You need to balance your skills and competencies to be successful in your career.  Over-reliance on IQ (Intelligence Quotient) or EQ (Emotional Quotient) alone may only get you so far.  It is essential to learn the skills to be in the role, but you will need the competencies to catapult you higher.

So, what are the skills and competencies?

Think of skills as the basic requirements to perform a job. If you have don’t know math, you probably are not going to be a math teacher.  Or you cannot be a software programmer without any coding skills.  Or you cannot be an airline pilot without flying skills and certifications.

Skills span education, technical acumen, and functional knowledge necessary to be in a specific role.

Think of competencies as the soft side of the equation that will enhance and catalyze your skills. For example, a pilot may have the necessary technical skills to fly a plane, but he or she may need judgment, the ability to be calm under pressure, and the ability to make life and death decisions when the occasion arises.

Someone may possess an ivy league degree, but without initiative, curiosity, and ability to work with others, education alone will not propel the career forward.

How to Balance your Skills and Competencies? Think of a Bicycle

A good way to think about the concept of balancing skills and competencies is riding a bicycle.  You may wonder what does the humble bicycle have to do with my career.  In fact, there is a lot to glean from how we ride our bike.

Rear Wheel Skills:

The rear wheel skills constitute the “What” – the core technical, functional, and educational skills which are essential to your role.  These skills, we discussed earlier, are your entry ticket to your job.

Examples of Rear Wheel Skills

• A relevant degree
• A certification
• Experience in the field
• Functional knowledge
• Technical know-how

Front Wheel Competencies

The front wheel competencies are the “How” – the approach, the navigation, and facing and overcoming hurdles along the way.  These competencies are soft skills critical to success – particularly in this collaboration-based, information-driven, multi-cultural workplace.  Think of these competencies as the “How” that complements your “What” (the skills).

Examples of Front Wheel Competencies:

• Interpersonal skills
• Leadership
• Communication
• Initiative
• Listening
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Strategic thinking
• Judgment and Decision making
• Innovation
• Empathy and Understanding
• Resolving Conflicts

Let’s review how the Front Wheel competencies are integral to most jobs. Here are a couple of examples.

A Project Manager:

The Rear Wheel Skills necessary for a project manager:

• An undergraduate degree.
• Certification in one of the project management methodologies.
• 10-years of experience managing complex projects.

The Front Wheel competencies essential to a project manager:

• Ability to oversee a collection of teams with functional and technical experts.
• Ability to optimize across competing interests and viewpoints.
• Ability to influence without authority.
• Communicate effectively.
• Manage stakeholder relationships.
• Ability to resolve the conflict.
• Exercise judgment.
• And so on.

If there are two project managers – both the same base level technical knowhow ( the rear wheel skills), guess who will be more successful? Yes, you are right – the one with more of the Front Wheel competencies.

Let’s look at the case of a Sales Person:

Rear Wheel Skills:

• A high school diploma or equivalent.
• Understanding of how the products or services work.
• Working knowledge of the software that powers the Product/Service Catalog.
• Using the CRM system.

Front Wheel Skills:

• Confidence and conviction.
• Handling rejections.
• Charisma and presence.
• Strong desire to sell.
• The ability to hunt for accounts.
• Collaborative facilitation of the sales process
• Ability to qualify and prioritize prospects
• Closing skills. (Ah! The famous, “Always be closing.”

Most of us have or can acquire the basic rear wheel skills of a salesperson, but those are outstanding success stories possess the Front Wheel Competencies in abundance.  That innate sense of judging the situation and going for the kill is an art of the sales craft.

Stepping away from a minute from specific role requirements, here are a bunch of front wheel competencies that are an integral part of many jobs across corporate America.

A Sampling of Rear Wheel Competencies:

1. Work within a team constructs and collaborate across the team.
2. Build consensus across diverse opinions and disparate groups.
3. Listen to understand not just to respond.
4. Resourcefulness to work within constraints.
5. Disagree but without being disagreeable.
6. Demonstrate assertiveness without being intransigent.
7. Make decisions under uncertainty.
8. Build alliances and relationships
9. Represent your team’s interests well.
10. Share success and shoulder the blame.

Of course, it does not mean the rear wheel competencies are not important. What we are suggesting is far from it. We are advocating balance and harmony in the front wheel and rear wheel skills and combining the IQ and EQ to achieve tremendous synergy.

Without the rear wheel skills, the fundamental toolkit for doing your job, you will not be in the conversation.  We need to up our game and constantly upgrade and reskill ourselves.  A pilot has to learn the more sophisticated fly by wire technologies. A software developer needs to keep abreast of the latest programming languages. Today’s project managers need some skills in agile techniques.

Here is an exercise for you:  Take a sheet of paper (or in a word processing software) make two columns – one for Rear Wheel Skills and the other for Front Wheel Competencies.   Then jot down what are the foundational requirements for a role you are aspiring for (or the current role) and then the front wheel competencies that are integral to succeeding in that role. You will be surprised at what you will find.

If you are short on any of the functional skills, get on to any of the learning platforms – EdX, Udemy, Coursera, Lynda.com or numerous other venues – and upgrade your technical know-how.  And if you are short on the list of competencies, make an effort to cultivate those through learning, practicing, reflecting, and refinement.

Remember, for a bicycle to be stable and go where you want to go, it has to have balance and harmony in motion.  Similarly, your career needs a judicious combination of functional skills and emotional intelligence to reach your career North Star. Go ahead, balance your skills and competencies for achieving career harmony.

Note: We were not able to find the source to attribute the concept of “Front Wheel and Rear Wheel” skills framework.  So, a sincere thanks to the unknown for the powerful framework.