CHAPTER 4
THE COMPETENCE FORMULA
FRAMING YOUR COMPETENCE

Smart and hard-working—doesn’t exist

Smart and lazy—that’s what I am

Stupid and lazy—for entertainment

Stupid and hard-working—heaven help us!

—CHARLES DE TALLEYRAND

The Amazing Fitzjames

British author Stephen Potter wrote a serious of humorous self-help books on how to gain an advantage in life. In one of them, he described one of the stories of a legendary Harvard student with the name Fitzjames.¹ Toward the end of his second semester, only a few weeks before the all-important final exams, Fitzjames suddenly disappeared. No one saw him at any lecture, seminar, or study group. His fellow students feverishly worked toward the final exams and were hanging on every word their professors said, but Fitzjames was nowhere to be found. On the day of the final, however, he walked into the exam room a few minutes late, sporting a heavy suntan and wearing a Palm Beach jacket. He slowly wrote his exam—and aced it!

This chapter is about how the Fitzjameses of this world accomplish such feats, and how you can use their ingenuity to display your own expertise. Fitzjames’s careless attitude and seemingly effortless success caused him to radiate genius. Was he just a highly intelligent person with an off-the-chart IQ? Did he somehow cheat on the exam? How much did his “competence” truly come into play?

In principle, it’s not so easy to figure out how big of a part an individual’s competence will have in finding a successful solution to a given problem. The result of a team’s price negotiations or a successful treatment by a physician, for example, appears clear at first glance. However, the factors that are significant for the achievement of these outcomes are entwined in the result and difficult to unravel—since factors other than mere competence will play a role. But which factors? The American psychologists John Darley and George Goethals examined this question and summarized these relationships in a formula:

P = [(A + A′) * (M + M′)] + (D + D′) + L

P = performance

A = stable ability factors

A′ = temporary ability constraints

M = stable motivational factors

M′ = temporary motivational factors

D = usual difficulty level

D′ = temporary factors affecting difficulty

L = luck

Simply put, there are three factors that the observer, when evaluating an outcome, concentrates on:²

• motivation

• difficulty level (ease)

• luck

According to this formula, the more difficult the task, the more bad luck experienced, and the less effort the individual put into the task, then the greater the role that the individual’s competence will have played in the successful result.

These relationships are obvious and also explain why the lawyers I mentioned in chapter 1 needed almost 10 years to decide whether a new employee had the qualities necessary to become a partner in the firm. They needed to unravel an entanglement of competence, the task’s degree of difficulty, luck, and motivation to make an evaluation of an employee’s competence separate from the other factors.

Understanding the interactions of these factors will enable you to control the perception of your own competence.

Tough and Unlucky

In his famous Stanford commencement speech from 2005, the legendary Apple founder Steve Jobs said about his beginnings, “I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”³

If you read a biography of any great captain of industry, you should always have enough tissues at hand. Almost all of these heroes had to overcome the greatest difficulties and the most unfortunate circumstances; the poor fellows were spared nothing—and, like Jobs, in spite of these obstacles, they made it to the absolute top. How? Can there be any explanation other than that they were simply magnificent individuals?

Former US president Bill Clinton told the story of his undeniably hard start in life again and again: his father died in a car crash before his birth, and he grew up with a step father, who was a heavy gambler and alcoholic, and who regularly abused his mother and half-brother.

Such stories provide a rich texture to a person’s life, while also showing his or her humble beginnings, but there is also a practical lesson here. Now don’t worry if you’re not able to dish up a sob story like Clinton’s. Even those who can’t claim to have started from the very bottom will almost certainly have had to overcome some difficulty before they could reach their goals, or at least their present intermediate goals. Such stories not only helped these people become more likable, they also helped them to manifest their competence. This idea can be applied to any daily task and subsequent accomplishment—without dramatic tearjerkers.

The method here is to draw attention to the high level of difficulty and the complex circumstances of the upcoming task. Just as athletes will refer to bad weather conditions or to their history of injuries before a game, you can, as a salesperson, for example, point to unusually volatile market conditions or, as a lawyer, point to the special trickiness of current case law. The more difficult the situation, the more competent you will seem. When you, first, have been unlucky, and second, have had to meet a truly herculean challenge, there are two good reasons—unrelated to your competence—why you might fail. Explaining these reasons in advance will make them more credible than if you bring them up after the task is completed—like most people do. In the latter case, especially after failure, they just sound like a bad excuse.

