We can break down people’s abilities into four areas:
| Capability | What people need to do to produce results |
| Skill | Broken into technical knowledge and practiced performance |
| Interest | Passion |
| Required behaviors | Operationalize the organization’s vision, culture, or way of being in behavioral terms. |
Competence is a combination of Capability and Skill. If I do not have the capability for the work, no amount of developmental training will be helpful. And, I don’t have the skill, you will never see my capability. Competence is a combination of both.
Interest or passion for the work will influence the amount of time for practice. The more interested I am, the more time I will spend in practice. And if I don’t practice a skill, the skill goes away, and competence diminishes.
There is also a set of required behaviors. Practice arrives with many qualities, frequency of practice, duration of practice, depth of practice, and accuracy of practice. Accuracy of practice relates to required behaviors. Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect.
Deliberate practice allows us to influence all four attributes.
Investigations of a Dog 
2 thoughts on “Competence”