How do you develop competence?

Photo by Tory Bishop on Unsplash

If competence is more than skill and more than knowledge and more than confidence (as I suggested last time), what is it?

It is the ability to complete a task, activity or job to the required standard demonstrating understanding, skill and confidence in so doing.

In my last post, I suggested that if you only have knowledge without understanding, you cannot progress to competence.

Also, if you have skill without understanding of what you are doing, you cannot progress to competence.

Finally, if you have understanding and skill but little confidence you will not be competent (just think of a surgeon).

So to develop competence you need to develop three things:

1. Understanding
2. Skill
3. Confidence

But how do you do that?

In the workplace, in an on-the-job learning situation you tend to develop understanding, skill and confidence all at the same time and pace, and in an integrated way. In an off-the-job learning situation you tend to learn them separately: theory first, practice second and confidence restricted to the simulated setting of a test.

Both methods are valid but both are different.

And providers of both, sadly, tend to dismiss the other — one for lack of awareness of the real world and the other for failure to support off-the-job learning back in the workplace.

So who is right?

They both are.

When a garage technician needs to learn how to replace an exhaust, an old car can be set up to provide many learning activities — trainers can set the challenge of changing an exhaust, tyre or battery and the learner can use that car as their own learning lab.

However, the very nature of workplace learning is that in many cases the learning is opportunistic —i.e. it happens when the opportunity arises. A car comes in with a low battery, flat tyre, or noisy exhaust, and provides any opportunity to learn how to fix it. A good workplace mentor or trainer will explain the how and why, and then demonstrate the process. They will then ask the learner to show and tell. Sometimes this last part cannot be done until the next time a battery needs changing, which may be weeks later and thus require the learner to remember what they were taught.

Some days will offer a feast of new learning, as different cars with different problems need turning round before the end of the day. On these occasions, however, workplace mentors tend to be busy and — whilst there may be lots of opportunities for learning — there is not always time for teaching.

In a day release off-the-job setting, such as a college or company training academy, the learning is developed, scheduled and resourced months in advance. Learners arrive and are slotted into their allotted classroom until the bell goes. In many cases there will be pre-course work (rarely done or done at the last minute) and post-course work that should see the application of what has been learned into workplace situations. A small library of research suggests that this does not happen and that only 30% of what is learned off the job is applied on the job.

Then there is self study, e-learning or webinars of every description. And gamification or disnification or californication — bite sized vol-au-vents of learning — a tapasaria of pick and choose what you want, when you want it just to get learners to learn something.

But does it develop competence?

In most cases it develops understanding and sometimes enthusiasm to find out more, but not competence.

At its worst these easy access snacks become tick box exercises, like the worst of compliance training.

So, how do we develop competence in learners?

The first question is not how, but who…