It is crucial to mention these obstacles even when you are successful, instead of saying something like, “Ah well, I was just lucky.” You want to highlight, not downplay, your success. By pointing out the difficulty even in the case of success, your performance will be attributed to your exceptional level of competence rather than to external factors.

You might be asking, “Doesn’t this suggestion contradict the previous chapter, in which the motto was ‘show optimism’?” No, because you should certainly still make a point of spreading optimism—only now you are doing so in spite of all the obstacles that you have listed. Your motto should thus not be “No problem!” but rather “Despite all the obstacles, no problem for me!”

And while you’re at it, even if you’re overwhelmed, make sure to keep your cool. You want your performance, and the following success, to come across as effortless.

Effortless Superiority

In 1917, the German composer Hans Pfitzner was sitting with his colleague Richard Strauss at the premiere of Pfitzner’s opera Palestine at the Munich Prinzregenten Theater.⁴ Before the curtain went up, Pfitzner whispered proudly to Strauss, “This piece is the result of 10 years’ hard work.” The mischievous Strauss replied, “Why, then, do you compose, if it is so difficult for you?” To an audience of classical music lovers, Strauss’s name remains well known—Pfitzner’s, not so much.

Giving the impression of excessive effort has a negative impact on the perceived level of competence. If you give the impression that you had to make a considerable effort to achieve a particular goal, your perceived competence will suffer. In other words, the same result can be reached either with great effort and a low level of competence or with small effort and a high level of competence.

Everything is easy for true experts—they just have it in their blood. When he was working on his opera La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie), Italian composer Gioachino Rossini is said to not have retrieved pages of the scores that had fallen from his desk while he was composing. Rather, he preferred to write the pages again—it required less effort for him.⁵ In the 16th century, the Italian aristocrat Baldassare Castiglione described the most important characteristic of a nobleman as Sprezzatura, which was “to have a certain air of nonchalance that concealed the skills involved, and seemed to demonstrate that whatever he did or said was achieved effortlessly, and almost without thinking.”⁶ Concealing all effort is actually the cornerstone of one of Oxford University’s colleges, whose unofficial motto is “Effortless superiority.”

Natural talent is more prized than acquired skills. For example, why do parents like to hear the teacher say that their child, although highly intelligent, only got a B− in calculus because he was so lazy? Because no parents want to hear that it was almost a miracle their child got a B− and that he only received it because, although dim-witted, he was very hard working. We see an identical outcome, yet two completely opposite perceptions of the child.

Perceived effort must be minimized to maximize perceived competence. So should you present yourself as lazy? A tricky question. Doing so would be an advantage for your perceived competence, but it could make a bad impression regarding your level of dedication to your job, company, or performance. You therefore need to maintain a delicate balance. Give people the feeling that the task in front of you—despite the adverse circumstances—does not worry you at all. You were born to meet this challenge. This does not mean that you will take care of the entire task before breakfast, otherwise you will end up getting too much work pushed your way. You will certainly have to exert some time and resources on the task at hand, but it won’t give you a headache, because you are a natural.

Especially when mentioning earlier successes, you should give the impression that you’ve never had to exert yourself very much in the past, such as during your college days. I still remember well the time I met Edzard Reuter, the former chairman of the board of Daimler (the producer of Mercedes cars), shortly before I started working on my law degree. He explained to me that law school had been so easy for him, he spent most of his time on the tennis court. While I was at law school—just child’s play, of course—my respect for Mr. Reuter grew with every exam into a thing of vast proportions. You should, therefore, never say that you had to work harder for your degree than anyone else. Rather, you should make the individual you are talking to believe that you were born for your field and have always had an affinity for your line of work, just like anyone else who has a natural gift for something.

You should never mention that numbers repelled you before you became an accountant; or that advertisements gave you cold chills before you started work in the advertising industry. A genius is chosen by destiny and loves his or her profession. Do you think Ludwig van Beethoven actually wanted to be a gardener or Pablo Picasso a doctor?

Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the world’s leading violin players, has said in many interviews that she never practiced very much—about 2 hours a day. Studies that have been conducted about musicians’ practice times, however, show that the best violinists will normally practice 30 hours per week, starting at the age of 12. With that stat in mind, Mutter’s story seems rather doubtful; it seems more likely that such natural talent, of the kind that directly leads to being a world-class musician, does not exist and only through practice could one achieve such mastery of an instrument.⁷ Even having read research supporting this and having talked to many musicians who confirmed it, I cannot help but think that Mutter just might be one out of a billion. Indeed, it isn’t the grim overachiever who is esteemed the most, but the gifted—Mutter doesn’t enjoy her immense level of respect for nothing.

Melvin Reich had a small shop in New York for decades whose only business consisted of making buttonholes in clothing: “We do buttonholes and buttonholes and buttonholes. I am specialized, like the doctors. The one who takes care of the throat does not take care of the eyes. I take care of the buttonholes.” When Reich was asked once if he also did zippers, he replied, almost outraged, “Zippers are a totally different field. It’s a different game. A man can only do so much.”⁸ So, who would you go to if you needed a buttonhole for your favorite jacket?

The master knows that he is absolutely right for his present position and has never doubted his choice of profession—his path was predestined. For him, the only possibility was to land where he is now. And that is how it should look for you, too: your personal development has inevitably led you to your present profession. A glance at the biographies of famous personalities will also help here: they generally speak of a straight path, according to the motto “Fate has chosen me.” This idea is also touched on in the previously mentioned speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University:

Because I had dropped out of the university and no longer attended any classes, I decided to go to a course in calligraphy and learn something about it. There I learned about typefaces with and without serifs, and about the different spacing between different letter combinations. I learned what is great about great typography. . . . None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. . . . And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to imagine that when I was in college. But it was very, very clear in hindsight, 10 years later.

You should think about how to describe the path that led you to your present position as a straight line; your hero’s journey. With Jobs, though he dropped out of school and took what he thought was a useless calligraphy class, both of those events led him directly to his destined position. So even if you’ve taken some turns in your life and career, you can tailor how you present them so they appear as direct stepping-stones to your current profession.

Once, in one of my training courses, one of the participants was the head of customer support at a blue-chip company. He told me how he had worked as a bouncer in a club when he was a student. He didn’t see any connection to his current job at first, but then he drew this straight line: he had always cared about providing safe environments and worked hands on to ensure a smooth flow of events. By first examining and then sharing two or three experiences like that, you will also make the course of your personal career development appear preordained.

Another way to signal effortlessness through perceived natural talent can be found in the use of stereotypes. We all have a picture in our minds of how the ideal specialist in a certain field should look: a physicist like Albert Einstein, a journalist like Larry King. They have become archetypes. The typical scientist is considered absent-minded, odd, and doubtless a genius, while the star attorney is suave, smooth, and well spoken. How do others imagine an exemplary representative of your field? How would he or she dress and talk, and what kind of a general impression would he or she make?

I know a successful doctor who is not all that interested in the details of his profession but who understands very well how to convince his patients of his high level of expertise. When he is on the job, he always wears a stethoscope around his neck. Though he almost never uses the instrument, he is aware of its effect—this is simply how a doctor should look.

One of his colleagues, a family practitioner who was born in China, performs acupuncture in a small German city—the demand is enormous. He learned the discipline of acupuncture exclusively in advanced training courses in traditional Chinese medicine in Germany from German practitioners. Nevertheless, he is regarded, far beyond the city limits, as the undisputed expert in his field. When he talks about it, he gives a knowing smile: a Chinese acupuncturist must be especially good, better than others—or so the patients believe, anyway.

And yet so many people purposely avoid seeming like the ideal, typical representation of their profession! It reminds me of the story of the donkey who wanted to be a lapdog.⁹ The donkey worked hard for its master all day long and stood in the stall all night. The farmer’s dog, in contrast, slept in the house, didn’t have to do anything, and was constantly fed treats. Then the donkey got an idea: Why not act like the dog? He ran up to his master, wagged his tail, and tried to jump into his lap. What happened?

The donkey was tied up in the barn and beaten.

Your customer or boss will not, hopefully, tie you up and beat you, but it is better for you, in any case, to represent yourself appropriately. The world does not appreciate biotech executives who act like laid-back musicians or tax consultants who prattle on about philosophy.

