Many times we observe excellent professionals, experts in their specialty, who however do not obtain a good job performance. And this happens because in order to achieve high performance, it is necessary, in addition to technical competences, to put into operation a set of “social skills” or generic competences that enable effective action and interaction.
For example, it happens in many companies that hierarchical personnel with excellent training do not achieve the required performance because they do not interact adequately with other areas, do not communicate effectively, do not negotiate emerging conflicts correctly, or do not lead their work team. Without the necessary skills to manage in this network of links, the best professional may see the effectiveness of her performance damaged. This is why those with the greatest knowledge are not always the most effective.
Beyond expertise, scientific training or technical solvency, a set of skills and abilities that do not have to do with specific training are put into play in job performance. The degree of knowledge, the academic titles and the level of experience continue to be important but not exclusive subjects. A person may be "knowledgeable" but incompetent in the performance of his role. Technical competencies, no matter how highly developed they are in an individual, constitute only one of the factors - very important indeed - that will affect their job performance. Thus, two people with the same specific abilities may have a different performance in the same workplace.
Regardless of what each one knows in their field of specialty, their capacity for action, their performance in the tasks they carry out and the development of their work career will be conditioned by their generic competences.
Just as a job competency requires the integration of knowledge, skills and attitudes, acting competently implies knowing how to properly combine and integrate a set of technical and generic competences. Every task and function demands the deployment of a set of generic competences and generally these are related to the human aspects of work performance and organizational management.
The importance assigned to the topic of generic competences and its growing impact in the world of work, we can verify it in the fact that 135 European universities formed in 2001 the so-called European Higher Education Area, agreeing to adopt a new methodology "Oriented to the learning of competences" and launching the Tuning Project, which determined the 30 generic competences that all the careers of said universities must develop.
In particular, I believe that, beyond the long list of generic competencies drawn up by organizations or specialists in labor issues, there is a small nucleus of them that constitute the basis and support of all the others. This is so because in order to carry out most of this type of competences, it is necessary to put into operation another set of them. For example, the competence to negotiate and resolve conflicts is carried out by dialoguing with another and this implies the ability to know how to establish a good interpersonal bond, speak assertively and listen actively (conversational competences). It also presupposes being able to generate an attitude of openness and an emotional state, of tranquility to generate new ways of solving the problem in question (emotional strength).
Without a doubt, the level of greater complexity in generic competences is expressed in leadership, since it involves not only personal effectiveness, but also the ability and skill to inspire, guide and facilitate the actions of other people in order to generate a collective action towards a shared goal.
The five essential competencies, which are the basis of all the others, constitute the components of what I have called “Personal Mastery”. These are: Personal Vision, Emotional Strength, Learning and Change Capacity, Conversational Competences and Interpersonal Effectiveness.
- Personal Vision involves acquiring a notion of meaning and purpose in our life. Three foundational elements are distinguished in this competition: Vision of the Future, Self-knowledge, and Design and Construction of the Future. Emotional Strength is the second competition. Emotionality is a predisposition for action and therefore conditions our performance. Depending on the state of mind we are in, certain actions are possible to perform and others are not. Capacity for Learning and Change is the third competence. Here, the different levels of change that you want to carry out are linked to the different types of learning that need to be carried out throughout the job development process. Conversational Competences is the fourth competence. Five conversational skills are distinguished:to speak with power, to listen in depth, to inquire with mastery, to get in tune and to speak in a constructive way. Interpersonal Effectiveness as the fifth competence, is the ability to establish links, coordinate actions, generate commitments and develop trust between people.
The incorporation and development of these competencies is the safest and most effective way to achieve excellence in human relations, whether they are conditioned by an employment relationship and are established within the framework of an organizational environment, or occur in the personal or family sphere.
