Another way to think about competitiveness is to think about it as an act of perfecting oneself for the purpose of showing up with your full potential. This ultimately contributes on a broader scale to an organization. When you actualize your full potential individually, with your team, and within an organization, the result in today’s economy is often manifested in a combination of innovation, wealth, social impact, and happiness. There are many organizations whose deliberate efforts and investment in helping their people reach their full potential yields the results I just described. To be competitive I believe there are two primary areas for professional development: Technical Skills and People Skills. Individuals who constantly work on both domains succeed. Organizations that invest in both constantly succeed.

 

One may ask, where do I start? Or, how do I become more competitive if my organization is not helping me reach my potential? I have found that most people who are seeking to be leaders have an innate mindset, set of habits and routines, and shortterm and long-term goals that can be simplified into this attitude: Constantly getting a little bit better in service of a specific goal. What are you doing to improve your technical skills and people skills? We all struggle with objectivity, and this would be an ideal opportunity to meet with a coach, trusted colleague, and perhaps your human resources director to get diverse feedback from people you trust to guide your development.

 

I once coached a woman in a senior position at the request of the CEO and CHRO to help her improve her people skills. Her technical skills were superior according to everyone working with her. This was the reason for investing in her coaching with the aspiration of boosting her people skills. It failed, and in hindsight I knew it would after the very first coaching session. Remember, I’m a psychologist and incredibly nonjudgmental at heart. When I give people feedback about change, particularly with respect to their character or attributes, I do it in a way that can be tolerated—with rare exception. Some people just can’t accept their shortcomings, and they regress into defensive thinking and responses that interfere with any change. That’s exactly what happened. So, the coaching was an unsuccessful intervention, and she was subsequently fired. We have to be ready for change, and be brutally honesty with ourselves, if we truly want to reach our potential. Had this woman been able to take feedback from me, the CEO and the CHRO, she would be really soaring in this organization.

 

The Exercise:

A lot of people struggle with answering these questions, but they are critical in identifying where to focus one’s time and effort to be more competitive.

 

What are your best technical skills?

Which ones need improvement?

How will you improve them in the next six months?

What evidence will there be in six months to demonstrate they have improved?

Will any of these skills be irrelevant in the near future?

What people skills do you need to improve?

How will you improve them in the next six months?

What accountability and proof will tell you that they actually improved?