Self-competence or personal competence refers to our ability as individuals to understand ourselves, direct our affairs, make decisions that are aligned with our values, and act effectively to achieve our purposes.

I think we all have a basic understanding of what self-competence is because it more or less describes what adulthood is all about. Building self-competence is a necessary part of what we must do to develop ourselves.

Everybody needs to be self-competent. It underpins our ability to carry out our responsibilities at home and at work. I think it is especially important for Entrepreneurs to be self-competent because of the nature of their jobs and responsibilities.

While many think being an entrepreneur is liberating, this is true only in the sense that the entrepreneur gets to decide basically everything. The decisions however are not trivial or easy ones.

In addition to creating their businesses, business owners and entrepreneurs are responsible for ensuring that they are able to meet their obligations to their employees and clients. For starters, they have to pay salaries (and do so regularly) and ensure that the jobs they create are of good quality (providing a career path for their employees).

Entrepreneurs also have to be their own chief brand builder and ambassador. They have to manage their organisations knowing that businesses and brands often become part of the economic and social fabric of the societies where they operate.

Furthermore, with the prominence given to business ownership and private sector organisations here in Nigeria, entrepreneurs are increasingly becoming role models.

These responsibilities require that entrepreneurs be skilled at many things. Even more important is the need for entrepreneurs to have an exceptional level of self competence.

According to the Emotional Competence Framework, there are 3 parts to personal competence:

– Self Awareness,
– Self-Regulation, and
– Self-Motivation

I strongly recommend you take a look at the Emotional Competence Framework. Meanwhile, here’s my list of 12 things entrepreneurs can do to keep their personal competence well above average and on par with the scale of their responsibilities.

*** 1 ***
Understand Your Strengths

It’s very important that entrepreneurs understand and play to their strengths. As I wrote in an older article, some strengths are personality-related, some are character-related and others are career & skill related. It’s important to understand the different aspects of your strengths and also, your weaknesses.

You may realize that many of your strengths are interdependent. Understanding how your strengths relate to and support each other will certainly be of value when it comes to preserving and improving on them. For instance, I have found that my creativity feeds off my sense of curiosity and desire to learn. The more I explore and learn, the more creative I can be. Knowing how these strengths relate to each other has helped me with my work as a jewellery designer and writer.

Knowing your strengths will factor positively into many important decisions including how to shape the future of your business and the skills to look for when hiring freelancers or employees.

*** 2 ***
Build New Strengths!

‘Dynamic’ is a word that aptly captures the environment in which all of us must live and work. Things are always changing and evolving, and entrepreneurs must keep up! The ability to adapt personal skills and business competencies is more important than ever. That is why in addition to preserving existing strengths, entrepreneurs should be keen to develop new strengths and competencies. Your relevance in the community and the survival of your businesses will depend on it.

*** 3 ***
Cultivate Emotional Intelligence

As I wrote in an older post, to have Emotional Intelligence is to have the ability to connect with and relate to others in a healthy, mutually beneficial way. EQ has been touted as a key factor for success in every aspect of life and a vital leadership skill.

According to Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence involves competencies related to Self-awareness, self-management, Empathy and relationship management. To succeed in business, managing relationships is important. Entrepreneurs will have a variety to manage. This will include relationships with partners, customers, suppliers, competitors, employees, freelancers, investors, stakeholders, mentees, etc.

This is one competency entrepreneurs should willingly invest in developing. Training courses and personal study are equally important in building and maintaining Emotional Intelligence.

*** 4 ***
Learn Time Management

Time is the ultimate non-renewable resource. That’s all the more reason to know how to manage it well. We need to know how to weight it, track it, schedule it and use it efficiently.

Weighting time & having a keen sense of timing are important. How long will that project take? How many productive hours can you get out of your day? How much time do you ACTUALLY have to get things done? knowing how to weight time will help immensely with planning how to use your time.

Tracking time has become so easy that we often forget that its purpose is also to help us learn to weight time properly. It not only helps us stay on schedule, it helps us learn how to gauge the time impact of our activities.

Scheduling is what comes to mind when most of us think of time management. If only it were as simple as plugging activities into time slots. In reality, it takes much more to create a workable schedule. To begin with, the little things we do every day count. So much ink has been spilt on the negative effect of starting your day with emails or checking your smartphone every 10 minutes. These distractions make it difficult to actually get things done.

There are a few other things to bear in mind when creating a work schedule. From my recent reading on this topic, I’ve learned that it’s best to schedule similar activities together. This reduces the detrimental impacts of context switching as you are able to maintain focus on related things for a significant length of time. Also, creating a schedule that fits with your personal work pattern makes it more likely that you’ll keep to it.

*** 5 ***
Learn Financial Management

This is one skill entrepreneurs must master in order for their businesses to survive. Broadly speaking, it involves being skilled at sourcing funds and properly managing existing funds. From personal experience, I know it can be a tough skill to master. For instance, when it comes to funding, entrepreneurs need to know which of the options available will serve the interests of their businesses best.

Arriving at the right decision is as much a matter of knowledge and the right networks as having good contextual judgment because some funding options will simply not be ideal for your business. That said, I do think entrepreneurs should try to keep their options open by preparing to meet funding requirements on multiple fronts. This means knowing how to pitch to investors, preparing for a loan (Microfinanced) and bootstrapping (when possible).

Financial management is a highly specialized skill. While entrepreneurs need not be experts, they do need to know the basics and more.

