My Pet!

True competence is an accurate reputation that is based on your intelligence, your expertise and your knowledge. People create perceived confidence in themselves by using certain tactics, like dressing in the appropriate uniform: a white lab coat or a suit and tie.

Perceived competence is tricky. Hence, you have to be careful in how you explain your competence. If you launch into a laundry list of your accomplishments or of your education and titles, you might be perceived as a braggart. Take advantage of less direct or less self-proclaiming ways to show your prospects your competence. For example, you can hang your degrees on the wall, have someone else give a brief bio in her/his book’s introduction or have someone else offer her/his recommendation.

We consider others to be competent when we see them continually learning and advancing their training and education, being successful in what they do or having a strong track record with all the people they have worked with. Ultimately, genuine competency comes down to “either you know it or you don’t.” Can you deliver what people are looking for? The dictionary definition of competence is “the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually.” Competence is being qualified to teach about, to persuade on or to perform in regards to your particular topic.

In influential situations, people will watch and judge you to see if you pass as competent. Two studies clearly illustrate this point. In the first study, a group of elementary school children watched a video of two boys taking a math test. The teacher walked between the boys and looked at each of their papers. To one boy she said nothing while to the other boy she said, “Don’t forget to carry your tens.” The children observing the videotape were told that the boys scored the same on the test. They were then asked whom they wanted as a future math partner. Most of the children chose the boy who did not receive any help from the teacher. Clearly, the simple need for assistance influences how others perceive your competence.

The second study showed that competence can increase sales. An experimenter in a mall approached unsuspecting patrons and asked them to buy raffle tickets. In the first situation, the experimenter dazzled the shoppers with his incredible calculating ability when in actuality he was using a concealed communication device. In the next situation, the experimenter showed poor calculating skills and made a fool of himself. In the third and final situation, the experimenter did not have any incredible skills. The study found that the shoppers bought considerably more raffle tickets from the supposed calculating genius. In other words, the situation in which the experimenter showed extreme competence increased sales.

Everyone persuades for a living. There’s no way around it. Whether you’re a sales professional, an entrepreneur, or even a stay at home parent, if you are unable to convince others to your way of thinking, you will be constantly left behind. Get your free reports at Magnetic Persuasion to make sure that you are not left watching others pass you on the road to success. Donald Trump said it best, “Study the art of persuasion. Practice it. Develop an understanding of its profound value across all aspects of life.”

Conclusion

Persuasion is the missing puzzle piece that will crack the code to dramatically increase your income, improve your relationships, and help you get what you want, when you want, and win friends for life. Ask yourself how much money and income you have lost because of your inability to persuade and influence. Think about it. Sure you’ve seen some success, but think of the times you couldn’t get it done. Has there ever been a time when you did not get your point across? Were you unable to convince someone to do something? Have you reached your full potential? Are you able to motivate yourself and others to achieve more and accomplish their goals? What about your relationships? Imagine being able to overcome objections before they happen, know what your prospect is thinking and feeling, feel more confident in your ability to persuade. Professional success, personal happiness, leadership potential, and income depend on the ability to persuade, influence, and motivate others.

Kurt Mortensen’s trademark is Magnetic Persuasion; rather than convincing others, he teaches that you should attract them, just like a magnet attracts metal filings. He teaches that sales have changed and the consumer has become exponentially more skeptical and cynical within the last five years. Most persuaders are using only 2 or 3 persuasion techniques when there are actually 120 available! His message and program has helped thousands and will help you achieve unprecedented success in both your business and personal life.

If you are ready to claim your success and learn what only the ultra-prosperous know, begin by going to http://www.PreWealth.com and getting my free report “10 Mistakes That Continue Costing You Thousands.” After reading my free report, go to http://www.PreWealth.com/IQ and take the free Persuasion IQ analysis to determine where you rank and what area of the sales cycle you need to improve in order to close every sale!

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Is the synergy worth the energy?

The reason I ask this question is because, developing successful and profitable alliances is rarely easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it successfully. Many alliance consultants, and myself included, have determined that about 50% of the alliances created in the United States fail for one reason or another.

The reasons that you may select to enter into alliance relationships are varied, and generally based on need and competencies. The need side is usually represented in areas where we may consider ourselves or our organization to be lacking or weak. The competency side is the opposite, the strengths that we have to share. An ideal alliance situation is with a person or organization that exhibits competency in our weaker areas and weakness or need in our personal and/or organization’s areas of competency. This is where our circles of interest strongly overlapwhere we have the greatest chance to be of service to one another.

