Tip 701: Competence and Leadership

From the Leadership Workshops: Competence and Leadership 

We will not follow leaders we believe are incompetent. Or, at best, we will follow them reluctantly. Slowly. Cautiously.  

Given two choices, who would you follow? Mr. Bean or Tom Brady? Inspector Clouseau or Colin Powell? Elmer Fudd or Amelia Earhart?* 

That was easy, but what made it easy? The competence of the one you chose.

Competence has three parts: 

• The knowledge required to perform the required tasks.

• The skills necessary to apply that knowledge.

• The initiative to act quickly and wisely.

How do we gain the required knowledge? We learn. We study. We dedicate time for professional development. We read the manuals. 

How do we gain the necessary skills? We observe. We engage. We look to mentors for guidance. We make mistakes (which says something about forgiving cultures). 

How do we demonstrate initiative? We discipline ourselves to act. To get it done. To do it. To schedule something as soon as appropriate. A wise leader said (somewhat paraphrased): “A good plan passionately executed now is better than an excellent plan executed next week.”

Competence is beautiful.

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* Something interesting happened while we were writing this tip. It was easy to come up with the second-named names. In fact, we had more names than we had room to list them (Ursula von der Leyen, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Aaron Judge, and others). 

But the first-named names were hard. Notice there are no real people in that group, and one is a cartoon character. Why?