{"id":1740,"date":"2014-08-04T01:16:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T06:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1740"},"modified":"2014-07-21T07:26:15","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T12:26:15","slug":"watching-competence-evaporate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2014\/08\/watching-competence-evaporate\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching Competence Evaporate"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

Competence evaporates when we are upset. There are some things we can do to work our way back to competence, but they are not easy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently watched a group of otherwise competent people behave in a most incompetent manner. They had an excellent excuse as they were under great emotional stress.<\/p>\n

Hmm, is this a coincidence? Emotional stress and evaporating competence? No, it isn’t a coincidence. I have seen it happen often on projects and especially with project managers.<\/p>\n

The project is late, over budget, under staffed, etc. People are yelling. Smart people act like they were stupid. I’ve seen it too many times.<\/p>\n

Calm down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is simple advice, but it just doesn’t seem to apply to people who are hurting, angry, and any other number of stressful situations.<\/p>\n

Let’s try something more complicated.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Recognize that you are upset.<\/li>\n
  2. Find a checklist to follow.<\/li>\n
  3. Follow the checklist.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Of course this means that you have created a checklist when you were not upset. That is usually not the case, but if you are having a calm day, make a checklist. Still, the biggest problem is step 1.<\/p>\n

    Try this one.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Have a good friend.<\/li>\n
    2. Ask your friend if you are upset.<\/li>\n
    3. If the answer is yes, ask them to be your checklist.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Again, step 1. is the most difficult, but it is a start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      by Dwayne Phillips Competence evaporates when we are upset. There are some things we can do to work our way back to competence, but they are not easy. I recently watched a group of otherwise competent people behave in a most incompetent manner. They had an excellent excuse as they were under great emotional stress. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,105,33,7],"tags":[203,219,155,130],"class_list":["post-1740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breathe","category-competence","category-health","category-judgment","tag-breathe","tag-competence","tag-health","tag-judgment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1741,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions\/1741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}