How to Increase the Competence of Others.

When you see someone who is clearly at the top of their game, don’t you just feel the urge to say out loud “Now there’s someone who knows what they are doing!”

When someone demonstrates strong competency, it shows.  And yet when someone is clearly lacking competence, it also shows.

So how do you view yourself?

Generally, we are more lenient on ourselves than others. We allow for excuses in our life – why we can’t achieve a goal, complete a task fully, or do our job as efficiently as we’d like. Yet for others, if there’s the slightest mix-up or problem, we just view them as incompetent.

Leaders who value competence know how to help others increase their level of competence. It starts with the leader.

Competence Defined

As a differentiating value, Competence means properly or sufficiently qualified; capable; efficient.

For organizations, this can be a crucial value to build a successful business. But this is also a rather nebulous value that can be difficult to implement and measure.

How do you know when you have reached a point of being capable or efficient? Or when are you “sufficiently qualified.” This is not a Yes-No value.

It requires an appropriate scale.

The Law of the Lid

In John Maxwell’s book “The 21 Irrefutable Law of Leadership” it starts with “The Law of The Lid.” The basic premise of this law is that leadership ability – or leadership competence – determines a person’s level of effectiveness. We all have a leadership lid, which limits our ability to lead others. Do we know our own lid?

As an example, on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is low and 10 is high), a person who is an 8 in their leadership ability can only lead others who are a 6 or 7. And if someone is only a 4 on this scale, they can only lead others who are a 2 or 3. A leader’s effectiveness is determined by their leadership lid.

The good news is that every leader can raise their own leadership lid. And every leader can help others raise their lid too – to increase their level of competence.

So if you want to help others grow, the first step is to help them to recognize where they are on the own scale. Then help them grow one step at a time.

But if you want to continue helping someone grow, you will also need to increase your own leadership abilities. Otherwise your leadership lid will become the barrier for everyone around you.

5 Things to Cultivate Competence

Another relevant book by John Maxwell is “The 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader” (yes I’m a big supporter of John Maxwell). Regarding competence, Maxwell provides 5 recommendations to help each of us cultivate this important value:

1. Show up every day. Come ready to play your best.
2. Keep improving.  Constantly learn, grow, and ask a lot of ‘why’ questions.
3. Follow through with excellence. It’s not an option. It’s an act of will.
4. Accomplish more than expected. Always go the extra mile.
5. Inspire others. Motivate others to raise their lid.

In the end, it comes down to this: our ability to help others increase their level of competence is dependent on our ability to raise our own leadership lid. Whatever you can accomplish will be restricted or propelled by your ability to lead others.

Be a lid lifter. And increase your leadership competence.

What are you doing to raise your leadership lid?