The Absence of Learning – Purposed Incompetence
January 27, 2009 by JoAnn Corley
Filed under Management Training
Do you know of anyone who is incompetent on purpose? I bet you do know of someone. You know that really bugs me! Why, because there is absolutely no reason to be so!
In my view being incompetent is a choice because the person has not pursued what’s necessary to become competent. Now more than ever there are resources available for people to learn and get help to be good at what they do – even moderately so.
One easy way to become incompetent on purpose?…take absolutely no initiative to learn and develop skills. But you know what’s sad? With that attitude, people suffer when that occurs; managers experience tremendous stress as does their team members. So let’s change that!
We’ve come into an age when things are moving fast – changing often. To be competent, we’ve got to keep pace and really the only way to do that is to keep taking in new, relevant information and then translating that information into working knowledge, developing aptitudes and skills.
And who is responsible for that? Each working individual whether your company pays for it or not! I’m amazed at how people do not take personal responsibility for learning and developing a needed skill set unless their companies pay for it. I find that completely illogical.
Ironically, the need to take 100% responsibility for ones competency is most pressing among managers, because being incompetent carries such significant consequences.
So, here’s a recommendation: have a list of skills and knowledge you want to gain and are currently working on, as well as the resources to access to meet those objectives (e.g. workshops, books to read, tools & techniques to use, websites, audio lessons to listen to, etc.) Or, (shameless plug here…) if you haven’t yet explored what the Management in Minutes community offers, consider doing so.
One final point of irony – as managers we generally expect the people we manage to be their best, don’t you think we should set the example in that?
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