To be successful in building competent collaborations, at least a sprinkling of the following six personal qualities should be encompassed within you and your alliance partners: Curious, Vision, Communication, Leadership, Organize, and Compassion. Let’s look at these individually.

Curious. While you’ve undoubtedly heard is said many times, “Curiosity killed the cat.” We’re not cats. We’re business people searching for leading-edge methods for which we desire to improve our capabilities and hopefully our profits. Curious means you are open to new, and frequently, unsuspected opportunities. You must be curious to alliance possibility in order to simply get started.

Vision. Where is it, which you want your alliance to help you reach? What synergistic goals do you visualize being possible? Simply developing an alliance because it appears the trendy thing to do is hardly a reason to put forth the effort. Additionally in the area of vision, you must be able to see into the future and not become dependent upon your alliance partnerdoing this will make you weak. On the other side, if you become too independent, you will no longer be desirable ac an alliance partner to others. Your vision needs to be to work toward that proverbial, and many times elusive, sweet spot where you become interdependent and develop time effective synergies.

Communication. Through my research, I have discovered that the leading reason for alliance failure is communication. While communication does cover a number of issues and situations, this is the key area for which I’d suggest you focus greatly.

A great example of the need for quality communication is the fact that Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, writes into many of their alliance agreements a mandatory quarterly face-to-face meeting of the principals from each company in the alliance. While the Lilly executives sometimes complain they do not have the time for these meetings, the meetings are contractually mandatory. Generally there is a social dinner the evening before the meeting where many of the current issues and problems get brought out in the open in a non-threatening manner.

Following the 911 attacks and resulting travel challenges, some of the Lilly alliance executives tried fulfilling these contractual obligations via videoconferencing. It seemed to work well and continued substituting videoconferencing for the mandatory face-to-face meetings. It did not take long for alliance problems to start magnifying. As soon as they went back to the live face-to-face meetings, they started again solving challenges before they ever became alliance relationship problems.

Leadership. In order for your alliances to be successful, you must exhibit at least a modicum of leadership qualities. I did not say dictatorship! Here, more than in any other area, your willingness to focus on getting things done, rather than to obsess on being right will determine alliance success. In a corporate environment, the paradigm of partnering must start at the top. The executive must drive the philosophy through both word and deed. Even if you are a single person practice, you must be an alliance champion throughout all the areas of your business.

Organize. Your ability to organize, in the form of alliance structure, procedure and process will have a huge impact on the ultimate implementation and longevity of your alliance relationships. Continuing with Lilly, their alliance implementation process is so sophisticated that they measure (Lilly Web) the perceptions of all of the key players in their alliancesLilly players and those of their alliance partners. The perceptions that they measure are basically what everybody thinks about one another. This allows Lilly to course correct when they discover that Lilly’s, and their alliance partners’ perceptions of the performance of one another is distorted or out of balance.

Compassion. As you meander through the process of alliance development and implementation, you need to have compassion, and even tolerance, for the foibles of others. This quality will allow you to maintain your sanity in what can sometimes seem like alliance insanity. As you develop alliance relationships, sometimes your alliance partner might, in your opinion, let you down. Since not everybody happens to be as bright as you are; an alliance success secret is to give your alliance partner a break once in a whileespecially if your expectations are a bit unrealistic.

Relationship Value Update. For years, I have told my alliance clients, that if they would just complete a Relationship Value Update (RVU) for one another as little as twice yearly, they could head off a number of relationship killer situations. Some have, and succeed but unfortunately many have not and have failed. While using this tool does not guarantee success, but it sure makes alliance success more likely. There is the long form in my book, Developing Strategic Alliances, (to access this and other helpful additional information from Ed Rigsbee at no charge, please visit the link below.

Here, I’ll share with you my short form. I believe this RVU if used diligently, will make a lasting difference for you as you go through your alliance implementation process.

Below, you will find the three key questions for both you and your alliance partner to answer IN WRITING about the value of your alliance with one another. Then mail your answers to the other. Then each of you can review the information in the privacy of your own officeit’s much better this way. Doing this is far less threatening than is a face-to-face value meetingthat can be done later. Now each of you can quietly read the RVU and hopefully better understand the others’ perspective on the success of the alliance and the value it does, or does not, deliver. This tactic is your best help for avoiding perception challenge issues and dealing with small issues before they get out of hand.

The value I’m getting from the relationship.

The Value I think you are receiving.

