Regain my ability to Catcall or competency for the right context

A few weeks ago, I attended a concert. It had no resemblance with heavy metal concerts, crowded with screaming spectators and occasions of wall of death. Although, it was neither very loud nor a rough event, at one point during the evening, the audience felt the urge to stand up and applaud. So did I, and not only clap. I was also struck by an impulse to catcall, you know the skill to blow air over your u-shaped tongue with a loud whistling sound as a result. To my surprise, no magnificent sound left my mouth, instead an embarrassing whizzing slipped away, that no one in the cheering audience made any notice of. That made me think about competence.

Competency for the context

Where I grew up and went to school, the classes were noisy and hard to steer. I judge, half of the teacher’s time, and more of their energy, went to keep order in the classes. One of the more challenging classes was physical education. And our female gym teacher, gifted with a small body and a humble demeanor, had extra a challenge to keep the ungovernable class in a tight leash. For some reason I now have forgotten, she knew that I mastered the noble skill of catcalling.?

I had during an intense and dedicated period in my pre-adolescence made a promise to myself that I should learn, what I thought with my prepubertal brain, one of the coolest skills a person could master. I spend numerous hours that summer to perfect the talent, and when the school started after the summer break, I came back with an almost bursting secret within. l remembered the first time I reveled my ability. It was on the soccer field during an afternoon break in late August. A guy in sixth grade made a rough tackle on one of my co-players. I shaped my tongue in the shape I had practiced endless hours and blew. The tone was loud and clear, and the game just froze. 26 eyeballs turned to me, and they were enclosed by faces communicating surprise and respect. My teammate closes to me said with awe in the voice: “you can catcall?”. That was how you could gain respect on the school yard in Botkyrka in the late 1970-ies.?

Back to my order-struggling PE teacher. When the classes degraded to anarchy, and for some reason I was not a part of the chaos, she used to come to me and asked me to do my catcalling party trick. And when I did, the turmoil always paused enough for her to be able to gain control.

And here, I was on a concert, in a moment that deserved a catcall, and I couldn’t. What had happened?

Why I have a beard

To understand that I must introduce my father. He is 81 years old, and I have never seen him without a beard. He grew his facial hair as an act of rebellion during his military service in his early twenties. Being a son of my father, when I entered my mid-life crises and needed a change, and both loved my job and wife too much to change them, I decided to grow a beard. Not that proud, big, cocky hipster beard that communicate, “I am self-confident and have a beard that looks nonchalant but is cared fore like a baby”. No, I have more of an anxious stubble saying “I am no longer 35 but I have come over it….I hope”.?

So, when that awkward whine was the result on the concert instead of a proud whistle, I immediately realized what the problem was. Being an engineer and have read enough fluid dynamics, I comprehended that my mustache disturbed the laminar flow over my tongue and lips to make it turbulent enough to destroy the spectacular catcall.

Being competent and being given the opportunity to practice it?

Being an engineer in a high-tech business, like the heavy truck and bus business, is a lot about being competent. Competency, according to one definition, is?knowledge and experience?AND the?ability and will?to use it. It is not only about what you learn in the textbooks, nevertheless, ambition only will certainly not solve the problem of the noise from the rear-view mirrors. However, a decent doze of fluid mechanic might. The same is true for leadership. Meanwhile, leadership competency leans a bit heavier towards the?experience?and the?ability?part of the competency definition.?

One crucial ingredient in the noble art of leadership is to be given the room to practice your leadership competency. Ultimately, it is the managed person that decides if she wants to be led. Or to put it differently,?

the possibility to lead is given to the leader by those who are willing to be led. The first step in this want-to-lead-letting to-be-led-process is for the presumed leader to be perceived to be leadership-competent.?

Here, the first impression plays a role. Since the only tools you have as a leader is how you communicate (verbal and nonverbal), and one of these non-verbal communication tools is your appearance, the question arises: what are the traits of a person looking competent and trustworthy? I recently came over an investigation on what characteristics that signal trustworthiness and competency (Venter P. J.,?Facial appearance manipulations for first impression in economic interactions,?2015). Not surprisingly, the most significant was wearing glasses and the second was……having a beard. And having both glasses and facial hair gave the greatest effect.

The Dilemma

So here I was in a dilemma. Do I want to regain the skill that raised my position in the pecking order on my childhood school yard; the ability to catcall, by shaving my face clean, and by that letting the smooth laminar flow pass my lips? Or should I keep my beard and continue to live with only an embarrassing whizzing capacity? After a long internal ideological conflict, I have decided that the more functional ability in my current role as a leader is to, hopefully, communicate competency and trustworthiness rather than use the catcall at work. Therefore, I keep my beard although the price is high. However, the day you see me come to work with a clean face, you know that my days in the corporate world are counted.?