*** 6 ***
Learn How to Switch Mindsets

I think many entrepreneurs are visionaries and idealists. In some ways, they have to be. Like me, they begin with a vision and then proceed to work tirelessly to achieve it. Ideals inspire many of their decisions and for the most part, this is great.

However, no one can operate from an idealist perspective all the time. Most day-to-day business decisions have to be pragmatic. They have to be rooted in sound understanding of the realities of the market. This is why entrepreneurs must learn to be both visionary and pragmatic, idealist and realist.

To cope with their responsibilities, entrepreneurs must know when and how to switch mindsets. They have to be able to orient themselves to different contexts and do so as often as is necessary. It takes practice to learn how to take new contexts into account and how to adjust one’s mindset accordingly.

*** 7 ***
Be A Lifelong Learner

Entrepreneurs need to be dedicated lifelong learners. They need to have a zeal for gaining new knowledge and skills. The contemporary understanding of lifelong learning goes beyond private and informal study. It emphasizes all kinds of semi-formal and formal training that help people acquire the skills they need to achieve their personal goals.

It is also taken for granted that these days, lifelong learning is self-directed. This means the individual gets to decide what to learn, why learning is important and how to apply what is learned. Entrepreneurs need to know how to direct their own study efforts in order to be effective lifelong learners.

*** 8 ***
Practise Positive Thinking

It’s not always fun being an entrepreneur. Managing sales and revenue expectations while coping with the sometimes unfavourable realities of the market can be tough. It’s been said many times and it’s worth repeating that failure is something entrepreneurs will have to confront time and time again. And coping with failure is not easy for anyone.

This is one very important reason why entrepreneurs need to practice positive thinking. Positive thinking is about optimism, confidence, self-assurance and courage. These are the things that enable us muster a positive mindset not matter the nature of the situations we confront.

Entrepreneurs need to maintain a positive attitude for themselves, their employees and their customers. They invariably set the tone whether it is positive, apathetic or negative. It is important for entrepreneurs to consciously develop and project a positive attitude.

*** 9 ***
Build Good Relationships

Success in business depends to a large extent on the quality of the relationships we build. Good customer relationships will keep customers loyal to your brand through thick and thin. Good employee relationships will make your business a healthy and uplifting place to work. Good competitor relationships will enable the kind of cooperation that develops and deepens the market for the benefit of all players.

I guess what I’m saying is that relationships make the world go round. And knowing how to build relationships can mean the difference between success and failure.

*** 10 ***
Be A Mentor

I think it’s so important to learn how to help other people achieve their career-related goals. This is ultimately what mentoring is about. It’s about helping someone else up the ladder of achievement and success. The knowledge and know-how that’s passed on often cannot be learned in any other way.

I think every self-respecting entrepreneur should know the value of having mentors and being a mentor. Whether you are the mentor or mentee, it’s always a learning experience. I understand that unlike the power relationship between teacher & student (the classroom setting), a Mentor-Mentee relationship is more of a give and take. Rapport, mutual understanding and mutual respect matter a lot.

*** 11 ***
Be Compassionate With Yourself

I recently read a business-related article that made a connection between having compassion for self and building resilience. Building resilience is especially important for entrepreneurs because most times, (extreme) highs and lows come with the territory. I can’t count how many business owners and writers have said in various ways, that entrepreneurs must learn to survive the lows in order to finally reach sustainable success.

For me, self-compassion is about self-care, self-respect and adequate self-consideration. It means making time for rest and rejuvenation, creating working conditions that are dignified, nurturing supportive relationships and dealing with unsupportive ones, making room for occasional failures and seeing the best in yourself no matter what.

From experience I know it can get difficult to do right by yourself. When deadlines are looming and it seems like putting in more and more hours will solve all the problems, self-care falls to the bottom of the stack. Sometimes, this is okay. However, it cannot be the norm or burnout will surely follow. Entrepreneurs must learn to be compassionate with themselves and ultimately, others.

*** 12 ***
Self-Assess Regularly

This goes for everyone especially entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are on your life journey. You just have to make time to self-assess. This is something I actually miss doing regularly. I’ve been so busy pushing a number of things lately that I haven’t made time to do my regular reviews.

I’m determined to get back to it because I know how beneficial it is. When I started this business, everything was new to me. Entrepreneurship, design and even blogging were things I knew I had to consciously work on and improve. Armed with the little knowledge & skill I had, I set out to own every step of my journey. I did regular business and entrepreneurial assessments and they helped me keep things in perspective.

Infact, the records I kept and the insight I gained from self-assessing made coming back after a 2-year break possible. My performance reviews were like a time capsule. They helped me recall why and how I made certain decisions. But for those records, among other things, I think this business would long have been history.

If you don’t have a regular quarterly or bi-annual self-assessment planned, you should. Make it as formal as possible. Decide which aspect of your life you want to assess (private, career, business, relationships), do your research and gauge your progress over time.

If possible, get a second opinion. What matters is that you make a habit of doing regular self-assessments. The sooner the better.

POSTSCRIPT

In some ways, this article is my personal competency wishlist. I have a sense of where I’m strong & where I could use a bit more work. I hope it serves a similar purpose for you. At the end of the day, it’s not about ticking off points on a list. It’s about consistent personal development with a view to maintaining professional excellence.

Personal competence is an important foundation for all that we will do or achieve. For entrepreneurs, exceptional self-competence could be the thing that makes the difference. Let’s keep our foundation strong.