Intrinsic Motivation at Work, 2nd Edition

16Leading for Competence

This chapter will guide you in building a sense of competence in your team. As discussed in chapter 3, a sense of competence comes from the third step in the self-management process, monitoring one’s work activities for quality of performance. So a sense of competence is directly related to performing work activities well—another important way that engaged workers add value. There are five building blocks for competence:

• Knowledge
• Positive feedback
• Skill recognition
• Challenge
• High, noncomparative standards

Providing Knowledge

Management Principle #6: Institute training on the job.

W. EDWARDS DEMING¹

Over time, workers gain a great deal of knowledge through their own experiences with tasks—through experimentation ...