In Print » December 2011 » Features » Staff Training

How many times have you heard someone (maybe it was yourself), bemoaning the fact that the success of a department or maybe a whole organization rested on the shoulders of one person? Sometimes this is the owner (why can't anyone else do it the way I do?) but it is often a key employee (no one else closes sales as frequently as Donna does; James has a way of working with our vendors that gets us the best pricing; Fikisha is the only one who gets the cheese order right). In some cases we tiptoe around these "experts" because we're afraid that if we annoy them, they will go elsewhere and, heaven forbid, share their expertise with our competition. In others, staff members suffer burn out and exhaustion because they don't feel they can trust anyone to do their job if they take a vacation. Robert Quinn, writing in his book, Deep Change, calls this situation the "tyranny of competence." It is something to watch out for and to avoid.

I don't think this "tyranny of competence" is more likely to happen in retail than it is in other fields — in fact it may be more common in industries that require high levels of technical or engineering expertise. But I have certainly seen the phenomenon in enough retail organizations to realize that it is an issue that we — as leaders and trainers — ignore at our peril. A common situation I've encountered is the product specialist who is unwilling (although she would say "unable") to train others to do things as well as she does.

In my last column I wrote about the "Stages of Learning a Skill" and the fact that once someone has been doing a particular job or task for a long time they become "unconsciously competent." When someone is "unconsciously competent" they have a hard time explaining exactly how they do what they do or why doing something a certain way is more effective than doing it another way. In that column I had some suggestions for how to move from the unconscious/competent level back down to conscious/competent – which is where one needs to be to teach effectively.

Today I'm addressing a similar situation but suggesting a different underlying cause. Sometimes "experts" hold on to their knowledge not primarily because they don't know how to effectively share the information (although that may play a role), but because they actually don't want anyone else to know as much as they do. Either consciously or unconsciously, they want to maintain their status as the one who has all the answers. Quinn describes a situation in which "a powerful individual contributor takes control and then begins to undermine the influence of others. The work climate is poisoned, and morale declines."

When put in that way, it's easy to see that this is a disaster — so how does this situation develop and what can be done about it? As leaders and managers, I believe we always need to look first at ourselves and ask, "How am I contributing to this situation?" Although it may feel that the employee in question is acting completely contrary to the behavior we want to see, chances are that at some level he/she is responding to a message that rewards the behavior we're unhappy about. As Quinn says, "...competence often comes to mean task completion — finding the file or making the sale...the organization often rewards and reinforces this position."

Using a product specialist as an example, how is success measured? a. By having the right quantity of the right products on the floor, all priced correctly to reach sales and contribution targets? Or b. By having trained three other people, each of whom is able to order, merchandise, price and sell effectively? More often than not, a. is what gets organizational recognition and rewards.

The tyranny of competence may also develop from a fear of making mistakes. Most people agree that making mistakes is a necessary part of learning, but most would also say that they are uncomfortable making mistakes — or having their employees make them. If Carole has gotten really good at estimating the amount of product needed, she is less likely to over or under order than someone with less experience. But how can her trainee gain that experience without practice — which will likely involve mistakes? If we, as managers, measure a staff person's performance on sales and profit metrics or task completion — to the exclusion of all else — we're encouraging the tyranny of competence to grow.

This is not to say that financial metrics don't matter. Of course they do. But remember that it is easier to see the short-term sales/profit impact of a less than perfect ordering decision than the longer term, but inevitable, financial impact of having skills and knowledge limited to an elite few. Because eventually the "gifted" employee will leave the organization or alienate co-workers — and the financial fallout will follow.

I agree with Quinn that "an enlightened and thriving organization contains competent people whose jobs are not defined or evaluated solely in terms of technical task completion." To that end, here are some tips for keeping the tyranny of competence out of your organization:

• Be clear about your expectation that transferring skills and knowledge to other staff is a key element of each person's job.
• Recognize and reward cooperation, team effort and positive relationships with co-workers at least as much as individual achievement.
• Consider a bonus for the expert when the people she is training reach an agreed upon level of proficiency — tying her success directly to their success.
• Provide specific opportunities for staff to share skills and knowledge with each other — on the job, in staff meetings, in classes or through written materials.
• Give your employees the latitude to make honest mistakes as part of the learning/teaching process. ("I know that Susan isn't going to do it perfectly the first couple of times she orders, but I expect you to find that balance where she's doing it on her own but with enough oversight that she doesn't get into deep trouble. When in doubt – err on the side of letting go.")
• Reinforce the behaviors that you want to encourage (sharing of information, training on job-related skills) by noticing them and giving positive feedback. ("I saw that you were explaining the XYZ Distributor invoice to both Susan and Jamal. That's great! The more people who can accurately check in product, the better.")
• Challenge yourself on this front and model the behavior you want to see in others. What are the things that you continue to do because "I can do it faster/better/more reliably" than anyone else?

Technically competent people are important assets in any organization, but when they succumb to the tyranny of competence they become liabilities — even though we may feel we can't live without them. Truly invaluable are those technically competent people who foster team success by teaching and mentoring others.

For more than a decade, Maggie Bayless has provided readers with staffing insights. From training programs to keeping employees motivated, Bayless uses her years at specialty independent Zingerman's and her ZingTrain skills to help retailers keep staff training issues at the cutting edge in their own stores.