The Case for Being LESS Competent

Forgive me. Whenever you see a 2 x 2 matrix, its creator wants you to move to the upper right quadrant. My goal is the opposite: to push you the hell out of that quadrant.

LinkedIn member Dirk Biesinger deserves all the credit - and none of the blame - for what you are about to read. As a comment on one of my previous articles, he wrote that over the next year, “I would like to see both my confidence and competence decline. This would mean I moved forward.”

Eureka! Dirk nailed it.

Many of us love to talk about growth, but few of us tackle the 800-pound gorilla that follows it into your life. To grow, you have to bring your weaknesses and vulnerabilities into the open.

To cite a superficial example, two weeks ago I started trying to learn the slack line. It’s basically a tightrope stretched 60 feet across a climbing gym I visit. Most nights, you see 22-year-old wizards playing on it as though gravity doesn’t apply to them. After weeks of watching them, I came in on a slow afternoon and gave it a try.

If you look up “feeble” in the dictionary, there may be a picture of me trying to balance on a slack line. My main objective was not to hurt myself. But with the help of a rope hanging from the ceiling, I was able to get on the line and balance. Then fall off.

But I’m trying! Balancing is not the hardest part; it’s looking in public like a feeble 50-something guy.

Most grownups hate being bad at anything. We abhor being vulnerable.

I’ve written often about confident and competence, and the underlying assumptions in both my writing and most reader comments are:

1. More competence is good.

2. Too much confidence is bad.

3. Too little confidence is bad, too.

So, in other words, you want the perfect balance between confidence and competence. But growth requires that you throw your whole system out of whack and that you actively move into realms in which both your confidence and competence are near zero.

Sure, your goal remains to increase both. But your reality is that any substantive growth will require your prolonged presence in vulnerable territory.

Recently, a friend of mine argued that all the adults she knows are getting increasingly narrow and rigid. She wasn’t saying that her crowd is particularly unique; she was saying this is part of the aging process.

I hope she’s wrong, but also suspect that this is our fate unless we actively resist it.

You may wish to ponder a few questions like these...

Would you transfer into a job that was far outside your current strengths?

Would you go back to college at age 30, 40, 60, or 80?

Will you “make a fool of yourself” in order to learn and have stimulating new experiences?

Are you stuck in a safe place?

How much risk are you willing to take in the name of growth?

Bruce Kasanoff helps professionals like you find the right words to advance your career. Learn more at Kasanoff.com. 

An earlier version of this article appeared on Forbes.