HOW CAN I SUSTAIN COMPETENCE?

In the first two articles, our focus was competence development—how to develop competence. Now it is time to focus on, how to sustain and keep competence once you have developed it. Simple competencies, which you can accomplish with 90% of the skills that we humans learn and develop, you can reach them in 30 to 90 days. For the bigger competencies such as being a professional coach, trainer, leader, manager, etc., that takes longer, usually we measure that in years, not months.

To ask this question, “How can I sustain my competence?” recognize a crucial fact. Namely, every skill and every competence will deteriorate if not constantly refreshed. At the level of your neurons in your brain and body, just as “cells that fire together will wire together” so the opposite it also true. Cells that do not continue to fire together will not stay wired together. The connection between the cells will degrade. The actual dendrites of the neurons will shorten since there is no firing that activates them to reach out to connect with other neurons. At the behavioral level you will experience this as the weakening of the skill, forgetting, etc. as the connections are loosened.