Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Create a culture that inspires and empowers every individual to contribute his best in
building business and organization through self development.
Review current work performance and plan for the future improvements.
Provide an opportunity for post-appraisal discussions and guidance to promote self
development.
Provide an objective basis to recognize and reward meritorious and outstanding
performance.
Provide an objective basis to identify substandard performance and reasons for it.
Meet the need of each person to know how well he is performing.
Support coaching, mentoring, training and development activities.
Support internal mobility like growth paths, transfers, job rotation etc.
Attitude: An individual's tendency to act in predictable ways. A manager may have humanistic
attitude and therefore, he may be compassionate towards people.
Behavior: What an individual performs or does is his behavior and that is observable. It is based
on his thinking which is not observable.
Performance: Actual work output/results given by an individual against the expected results or
goals/objectives is his performance. It is normally the basis for appraisals and rewards.
Practice: An individual acting as per his or organizational strategies and policies is putting the
policies into practice.
Skill: It is the work behavior. In a sense, every verb in a dictionary is a skill. It is micro
competency. Allied skills make a competency. In earlier example of conducting meeting,
listening is another skill that is essential for conducting effective meetings. Skills are observable
and ratable/measurable.
Style: Patterns of behavior is style. A person with humanistic values will have particular sets of
behavior towards people and that defines his style.
Traits: They are personal characteristics. For example, an individual can be harsh, arrogant,
aggressive or some other person may be polite, just, assertive etc. Many a time, they may not be
observable or ratable/measurable.
In order to carry out an organization's business in a superior manner, it needs to identify the
competencies it's managers and all other employees should possess, further improve and practice
to improve their job performance towards achieving it's goals.
1. An organization should develop an inventory of all the competencies it will need from it's
people in order to run it's business as per it's vision, mission, objectives and strategies.
2. These identified competencies then should be classified and grouped together accordingly.
The following classifications can be made:
Some examples of the competencies under these classifications are given later in this write-up.
There could be other alternate ways for classifying competencies as given below:
3. Each competency, in turn, will have it's levels of proficiencies. They should be identified.
4. Clear explanations of each level of each competency should be written down. These levels are
given different labels by different organizations as per their needs. Some examples are given
below:
In one organization, these proficiency levels for each competency are graded as: oh-oh,
so-so, good and great.
In other organization, they are termed as: baseline, collaborative productivity, ownership,
managing complexity and expert.
In another organization, they simply put them as: level 1, level 2, level 3 and level 4.
5. Also, for each job or each position which competencies of which proficiency level are
required should be determined. this is called developing a "competency matrix".
Competency Mapping
Having created competency matrix for every job/position, the job incumbent's current
competencies are evaluated against the desired competencies and their level of proficiency. This
is mapping the competencies of a job holder against the desired competency matrix for that job.
The gaps in desired and actual competencies are identified. This entire process can be done
collaboratively by the job holder himself and his superior(s).
Once the gaps in competencies and proficiency levels are known, the gap analysis is carried out.
The analysis focuses on the further development of the job holder rather than trying to pin him
down for his lacunae in competencies. Therefore, the reasons for the gaps are found out
objectively and further course of action to remove these gaps is decided and implemented.
Excellence in Competencies/Skills
You will be able to achieve the excellence in any skill or competency only if you rehearse or
practice the learned skill a large number of times. Knowledge alone is no guarantee for achieving
great levels in skills or competencies.
Only if you start swimming, you will become a swimmer; mere knowledge of swimming or great
theories of swimming will not automatically make you even an ordinary swimmer. Knowledge
surely helps and is a must but without doing, it is of no use to you. If you wish to become a good
teacher, start teaching the subject you know well. If you want to become an actor, start acting.
Seek roles in movies or dramas or TV shows and keep refining your acting by doing it and also
applying your knowledge in doing it better. If your desire is to become an author, start writing.
Write something every day. And use your knowledge to write even better. Doing is what makes
you what you wish to become, knowledge alone does not.
Implementation of knowledge is the name of the game. Wisdom is in knowing what to do and
how to do but the virtue is doing it.
There are 4 levels of competencies or skills (also refer points 3 and 4 of the paragraph titled
"Inventory of Competencies and developing Competency Matrix" above):
1. Unconsciously incompetent: Ignorance (example: you are not even aware that there are some
proper styles of swimming).
3. Consciously competent: Gaining the knowledge about the skill to be mastered and begin
practicing the knowledge gained (example: gaining knowledge on how to swim using proper
styles of swimming and start swimming using the right styles of swimming).
