competition not everyone can be the winner. Not winning does not mean you have not accomplished anything worthwhile. In some cases, not winning can turn out to be extremely worthwhile.
Take the now fabled story of runner Dick Hoyt, who until the age of 72 made his greatest accomplishment how he lost more than 1,000 races. He is the father of Rick Hoyt, who has cerebral palsy that left him a paraplegic. As a team his father carried him through marathons, triathlons and even grueling iron man competitions – always to come in last. The Hoyt’s prove the point that accomplishment is always a matter of making meaning of what we do. They didn’t just create meaning from these races for themselves; they made a profound impact of millions of people along the way. When what we aim for in life is truly meaningful, success is often measured long after the most apparent winner has celebrated, gone home and is fast asleep in bed.
In search of meaning
Most people at some point discover that winning can be meaningless, even empty. Anything won in the absence of a real challenge, or when winning is entirely expected is typically unfulfilling – especially when it becomes your status quo. How you win matters. And so does how you lose. Engaging with a young child in competition gives us a clear illustration. Crushing them with superiority of prowess that any average adult might muster feels like bullying – and it should. But putting up no challenge and making it easy for them to win also amounts to a disservice. It seems the most sensible approach is to provide a sufficient challenge to make the experience – win or lose, meaningful. Learning to lose or win and be a “good sport” about it is a valuable lesson we might be able to help them learn. The old saying is that it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game that counts. Perhaps it is really about how meaningful the experience is – and whether that might provide a means for us to become more competent in whatever it is we are playing.
This is no less true when the consequences are a matter of life or death. In “Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor Frankel tells of how even in a German concentration camp, how you play the game matters. Those who developed a deep sense of meaning around their dire situation were those who tended to survive. Those who managed to survive we’re treated no better than those who did not. They should rightfully be considered victims no different than those who were murdered. (And to some extent, those who perished may have actually experienced some mercy by being spared from the further atrocities forced upon on those who managed to endure.) The survivors didn’t defeat their captors, but they did ultimately accomplish something extraordinary. More than seven decades later their experience continues to inform the world about the powerful and unthinkable evil that mankind is capable of with a clear warning to always be vigilant when it comes to basic dignity and human rights.
We shouldn’t do what we do because of what others think, but what others think does matter
While what is worthy or noble about us is found within us, what is meaningful about us is ultimately defined in the minds of others. It starts with what is meaningful to us, but unless we accomplish something relevant to others, it is unlikely that our efforts will be viewed as truly worthwhile.. A leader’s achievements are often forced to stand the test of time. Many of the world’s greatest achievements were posthumously credited to those who led them. This is not just true of martyrs. Competent leadership leaves a legacy. The impact Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin made on the world is far greater today than it was during their lifetimes. Their achievements transcend them as mortal human beings – and instead become a phenomenon larger than they were. A great worthy cause has a life of its own.
Great, visionary leaders often come to understand that what may be meaningful to us, even what might be most meaningful– might not be valuable to those we are charged with serving – or even anyone else besides ourselves. Steve Jobs was tenacious about building what he felt was necessary regardless of whether anyone happened to agree. Disruptive advances in technology are rarely welcomed at first with open arms. But it is in the ultimate value of the contribution we make that our accomplishments and competence are realized.
Beyond the fact that leaders may not be recognized for their competence by those they lead, it is also possible that a virtuoso leader will likely not even see herself as being fully or even sufficiently competent. The desire to constantly improve yourself and the world around us is often borne from a persistent dissatisfaction with the status quo. When there is a deep sense of duty to something larger than just yourself that drives our ambitions, it is neither fame or fortune that is our aim. Rather than calling attention to herself, such a leader continuously points to her cause. That is why competence is often seen from the wake left behind.
In this regard, competence is an aspiration, a journey that has no exact destination. We are competent, or not, in any given moment. But we can be prepared to be competent based on the choices we make.
The meaning of competence is obscured by a fuzzy and diluted definition…
In more primitive, clearly harder times, competence could be measured in terms of survival. If you were not competent as a hunter or farmer – you simply starved to death. If you were not competent as a protectors, your predators and enemies would have their way with you. If you were not competent to an employer you were unemployed. And of you were not competent as a human being – you were left to the resources of nature to take care of you – which meant you were not taken care of.
For mostly goo, things have clearly changed. A more seemingly humanistic sensibility has provided all sorts of safety nets – and an unintended consequence may be the the cultivation of institutional incompetence. It’s not just that life is easier, and it’s certainly not that competence is any less valuable, but in too many cases we find most functionally competent people are those who simply can work the system and compensate for their personal lack “meaningful competencies” or failure to make any sort of valuable contribution. Some of this can be attributed to a combination of laziness and cleverness. But this toxic combination thrives in the absence of high moral values and a sense of meaningful purpose, and is fortified by a status quo that is less and less capable of recognizing competence enough to clearly see the difference.
The Future of Competence and Leadership
The solution that best combats the general malaise of mediocrity and fostered incompetence is competent leadership. We need better leadership in our communities and schools, in our governments and civic institutions and in our homes. The world would also greatly benefit from increasing the presence of fully competent leadership in our business communities.
In “Conscious Capitalism” John Mackey and Raj Sisodia argue that capitalism has provided greater benefits to society than virtually any other institution in the history of the human race. I do know from my experience, the men and women who lead successful business are those best equipped and able to serve the social, economic and cultural needs of society. Beyond the financial means that their success generates they are well practiced in connecting purpose with accomplishment. The competence of their leadership yields competent organizations driven by competent people and effective systems. This efficacy on every scale outperforms government, politics and public policy and evidence of their contributions can be found virtually everywhere, from small rural towns to the greatest cities, from libraries, public parks and health clinics to hospitals, university research centers and even highways and bridges. Some are named honoring the heroes of capitalism, with many, if not most who contribute mightily, quietly existing in absolute anonymity.
If the product of competence is accomplishment, the trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the leadership that has truly shaped the miracles of modern society brings us to the intersection of competent leadership and the future we have at stake. If we want our future to fulfill the promise of human potential, we need to foster the ranks of fully competent leadership that will move us in that direction. In order for the surge of human advancement to be sustainable, we need to not only prepare our children and future generations with the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills we currently emphasize in education today. We must also and equally focus on the arts, communication and the cultivation of competent leadership that will enable society to apply our human and natural resources to build a secure a sustainable and better tomorrow.
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You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at www.ALPSLeadership.com
