Competency Matrix: Overdoing the Competencies

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Competency Matrix: Overdoing the Competencies

Excess of Everything Is Bad

In our earlier post on "Competency Matrix" (http://competency-matrix.blogspot.in/2009/01/competency-matrix.html), we had included a word of caution. It was about taking care of the pitfall of "overdoing the competencies". 

While developing various kinds of competencies, it is possible to fall into this trap of getting "obsessed" with those competencies. But then as you are aware excess of everything is bad. We had cited a few examples of this and it's negative impact. 

In this present post, we are giving a comprehensive list of indicators of this "obsession" or "overdoing" on a large number of competencies as given below.

Indicators of Overdoing the Competencies: Beware of Overdoing the Competencies

When you get obsessed with any competency or start overdoing it, possibilities of following tendencies exit and efforts should be made to overcome them.

1. Action Orientation: hopelessly workaholic, lopsided personal/family and social life, stressed out, setting unrealistic goals, setting very difficult dead lines, subordination of planning over actions, single track mind and action, inflexible.
2. Composure: uncaring attitude, hiding the emotions all the time, stressed because of bottled up feelings not shared or expressed, boring at times.
3. Communication: only gab and no worthwhile content, too much or too little preparedness before communicating, presentation style and effect more important, excessive salesmanship,  too much of a listener, listening giving impression of agreement or weakness, may err on time management due to over-indulgence in communication by self and others. 
4. Conflict Management: invariably insist on only the win-win solution though not necessary,  getting involved in every conflict resolution situation though not required, seeing every problem from an assumption that some conflict exists. 
5. Conviction: inappropriately sticking to certain ways of thinking, inflexible even where flexibility is necessary, blatant in expressions about self beliefs, too pushy in actions related to matters of  self convictions, perceiving flexibility as a sign of non-conviction, closed to feedback.
6. Creativity: disproportionate expenditure of resources on certain creative ideas of less importance, superficial ideas, only ideas and no implementation, possibility of becoming a loner  and poor team player, contempt for less creative people, being far ahead of people and time  in  terms of creativity to the extent that the ideas get shot down by others.
7. Customer Orientation: Giving in too easily to customers even when not warranted, twisting even well-tested company policies, plans and practices in view of customer demands, inordinate pressure on employees of the organization and overcommitting other resources to accommodate the customers.
8. Decision Making: may becoming overzealous in giving decisions rather than evolving the decisions,  burdening all the decision making situations on own shoulders, giving decision without sound analysis, short term decision overlooking any long term considerations, weakening  the decentralization.  
9. Developing People: lopsided expenditure of time and other resources on training and development of people, more of professor than an executive, employees spending more time and efforts in training rather than on the job thus affecting the time lines of the projects. 
10. Integrity: perceiving and making every situation an issue of integrity and ethics, act in a self-righteous manner, getting projected as a stubborn and inflexible person, making too much fuss of transparency and openness.
11. Interpersonal Skills: being goody goody with each and everyone at the cost of effectiveness and efficiency, acceptance and approval addict, tendency for groupthink, avoiding conflicts all the time, cannot handle rough weather, wasting time spend relationship building and networking, compromising and accommodative.
12. Leadership: mistaking leadership for dictatorship or patronage, more words less action, creating a crevice between followers and self leaving people behind, tendency to curb emergence of new leadership, insistence that only his vision be followed, share his vision, envisioning or deciding on only the big or strategic picture with little concern for details, get projected as more theoretical and less practical.
13. Problem Solving: tendency of analysis paralysis, burdening self with all the responsibilities of problem solving, curtailing delegation and the resultant empowerment of others, excessive avoidance of  risks.
14. Self Confidence: danger of turning overconfident, mine is always right posture, bordering on being arrogant, shun feedback and opinions of others, creating a sense of inferiority complex in others.
15. Self Development: obsessive with self-improvement through self-help literature and other self-help resources, self-centered and selfish, may become boring to on-lookers with self-improvement antics.
16. Result Orientation: overemphasis on results and no concern for processes, results by hook or by crook, inclination for short term results as these are immediately seen, inordinately high concern for tasks and results and no or very little concern for people, cannot form teams, meddling with subordinates'/colleagues' work to achieve results.
17. Team Building: excessively participative all the time and in all the situations, may miss the targets and time lines due to overemphasis on consensus building, always evolving decisions taking  people along with and not taking a definitive position i.e. not taking decisions on own when required, disproportionately greater inclination for concern for people as compared to concern for tasks/timely results, insistence on forming teams for every job even when not appropriate to do so.

(All the aspects of various soft competencies and competency matrix are now available in the book form titled "Competencies and Competency Matrix" by our eminents authors Shyam Bhatawdekar and Dr Kalpana Bhatawdekar. For more details of the book contact our email: prodcons@prodcons.com)