Kind, Quiet, and Competent…
I have a desire in my work and in my time outside of work to be good at what I do. I think this is a universal desire. We all want to be good at what we do in life, and to be recognised for being good. We all want praise, positive feedback, and approval.
The reason I am bringing this up is because we just went through annual review season at our practice. You know, this is the time everyone hates where you get to sit in front of a supervisor and they ask you what your goals are for the next year and you try to come up with something interesting to say, then they give you a review of your “performance” and you agree about salary adjustments for the year.
As part of the review process within our practice occasionally I am asked about the performance of various employees, supervisors and managers. I have never found writing reviews of others a very easy job. I find it difficult to be critical of others when I am so imperfect.
As luck would have it this year I was given a short list of people to comment on this year, most of whom work directly alongside me and I know their performance well enough to, I hope, add something to the review process.
But I found myself struggling when I was asked to rate the performance of a new employee within our company with whom I have had only limited contact and whose time with the corporation has been limited enough that it is difficult to evaluate the performance to any large degree, or even to get a sense of who that person is and what skills they have.
I was surprised that I was asked for my comments because of my limited contact with this person. I struggled with coming up with what I could or should say that would reflect the limited information and contact that I had with this person but also reflect my general sense of potential that I think this person has for the job.
Here is what I quickly jotted down about this person as I began thinking about my review.
“This person seems kind, quiet, and competent. That’s as good a starting point as any for success within our practice.”
For the record, I did not send that review, not because it wasn’t true or that I didn’t believe it about this person…but because I really didn’t know how it would be received. My concern was whether that review would seem dismissive? I really don’t know.
Instead I wrote something like,
“Pleasant to work with and appears to posses the necessary skills for success. Seems to be doing a good job taking over a negative situation and being pro-active to tackle both short and long term goals for the corporation. I would like to see future growth in communication with other staff member and physicians and evidence of growth in team dynamics with administrative leadership and staff. Long term success will depend on good mentorship.”
That’s not actually what I wrote, of course, but you get the drift. This is a person who has potential, has already grown in the position, but requires some mentorship and ongoing development to really fill the shoes of the role.
But I keep coming back to what I had initially written, “Kind, Quiet, and Competent. That’s a good starting point for success.”
Kindness, Quietness and Competence. Are these foundation elements for success at work?
As I reflect on my own performance now over many years of practice I think my failures, times when I have not performed well, may all fall into one of three buckets, 1. A failure to be KIND, 2. A failure to be QUIET, and 3. A failure to be COMPETENT.
Let me explain.
Number 1. Kindness: the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
I think Mr Rogers has it right for the most part. But Kindness goes deeper than that as a core principle of a successful person and life.
Be kind, be kind, be kind. Be friendly, yes. Be generous, yes. Be considerate, sure. But go beyond. Be kind to yourself and be kind to others. Forgive yourself and others. Do justly and love mercy as it says in Micah 6:8. Walk a mile in another person’s shoes before judgement, not, as Jack Handy would quip, because then you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes, but because you seek to understand. And in understanding you can have empathy. Our ability to be kind comes from the empathic understanding of others.
But don’t mistake kindness for weakness.
““Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” ”
We can be kind at our core while having a firm resolve, high expectations, strong beliefs and a sound footing in our mission. But, first and above all else we start with kindness.
The second core principle is the idea of quietness, as in stillness, calmness, and composure.
Quietness here is again not the meek, stand in a corner, she really doesn’t say much sort of quietness. It is true that for many of us, me included, we say more when we speak less. But the quietness we seek here is both in intrapersonal, your internal dialogue with yourself, as well as interpersonal, taking place between you and others.
The quietness we seek is the internal check of knowing what needs to be said, when it needs to be said, and who needs to say it. All too often, whether we are saying it to ourselves or to others we aren’t saying the right thing at the right time, and we aren’t the right person to be saying it anyway.
Here are the first lines of one of my favourite poems Rudyard Kiplings “If” as an example of this quietness.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:”
The quietness we are talking about here is the ability to quiet our gut emotion.
It’s the idea of Osler’s Aquanimitas, the ability to quiet our emotions, to be able to keep our mouth shut long enough to allow our head to take over. Can I be quiet, calm and composed? Can I be still?
Lastly we come to this idea of competence added to the equation as the third element for success, competence. Here I am referring to ability or skill. Competence is the combination of knowledge gained through formal and self-education, experience gained through success and failure, and the inherent talent or intelligence that we each bring to any element of our lives.
Osler addressed competence as a core fundamental contributor, along with comportment, to achieving Aquanimitas, the inner peace that comes as a physician from one’s knowing what to do, when to do it and how to do it, or, if we aren’t quite sure, being able to figure it out from experience and knowledge. We need to be able to say to ourselves, “I have seen this before and I have solved this problem before. I have read about this and I know how others have solved this problem. I know people, I know who to call to help solve this problem.”
The thing about competence is that it is not easy to get and it is not easy to maintain. The bar keeps moving for all of us. As we level up we will always will face situations we haven’t seen before, we aren’t capable of handling, and we don’t quite know what to do.
But, take heart. It is here, at the edge of our knowledge, experience, and talent where we grow. Competence is a growth sport, and what got you here won’t necessarily get you there, but it will help.
Competence comes from an equation of knowledge, experience and talent, with talent being the smallest factor in the equation for most aspects of our lives. So, gain knowledge, read, study, ask questions, think. Gain experience by jumping in and doing, accepting setbacks as part of a process while always trying to avoid catastrophic failure. Lastly, know that we all have limited ability and talent, that our reach will exceed our grasp, that we can touch it sometimes, but we can’t hold on to it forever.
Success is elusive, here today and gone tomorrow.
Which means that each new day is its own beginning. We all begin anew with each sunrise. We are all beginners.
And kindness, quietness and competence is as good a place to start as any for success.
-TB
