Embracing Values - Competence

The other day, I learned I’d failed a test, for the first time in over 30 years. I’m a lifelong learner, so there have been many opportunities for failure in that time.

It wasn’t just any test. It was two parts out of three for my Coaching and Mentoring Diploma, and it means a lot to me. I passed the Knowledge Test and had assumed I’d ace the coaching observation and the portfolio interview. My fellow students and my coachees thought the same.

I didn’t. I failed them both.

After the initial pain and shock had settled down, I read the feedback to see how I could improve. And it made sense. Having been a therapist for over 20 years, and with certificates in Counselling Skills and Hypnotherapy under my belt, I’d assumed I was pretty competent in the skills required for coaching. And it seems I was wrong.

However much it may hurt, I welcome constructive feedback, because it gives me a chance to improve. If you’ve ever come across the Johari Window, I’m always looking for ways to reduce the size of the right-hand windows - the ones where there are things about me that I don’t know. Feedback shows me things that others know about me but I don’t realise - it reduces the size of my Blind Spot, if I pay attention.

One of the questions I was asked during my interviews was, ‘what are your values and how do they show up in your coaching?’ I’ve done a couple of values exercises recently and got two different sets of words that, while related, don’t quite mean the same things, which got me thinking that maybe this was part of my problem. If you don’t understand your values, you don’t know when you’re not working with them.

As I deepened my reflection on my performance, I realised that one of my key values - one I hadn’t previously identified - is Competence. I expect myself to be competent in everything I do, or learn the task until I am competent. And I expect others to be competent and want to be competent, too. Few things stress me more in other people than an apparent indifference to doing a good job.

But thinking deeper, I realised this is both a blessing and a curse. It means I always aim to do a good job, but there are two main downsides to this value.

The first is that, once I feel competent, I don’t always make a lot of effort to go beyond competence. For instance, in my job, I try to keep up with changes - and things are constantly changing in the way I do my job. It stresses me that one of my colleagues is always at least 2 weeks behind with the changes, like he doesn’t care about keeping up with the processes. But it gets harder to find ways to become more than competent - to become excellent - and I don’t always put much effort into looking for them. It also means that once I feel competent in a hobby or interest, I’m easily distracted by the next interesting thing.

The second is that I tend to ignore or brush under the carpet any evidence that I’m not being competent. My confirmation bias tends to only see the things I do well. Doing something badly triggers shame and guilt, and I’ve tended to avoid looking at these things - I see them as blips rather than a trend. This means I don’t make enough effort to ensure they don’t happen again, and so they often do. It also means that I can sometimes react vehemently when I feel my competence in certain skills has been called into question, even if the comment was simply intended for information.

So I started thinking deeper still. That night, my sleep was somewhat disturbed, as my subconscious mind kept waking me up with some new insight. (It does this frequently!) And what startled me the most was the realisation that this isn’t even MY value!

At some point in the night, an image came to mind of a crowd of women in my family line, all with the exact same value. I know my sister holds it dear, and I think both my parents do, too. So it’s ancestral! I think the men have it as well, though some of them don’t have it so strongly.

Then I realised that the reason this value came to be so important to my family is that they all felt they had to be competent - and be seen to be competent - in order to be respected. And I realised I feel that way, too. The problem is that, when you identify so intimately with a quality that violating it makes you feel ashamed and guilty, you DO tend to ignore evidence that you haven’t achieved it. But others will see it, and wonder why you apparently don’t - and your denial just makes them shake their head and wonder when you’ll get it.

This means my value of competence, and the desire to be respected, isn’t always being achieved, because others will sometimes see me as inauthentic and not living my values. We’ve all seen other people not walking their talk, but we rarely realise the ways in which we are doing the same.

Another outcome of holding this value so strongly is that I can sometimes tend to leap in with answers when I can see them, rather than helping the person find their own answers - which is what I should be doing as a coach. This is at least part of the reason why I failed my assessments.

So of course I have to release this value. It’s not mine, and it’s not helping. And as I’ve worked to release it, I’ve felt all that guilt and shame slowly dissolving, and I can see so many times when I’ve ignored evidence I wasn’t competent, or when I’ve felt shame and guilt at not being competent. Failing History A Level - not once, but twice; losing a temp job and having all my sins cruelly enumerated; the many times my ex-husband criticised me for something I hadn’t done right; and even the many times my current partner has commented about a mistake, which I’ve tended to take very personally, as a criticism, even though he doesn’t mean it that way.

I’m trying to release the tendency to get very defensive if I feel criticised for something I generally do feel competent at, like cooking a nice meal or doing the washing-up. It turns out this work is important for my relationships - all of them, not just my romantic one - so I don’t over-react when someone points out an error, and so I can put my hand up to mistakes when I realise I’ve made them. I can already do that with most things, but there are some things I’m too ashamed to own up to.

Releasing this value isn’t an overnight job, though I’ve done a fair bit of it already. It’s going to take time, and revisiting it many times, to see the full extent of the damage it’s done and the ways it influences my actions and reactions. Knowing it’s there is the first battle; continuing to wage war on it is going to take courage and attention. But it’ll be so worthwhile in the end. I hope it’ll improve the way I show up as a coach, and also help me pass my assessments next time I take them.

I’m always aiming to be a better version of myself. It’s humbling to realise that even after over 20 years of working on myself, I still have these blind spots. This journey never ends, and while you may think you’ve got good at it, there’s always something lurking in the background to throw you a curve ball.

But here’s the thing. Having these faults and foibles is not a sign that you’re a bad person. It’s a sign that you’re human. Finding them, winkling them out, examining them by the light of self-knowledge, and letting them go is a vital part of increasing self-awareness. And only by becoming more self-aware can we become who we want to be.

Wanting to be competent has actually impeded my achieving competence. There’s the irony. Letting go of that value will enable me to achieve greater competence. The next step on that journey is to replace it with a value of Excellence, but always with an eye to what’s impeding that excellence and how I can improve.

Values are important, but you need to know which ones are most important to you. And it pays to examine them periodically; to see whether you’re holding true to them, whether they are still of value, or if they’re acting as brakes to your personal development. And of course, to check whether they’re actually even yours.

I encourage you, over the next few days, to consider your own values. Who do you feel you need to be, and why? What values may need to be re-examined? How do your values help you? How do they hold you back? Do they need tweaking, moving to a higher level, or discarding altogether?

Let me know what you find, if you feel like sharing. I’ll be fascinated to read your comments. And if you’d like some help identifying or changing your values, look me up on www.embrace-healing.co.uk. Maybe I can help? After all, I have lived experience!