Competence & Confidence

Should we focus on being confident enough to achieve success, or being competent enough to achieve success?

According to an interesting article I read lately, to achieve greatness, we should focus on developing competence to drive confidence, not just blindly building confidence (most self-help books and motivation programs today are guilty of this).

I attach here a link to a Financial Times article for those who are interested to read the full thing. It's a good read and some food for thought. I rarely talk about anything serious on my blog because I believe in being serious only when studying/working/avoiding getting into deep trouble. Other than that being serious be screwed. There's a reason this blog is called an asylum.

But asylum or not, once in awhile I guess I'm doing everyone a service by sharing something good.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c7d527a6-2ce2-11e3-a0ac-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2iVYnt7wD

The article also takes a swipe at KPMG for using 'core competencies' to assess its potential employees. This approach focuses too much on vague ideas like 'delivering quality'. Not really something measurable or explicitly related to competency, the article argues. This being the case, people nowadays are trying to appear confident, but do not care so much about being competent, because apparently, confidence is enough for you to ace that job interview. Perhaps true to some extent. I'm sure this 'core competencies' thing extends beyond KPMG to many other companies. I've seen a fair share of 'core competencies' or similar things myself.

You do not have to agree with the article 100%. I certainly don't. But let it serve as a reminder that it's important to get a firm grasp of the technical aspects of our lines of work. Spend time mastering your trade, not blowing your trumpet and ESPECIALLY, not backstabbing to get to the top. There is no honour in success built on a trail of casualties.