Intrinsic Motivation at Work, 2nd Edition

10Building Your Sense of Competence

As a manager, some of your sense of competence will come from how competently your team performs its activities. Here, I’ll concentrate more on the sense of competence you get from performing your own activities well.

The building blocks for your sense of competence are these:

• Knowledge—possessing an adequate store of insights from your education and experience
• Positive feedback—receiving information on what you are doing well
• Skill recognition—getting (and giving yourself) due credit for your successes
• Challenge—executing adequately demanding tasks that fit your abilities
• High, noncomparative standards—using standards that don’t force rankings or comparisons between yourself and others

The following are ...