Your suggested improvement strategies

Contracts. Written agreements, whatever you call them, are crucial in the success of an alliance. No matter how trusting and loyal each alliance partner operates toward the otherin time people forget their promises. Sometimes they even come to believe they promised something other than they actually did. You have heard it said by any number of professional speakers, “The palest ink is far better than the most retentive memory.” I have found this platitude to be quite accurate. By putting to paper your expectations of one another, along with promises and listing who is responsible for what, you both will have a living document to use as an alliance relationship guide. This guide, contract or agreement, whatever the name, can naturally be adjusted at any time based on new information, market conditions and/or changed alliance partner commitment levels.

In the final analysis, I can honestly tell you that alliance relationships, for a myriad of reasons, can be extremely profitable for all involved. The key is to determine if the synergy is worth the energy. If it were not, why in the world would you want to proceed? But, if you believe the synergy is worth your energy, you can open the door to a new world of business possibilities. With partners that share their complementary core competencies, things can be done that you may never have imagined possible in your career. A truth that I have discovered in my years of alliance consulting, most people are in such a big hurry to build their alliance that they over look the most important alliance issuepick your partners well. Skip the necessary due diligence, and you’ll be crying about conflict resolution and exit agreements rather than focusing on the opportunities and possibilities.

My Alliance Partner Quiz will help you to get a fighting start in selecting your alliance partners. You may also access this at no charge, please visit www.rigsbee.com/downloadaccess.htm.

Good luck in building your synergistic alliances.

Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the author of PartnerShift, Developing Strategic Alliances and The Art of Partnering. Rigsbee has over 1,000 published articles to his credit and is a regular keynote presenter at corporate and trade association conferences across North America. He can be reached at 800-839-1520 or visit http://www.rigsbee.com.

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The South Australian Public Sector (SAPS), through the Office of Public Employment (OPE), have identified a range of middle management and executive leadership competencies that are considered essential to the effective operation of government departments and services. For those of us who are mere mortals, these competencies provide some useful directions for our own personal and professional development.

The definition of competencies adopted by SAPS originates from the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), which states, “a competency is the specific knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviour applied within an occupation or industry to the standard required in employment”.

SAPS Middle Manager Competencies

OPE have identified 9 “Core Competencies” for all public sector middle managers, these being:

• Maintain and enhance confidence in public service
• Apply government systems
• Manage compliance with legislation in the public sector
• Manage policy implementation
• Manage resources
• Manage quality client service
• Influence workforce effectiveness
• Establish and maintain strategic networks
• Manage personal work priorities and professional development

This foundation is ideally supplemented by other generic middle manager competencies, which are identified as:

• Formulate business strategies
• Undertake research and analysis
• Recruit, select and induct staff
• Facilitate people management
• Manage budgets and financial plans
• Procure goods and services
• Develop a business case
• Manage risk
• Manage innovation and continuous improvement
• Provide strategic direction

It is interesting to see that the competencies address a range of administrative, planning and leadership elements within the role of middle manager. Not every middle manager will utilise each of these generic competencies in any given role. However, if you have an eye to becoming more “job ready” as a manager, it would be wise to look for opportunities to build and consolidate these competencies. The competencies could provide a basis of discussion and/or negotiation with your manager, with a view to your development as a professional. If your employer has an established performance management system in place, this is an ideal forum in which to explore opportunities for learning and growth.

SAPS Executive Leadership Competencies

There is an obvious increased emphasis on leadership, self-knowledge and self-development at the executive level in the SAPS. The SAPS has identified 6 Executive Leadership Competencies, described as:

• Creates Vision and Gives Direction
• Develops People
• Manages Resources and Risk
• Promotes and Achieves Quality Outcomes
• Understands Relationships
• Manages and Develops Self

The Executive Leadership Competencies are firmly premised on having a sound strategic overview of the environment and utilising available resources (including human resources) to achieve the goals of the organisation.

So What?

The competencies identified by SAPS are but one way of describing the requirements of effective leaders and managers. However, they are a very useful indication of the kind of personal and professional capacities that you will need if you are to pursue a career in middle management or high-level leadership. For more information on SAPS Middle Manager Competencies visit the relevant pages at the OPE website (www.ope.sa.gov.au). More information about the SAPS Executive Leadership Competencies can also be found at the OPE website (www.ope.sa.gov.au).

Other Resources

Are you interested in more information on First Line Management Competencies? The OPE website (www.ope.sa.gov.au) also provides information relating to First Line Management Competencies.

Lewis Stratton has extensive experience in middle and senior management roles and has published over 300 articles relating to Human Resources, Management and Recruitment & Selection. More information available at http://www.progressenterprise.com/jobready.htm or http://www.progressenterprise.com/

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