To fit the stereotype, those with true natural talent love and live their profession. They draw on a great store of knowledge and know their job like the back of their hand. The architect should be an expert on the history of the landmark buildings in her city, the lawyer should be able to talk about the first contracts in ancient Rome, and the salesperson should know about trading practices on the Silk Road. The natural talent also lives his or her area of expertise in daily life. The engineer will have a technically advanced chronometer on his wrist and make his notes on the newest smart device.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to seem effortless. Remember to always give the impression that you didn’t have to try very hard to achieve your earlier successes—as a natural talent, born for your profession, everything is easy for you, from training to climbing the career ladder. Speak about your progression through life as if it was predetermined. With only a few reference points on hand, you should be able to illustrate this journey as a straight path. Also make the stereotype work for you, living out the ideal image of a specialist in your profession in your body and soul.

Last, when you let your colleagues, manager, or boss know that you will throw yourself 100 percent into the job they have for you, then you are unbeatable. There is nothing better than a natural talent who applies all his or her powers to meeting the challenge at hand.

Conclusion

Many luminaries describe their lives as a quest to where destiny (not effort) lead them. This Hero’s Journey is, in fact, an archetypical motive.¹⁰ It was described by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung and elaborated by American mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose work would become the template for hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters—from Star Wars to the Lion King.¹¹ The Hero’s Journey consists of three main parts:

1.   Departure (call of adventure with initial refusal to the call).

2.   Initiation (road of trials, meeting with the goddess).

3.   Return, after which neither the world nor the hero is the same.

From professional athletes to politicians, luminaries regularly describe how they had to overcome difficult obstacles, such as poverty or family issues, to get to where they are today. They most definitely weren’t dealt a lucky hand and yet made it to the very top. What factors other than mind-boggling abilities could explain their success?

As you’ve seen in this chapter, in the best-case scenario, success will be exclusively attributed to exceptionally high competence and nothing else. It is equally advantageous if a failure can be attributed to external factors rather than a lack of competence. Especially in the case of failure, the so-called fundamental attribution error must be observed: individuals prefer to explain the behavior of others by their character traits rather than external factors.¹² If your neighbor greets you in an unfriendly way, you will be more inclined to attribute this to his solitary nature than to the possibility that some unpleasant event had shaken him up badly that day. We tend to attribute the behavior of others to internal causes because we prefer others to be responsible for their actions, and because we only see the person and not the conditions that caused the actions. However, with our own behavior it is the other way around: we tend to explain our own behavior with external factors, because we do not see ourselves but the world around us.

The effect of the fundamental attribution error—that is, the fact that individuals will be held personally responsible for the results they produce—is advantageous when you have completed a task successfully. The success then seems to clearly be a result of your own abilities and competence, not any external circumstances. You should enhance this perception through your own efforts as much as possible. With failures, however, you should eliminate the fundamental attribution error. Make sure that the external circumstances—difficulties and bad luck—are brought strongly into focus so that your (deficient) competence will recede into the background. In both cases, your competence must be isolated, either as a decisive factor—after success—or as a factor to be ignored in the larger context—after a failure.

How do you most effectively frame competence? A story of a gunslinger from the old Wild West can answer that question.¹³ Once upon a time, a stranger walked into a small, dusty Texan town and could not believe his eyes. On the siding of a number of houses, there were painted targets riddled with bullet holes, but whoever had been shooting must have had superb aim, as they had hit the bull’s-eye every time. A man with a revolver was leaning up against a nearby wall. The stranger asked him who had fired all the shots. The man looked up and replied, “Well, it was me.” Naturally, the stranger was very impressed.

“How do you always hit the bull’s-eye in the exact center?” he wanted to know.

“It’s quite simple,” said the gunslinger. “First, I shoot. Then I paint the target.”

If you establish the right frame, any result can make your competence shine.

And now, to return to the legendary Harvard student Fitzjames: despite skipping lectures and showing up to the test with a fresh tan and in a beach outfit, he aced his exam and became top of his class. However, he hadn’t been seen in the weeks leading up to the finals not because he was partying or chilling at the beach but because he had been holed up in his room that entire time cramming for the test. While he studied, he sat beneath a shining sun lamp to disguise his hard work with an impressive tan. Well, I have no idea whether the story of Fitzjames really happened, but this is the stuff of legends.