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An interview with the Berlin researcher John Erpenbeck
Why knowledge and competence are not the same thing and how we can best develop skills.
Professor Dr. Erpenbeck, you have been one of the leading competence researchers for 30 years. The concept of competence is currently experiencing a revival. Why is that?
The term "revival" is not quite right. Thirty years ago, the term "competence" was far less common than it is today. In other words, it was not revived, but was used more and more. However, it is true that companies, but also schools, universities and other educational institutions, focused primarily on knowledge and knowledge transfer. Now, however, both in education and at work, we are realizing that knowledge alone is no longer enough.
Knowledge is not competence, as competence research has shown. What does this mean for individual employees?
In other words, it is not enough to talk to people or send them to training courses to fill them with knowledge. People know many things, but in order to be able to act, they need deeply rooted values and value orientations. For example, you can talk people into being innovative for a long time. This is useless if none of the people you are talking to want to be innovative or experience "being innovative" as something positive. If you talk people into it, they know that they should be innovative, but they still aren't.
So what do you need to do if you want to strengthen your employees' competence ability to innovate?
If a companies wants to have innovative employees, certain framework conditions must first be created. Unnecessary restrictions and controls, for example, are an obstacle to "innovation training". However, creating the framework conditions is not enough. Even if employees could complete "innovation training", such as "creativity training", they must first internalize the value of "innovation capability". innovation must "feel good". Only then can the ability to innovate be practiced and applied in various professional situations.
Why is it so difficult for companies to actively address people's emotions?
Homo economicus is one of the best-known examples of the fact that both in research and in practice, the "mechanics" of human thinking and the processes in companies have been relied upon for far too long. Even today, there are still famous consulting firms that advise almost exclusively in the Fordist tradition, i.e. that see companies as giant machines that can be optimized by turning the right knobs and levers. Of course, this is easier and has worked for a long time. But with the new self-organizing, disruptive, complex developments and the much higher demands on employees, this approach has reached its limits. companies must now exploit the full potential of people. This also includes values and skills. Research has also undergone a change in this respect: just think of the Nobel Prizes in Economics for the behavioral psychologists Kahneman and Thaler, who have distanced themselves from traditional economics. That says a lot.
Is it that easy to change or develop employees' values and skills?
No. Definitely not, but it is possible. leadership plays a major role in this and the demands on managers are increasing accordingly. It is important to abandon the idea that you can teach people values rationally. It is not enough to say "our values are initiative, partnership and commitment". This means little as long as people have not internalized these values emotionally, i.e. "interiorized" them. An emotionally meaningless word can be written anywhere and still have no meaning. But if you start to lead accordingly, to set an example, to involve people in work that promotes values and skills, then the brain reacts not only rationally but also emotionally. This, in turn, is the basis for the development of skills.
What do you think of the statement that certain employees are unable to develop?
People develop skills throughout their lives. For better or for worse. You can't stop that. Take a look at the skills you constantly develop and call on in your private life. You learn how to deal with old people because your own parents are getting old. You develop organizational skills because you are involved in an association. People are constantly competence development, but they are often not aware of it. The only problem is, how can I transfer such competence development to companies ? It already helps if this natural, permanent development is not hindered by mechanical and restrictive working environments. Many employees who you think will not allow themselves to develop are emotionally prevented from doing so by the working environment. Then they leave the office and suddenly they can do it again. That's why the emotional internalization of values is so important. companies should focus on two things: Firstly, they should stop hindering people in their competence development and should do away with inhibiting framework conditions. Secondly, they should consider which values and skills are relevant to them and communicate these rationally and emotionally so that the competence development of employees is also steered in the desired direction.
