QUALITIES OF THE HIGHLY COMPETENT

One of the important things I do on a daily basis is start out by reading my daily passage from "The Maxwell Daily Reader" by John Maxwell.  Each day comes with a passage on a topic that either inspires me, educates me -- or as often the case, both.  I have had my Maxwell Daily Reader for over five years.  As are most of the great books I've read, it is marked up with read pen, underlining key thoughts or making important notes.  Obviously after one year, I have read all the daily passages.  Still I keep it on my desk because I love (and need) the annual repeitition of the messages.  Here is the passage from yesterday, March 18:

We all admire people who display high competence, whether they are precision craftsmen, world-class athletes, or successful business leaders.  If you want to cultivate that quality, here's what you need to do.

1. Show Up Every Day
Responsible people show up when they're expected.  But highly competent people take it a step farther.  They come ready to play every day -- not matter how they feel, what kind of circumstances they face, or how difficult they expect the game to be.

2. Keep Improving
All highly competent people continually search for ways to keep learning, growing, and improving.  They do that by asking why.  After, the person who knows how will always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be the boss.

3. Follow Through with Excellence
I've never met a person I considered competent who didn't follow through.  As leaders, we expect our people to follow through when we hand them the ball.  They expect that and a whole lot more from us as their leaders.

4. Accomplish More than Expected
Highly competent people always go the extra mile.  for them, good enough is never good enough.  leaders cannot afford to just make it through the day.  They need to do the job, and then some, day in and day out.

5. Inspire Others
Highly competent leaders do more than perform at a high level.  They inspire and motivate their people to do the same.  While some people rely on relational skills alone to survive, effective leaders combine these skills with high competence to take their organization to new levels of excellence and influence.