Episode # 7 - Competent leadership: 2 questions

5/5/2020

Episode #7

Increase your leadership competence

Do you ever feel inept in your leadership role?
For example, are you afraid that you might look stupid or stumble over your words at a meeting?
However:

Have you ever taken training to speak in public?
Have you ever had the opportunity to practice speaking in public? Not to actually talk publicly, but practice public speaking with the opportunity to get feedback and grow and develop your skills?

If no, then it's no wonder you feel incompetent at times.

Key take-a-ways from this episode

Competent leadership is about:

Having skills
Having had the opportunity to learn to use those skills.

In the nonprofit world, however, two problems impact your level of competence as a leader.

First, nonprofit leaders often move up the ranks from frontline positions without the accompanying training to go with the advancing role. We move you up from frontline, to the supervisor, to the manager to the coordinator to the director. However, you've never taken the actual training to go with that.
The second problem is when you do get some training you think you have to know immediately and be able to apply it immediately. When you don't, you take that training, and you still are not entirely competent at it, you beat yourself up.

And that's where we feel inept.
That's where imposter syndrome comes in.
That's when we start to doubt ourselves, hold ourselves back, limit ourselves and keep ourselves playing small.

Competence is about learning a skill and then practicing a skill.

Two Questions In this episode, we will dig deep into the following two questions to help you consider how you can increase your leadership competence.

Have I taken any training on this subject?
By training, I mean a course someone taught you at work, you know, mentored you, you read a book, you attended a webinar, maybe you watched a YouTube video, or you listen to a podcast, whatever, doesn't matter. But have I taken any amount of training on this subject?
Have I had the opportunity to practice the skill?

The areas of leadership competence we talk about are: