Future Performance Training
Apart from being a good way to boost your reserves of confidence, taking a close look at the times in your life when you achieved great results is an effective way to find out more about yourself in all areas of your life. A great result certainly doesn’t have to mean winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
What you need to focus on is an event that turned out the way you wanted it to, as a result of something you did.
Take a look at this list of accomplishments. You may be able to add some or all of them to your own list:
- You passed your driving test.
- You got a job offer from an interview.
- You asked someone out on a date.
- You learned to ride a bike.
- You mastered a foreign language.
- You made a successful sales call.
- You became computer literate.
- You wrote a complex report for your boss.
- You navigated your way around a new city on a walking holiday.
- You cooked a fancy three-course meal from scratch for the first time.
If you were to tell the story of exactly how you did anything on that list, your story would be different to anyone else’s, although the nuts and bolts of the task may be pretty much the same. Even the simplest of these examples can take an impressive array of skill and knowledge. But how you go about getting and using that skill and knowledge is what makes the difference.
As well as skill and knowledge, competency – the behaviour or ‘how’ of carrying out an action – is the magic third ingredient you need to achieve a great result in whatever you put your mind to. Writing that complex report? Maybe you already have enough technical knowledge but you’ve never written a formal business report before. So you might apply your competency of per- suasion to get the help of a team member who’s done this before.
Your competencies can often compensate for shortcomings in your skills and knowledge. Knowing how to apply your competencies can help you find new ways to hone any skills and knowledge you think you lack. The really great news about competencies is that, far from being qualities that only get dusted off at your annual work appraisal, they apply to all the different areas of your life with just a few tweaks here and there.
Other competencies include:
- Creativity
- Determination
- Initiative
- Self-reliance
- Persuading and influencing
- Negotiating
- Empathy
Make a list of your competencies. A good way to begin to get at your ‘competency list’ is to ask a friend or family member to describe you. Your friend or family member is very unlikely to tell you what they think you can do and is much more likely to talk about how you do it.