I skied for the first and only time when I was 21 years-old. After taking a two-hour class surrounded by five year-olds on the “bunny” slope, I still couldn’t figure out how to brake.
One of my best friends, “B”, who is a great skier, decided the solution was to take me on a tougher mountain. On my first attempt, I navigated directly into a fence on the edge of the slope and got my skis stuck. (Totally killing it!)
Once I got unstuck, “B” suggested that he would ski backwards while holding my poles, so that he could guide me down the mountain. What could go wrong?
In the first two seconds, I thought…maybe this will work…and then we started picking up speed as if I was wearing a jet propulsion pack. “B” implored me to start braking…I told him I was…the terror in his face clearly indicated that I was not.
To avoid catastrophe, “B” put the brakes on hard, leading us both to fly in the air. He crashed into the ground and I landed on top of him, mouth-to-mouth, like a scene out of Dumb and Dumber.
Can you blame me for not ever skiing again?
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This is the final installment in a series of Friday Reflections that explores how to sustain motivation through the lens of self-determination theory.1 Today, I’ll reflect on how to fulfill the third basic psychological need: competence (something I clearly lack when it comes to skiing).
Competence is the desire to have the skills needed to succeed in the environments we operate. This need also implies that humans derive satisfaction from the improvement process.
Below are two habits that can help us fulfill the need for competence on our teams (and can also be applied to ourselves):
Habit 1: Proactively give and seek out constructive feedback.
Constructive feedback is an efficient and practical tool to increase competence in our teams. When you provide constructive feedback consistently and in a specific way, an individual has the opportunity to internalize how they have made progress in a given area.
For example, I gave feedback to a teammate that I want them to more courageously hold their ground in debates with clients. After the next client meeting, I asked him to share how he thought he did. Then, I shared my perspective that he was courageous in some areas and caved a bit too easily at other points. We followed this pattern of gauging progress on this dimension each week until he felt sufficiently confident in his ability to productively spar with clients.
Recent psychological research on constructive criticism suggests the following tips:
Create a supportive environment for feedback. Make it safe for team members to ask clarifying questions to better understand feedback (vs. seeing this behavior as defensiveness).
Give feedback frequently in a genuine and specific manner. Use specific examples that point to the behavior and the impact of that behavior versus stating opinions or feelings.2
Be consistent. Don’t worry about the feedback sandwich (i.e. coming up with positives for the sake of having something positive to say). It’s more about the consistent practice of giving both positive and constructive feedback.
Take breaks after providing constructive feedback (especially if you are a high empathy leader and tend to avoid giving feedback) to give your mind a chance to re-set.
It is also critical to actively seek out constructive feedback. This makes your team environment more supportive and encouraging, which is a precondition for enabling people to improve from feedback.
Habit 2: Don’t protect yourself or your team from “good” stress.
Consider the quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune: “Shield your son too much and he will not grow strong enough to live his destiny.”
Many leaders do their teams a disservice when we attempt to protect them from difficulties or take on the toughest assignments ourselves because we aren’t sure if they can do it. In doing so, we rob them from reaching their potential and we diminish the ability to meet their need for competence.
Humans actually find it intensely rewarding to do something difficult. The key is that it has to be the right level of difficulty (i.e., don’t jump from the bunny slopes to the black diamond mountain with a beginner adult skier who can’t even keep up with five year-olds.)
In child development, this “right level of difficulty” is called the “zone of proximal development.”3 A child learns to master skills beyond their current capability by getting exposure to more complex problems under the supervision of an adult and with some peer guidance. A similar principle is true with adult professional development.
The challenge can be that it won’t always “feel good” for you or for the person on your team. And it is impossible to anticipate all of the “unknowns” that could turn a challenging activity into the “project from hell.” In this case, the key is to communicate that you are giving them this responsibility to sharpen or develop a new skill. At the same time, you also need to show them how their strengths will serve them well on the project. Finally, let them know you have their back and will support them when the going gets tough, since you recognize that this activity will stretch them in new ways.4
Some questions I reflected on this week:
What does it take for me to fulfill my personal need for competence? What insights does this give me for when I think about how to meet my teams’ needs for competence?
How and with whom can I be more consistent about giving constructive feedback?
What is an example of a difficult project that helped me hone new skills? How did I feel about that project in the moment? How do I feel about it now?
What is a specific opportunity that is the “zone of proximal development” for two of my team members?
You can read the previous posts here: intrinsic motivation through lens of self-determination theory, Autonomy, Relatedness
For a model that many find useful, consider SBI - Situation-Behavior-Impact. More on this model here.
The zone of proximal development is a concept coined by Lev Vygotsky. https://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html
Refer back to my post on Autonomy for the 3Cs of giving teams responsibility: Complexity, Capability and Communication. Also, I’ll reiterate how useful of a tool the Responsibility Ladder can be.