about competences - learn, do, share

Learn, Do, Share

In the interview I did with my friends there were also the following two questions. Let's see what your answer is.

• Question 1: Pick one of your competency domains (see above) and list all the things that made you competent in it:
  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
• Question 2: How do you recognize competent people? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
  

I got many answers, among them things like 'mentoring, feedback from others, research I do, my own projects, flexibility to apply your competencies to a given situation, vision' etc. People do a lot of activities to become or stay competent in a given domain. Here are some of the things you might do:

• go to a class, conference or presentation on a topic
  
• get some coaching or on the job mentoring
  
• talk about it with peers
  
• subscribe to blog posts, magazines, watch programs on TV
  
• just do it a lot and grow into it
  
• write a book about it
  

I've narrowed the type of activities you do building competencies down to three. Do the test and tag all of the things you have written above to one of the three categories.
Learn - Do - Share

Examples of learning include: education, exams, conferences, reading books or magazines
Examples of doing include: giving presentations, leading teams
Example of sharing include: teaching, writing articles or books, coaching someone

We'll go into much more detail on providing evidence of learning, doing and sharing in later chapters. In fact, if you forget all the rest and remember but one thing from this entire book, remember this: learn, do share.
Repetition makes perfect: Learn, Do, Share.

As the manager of your competency mix, you'll need to balance the learning, doing and sharing. Learning will usually cost you money. Doing or sharing will earn you income. But only doing will make your competency obsolete and without value after some time. So I'd argue that you'll need to find the right balance between those activities.

It's not a staircase where you start learning, then get to do whatever the competency domain is, and end up as the guru telling others how to be good at competency X. No, you'll probably do a mixture of activities that include learning, doing and sharing. The dominant category, the one you do most of, will give you your level of apprentice, practitioner or master. Here is how it links:

learning	if you are mainly learning, you are anapprentice	you are building knowledge, skills and behavior
doing	if you are mainly doing, you are a practitioner	you are building experience
sharing	if you are mainly sharing, you are a master	you are building reputation

Key point: you build and maintain competencies by doing three kinds of activities: you learn, you do and you share. You do these all at once, but the biggest category of activity will determine your level.