4. Unconsciously competent: Keep practicing the knowledge gained till you gain mastery in the
skill (example: you have now become an expert swimmer since you have been swimming using
the proper styles of swimming over number of hours and you can now give yourself 9 on 10 or
even 10 on 10).
For greater success in life, you should try to reach the unconsciously competent level in the skills
required by you for your professional, personal, family and social activities/tasks/projects.
You will need to sharpen your soft skills as well as your hard skills in order to become effective,
efficient and successful in your life and your professions.
Hard skills are to do with the technical skills and soft skills are the behavioral skills. Both types
of skills are required for carrying our your professional activities effectively and efficiently.
They are also required to be successful in your personal, family and social life.
You should first identify as to which soft skills and hard skills you need to develop. Each person
may have his or her unique requirements. Once having identified them, you will need to feel
motivated about developing those skills. We have emphasized earlier that there is no short-cut to
master the skills. You will have to acquire the right kind of knowledge about those skills and
then keep on practicing.
Soft Skills
Earlier, we have emphasized the importance of acquiring and mastering both types of skills- the
hard skills and the soft skills. Hard skills are important and you should never undermine them.
They are your bread and butter skills. For example, a tourist guide has to know the technical
aspects of his job like showing his tourists the right places in a proper sequence with authentic
commentary on them, the legalities of his job, the safety aspect of his tourists etc, yet, he will be
more in demand and earn more if he also has the necessary soft skills for the job like manners
and etiquette, interpersonal relations with tourists, humor, creativity etc.
Hard skills are more rational types and soft skills improve your emotional intelligence. Soft skills
make you more cultured, empathic, understanding, caring and also, more sophisticated and
reformed.
You must try to find out what soft skills you should choose to acquire and develop for success in
your personal, professional, family and social life.
We are giving below a fairly comprehensive list of soft skills for your guidance. To know the
details on each one of the competencies given below, you can refer to the respective weblinks
(URLs) given below later in the paragraph titled "Other Topics of Interest".
1. Observation.
2. Know yourself (introspection).
3. Openness and flexibility (paradigm shifting).
4. Internal motivation and passion.
5. Action orientation, drive and self initiation.
6. Self development.
7. Self confidence.
8. Assertiveness.
9. Integrity.
10. Trustworthiness.
11. Composure and self presentation (appearance, manners and etiquette).
12. Intellectual horsepower and learning.
13. Creativity and innovation.
14. Conviction.
15. Moral courage.
16. Dependability and reliability.
17. Dealing with ambiguity.
18. Time management.
19. Goal setting and result orientation.
20. Decision making.
21. Problem solving and process orientation.
22. Organizing.
23. Coordinating.
24. Delegation.
25. Communication (speaking, listening, empathy, body language, writing).
26. Interpersonal skills.
27. Negotiation.
28. Conflict management.
29. Presentation.
30. Convincing.
31. Coaching and developing people.
32. Counseling.
33. Mentoring.
34. Team work.
35. Team building.
36. Consensus building.
37. Conducting meetings.
38. Leading.
39. Big picture thinking and strategic thinking.
40. Motivating others.
41. Controlling.
42. Safety.
43. Stress management.
Go through the above list very carefully and tick out the soft skills where you need to pull up
yourself. Then, you have to go through the cycle of gaining authentic knowledge of that skill,
understanding the process (the standard operating procedure- the SOP) of building that skill,
practicing that skill following the process (SOP), practicing it, practicing it and practicing it till
you get the mastery over that skill, till that skills gets internalized in you; it becomes your habit.
The More the Value Addition Due to Your Competencies, the More You Can Earn
The money you can earn as a professional by using your competency depends squarely on the
value it can add. Extent of value derived by the usage of your competency is decided by the user
or the customer. If the perception of the customer allows your competency to be seen as a high
value adding competency, you can claim more money for providing that competency to your
customer and more often than not, the customer will pay you that much. On the other hand even
if you reach the highest level of expertise in a particular competency, it is not necessary that you
will end up earning more particularly when the customers does not see it delivering high value to
him.
It is also a matter of supply and demand. The much needed rare competencies may get paid more
since at that point of time they are seen to be delivering high value to its customers in their
perception.
An example will illustrate the point brought out in this paragraph. You will generally see that a
specialist doctor say, a surgeon will end up earning lots more that the best or most proficient
waiter in a restaurant. Yet a chief chef in the same restaurant, if he is worth his salt (as far as
proficiency or expertise in cooking is concerned) may also end up earning as much as the doctor
or an engineer.
So, it seems that high value adding competencies alone can earn more money for you.
Overdoing a Competency