INCOMPETENCE

 

You can be fired during your career for a number of reasons, including dishonesty, bad behaviour and incompetence. There are a number of reasons why employers view a worker as incompetent, even if the employee is trying hard. Some causes of incompetence you can avoid, while others you cannot. Understanding what causes a boss to view you as incompetent will help you improve your skills or change your behaviour before you are fired

Incompetence means different things to different people, but generally it denotes the inability to do a job to a satisfactory standard. If an employee completes a task on time, without errors and the way he was asked to do the work, the employee is considered competent. If the final product goes beyond what was asked of the employee, the employee is more than competent. Signs of an incompetent employee include work being submitted late, over budget, with errors or requiring considerable help from others.

Simple Laziness

A common cause of incompetence is laziness, which can lead to errors, lateness and other problems. Not double checking your work is an example of incompetence, since anyone can do that. If you include typographical errors in written communication, these can lead to making your company look unprofessional or can cause other departments to make mistakes. Not bothering to check the status of a project you are managing or not asking for commitments in writing are other examples of sloppiness and carelessness, since you can easily do these.

Poor Communication

Just because you give someone instructions do not mean you have done your job. Signs of an incompetent manager include a trail of incompetent employees. A competent employee asks coworkers or clients if they received the message, if they understand it and if they can meet the request.

Waiting until deadline to learn that a project would not be delivered is another form of incompetence - you should check in with key stakeholders during the course of a project to evaluate its status. If you are not able to properly and clearly communicate your thoughts or your superiors’ instructions to others, leading to problems at work, you are not competent to work with others, no matter how good your intentions.

Lack of People Skills

Companies need to attract and retain customers and employees to stay in business. Examples of incompetence at work due to a lack of people skills include being tactless, overbearing, rude, unclear, upset or not inspiring confidence in the people with whom you work. Driving away a key employee because you only point out his faults and never praise him is an example of managerial incompetence. Trying to acquire a potential customer by telling her she is doing something wrong and making her feel stupid is another example of incompetence.

Lack of Training

Through no fault of your own, you may be given a task for which you have no training or experience. For example, an excellent salesperson can be promoted to a sales manager position thus coordinating the activities of the sales department. If that person has no experience creating departmental budgets, setting sales goals, determining prices based on a company’s costs and the market demand and supply, designing commission plans, developing sales materials and otherwise operate as a manager, he could fail.

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