The 87% You Don't See

Kathryn, Justin, Eric

Back on track with the main articles now. I apologize for some delay. Hopefully we have an interesting topic today.

If you’re starting here, I suggest you don’t. The articles make more sense chronologically.

Some people are like icebergs. Especially true of our Competent folks. You’ll be going along nicely, thinking you have a decent understanding of their capacity, and then bam. Something will come up that requires more…and they’ll have that more. Maybe it’s a skill, or knowledge, or they’ll know someone who can help, or they’ll figure out a path forward. That “oh right, I have this entire portfolio you weren’t aware of” feature certain people have is what we’re considering today.

This is a more nuanced attribute than you’d think. Lots of folks are accomplished. Degrees, skills, long practice. Renaissance folks. Some people are even deeply accomplished. Competence isn’t the same as competence though. People can be world-record good at something, go-to for that skill, even a savant, and that’s a wonderful thing. But it’s a different thing. As we’ve discussed before, Competence looks very different than brilliant at a single skill, it also looks different than “Jack of all trades.”

Here we’re looking at a specific set of skills, and how they interact. As you can tell from the number of articles so far, it’s a fair few skills. But it’s not just any roll of the dice. And I think (though we haven’t gotten into it) there’s a minimum level for each in order for the gears to engage each other to get a whole Competence “machine.” Our Competent folks have, I posit, an array of different competences and features and can use them all with facility. Though of course they’ll have strengths in some and may just reach the bar in others.

So consider what it means to be able to pull a skill out of a capacious hat. To be someone who looks like a human tip-of-the-iceberg, and then suddenly be much much more as the occasion requires. The iceberg analogy maybe isn’t the best, since we don’t necessarily like to find ourselves sailing by a giant lump of ice and then realizing it’s a lot bigger than we expected. If you have a better analogy, please put it in the comments! But the image, I think, is what I’m trying to convey here. You see one thing, and then find that it’s bigger.

How is that a skill in and of itself? How is that different than say, a mountain-person. You look, you see they’re big (have a lot of skills and knowledge). Why does it matter if you only see a little of someone? In another way, that’s true of us all right? We only see a little view of any other human. We never fully grasp the extent of another person.

What I’m trying to describe is someone who, maybe intentionally, maybe instinctively, presents just enough.

To give an example of why that matters: In order to gain the benefits of collaboration, Competent people need to relate well with others. As discussed in earlier articles, that might mean hiding their light a bit. The mountain person is likely to be intimidating. Unlike the savant, Competent people to be effective need to not suck all of the oxygen out of the room by being too openly awesome. They aren’t the sun, they’re the lighthouses. When someone has impressive knowledge, it’s important for others to know it exists but also not be intimidated by it. Consider two doctors, one who makes you feel insignificant. Who takes over the room, says what they have to say, and the patient is left to follow along as they can. The second shares information that’s needed, but without ego and as a collaborator. There might be times for House, but more commonly you need the person you can relate to. But you also need the expertise. In complex situations that takes either an impressive team who can put together the needed expertise, or, I think, one expert with this ability to reveal themselves only as parts are needed.

That is the skill I’m discussing today. Prerequisite: big capability, Skill: Show it in the right context and not otherwise.

Three people in my life came top of my mind to illustrate this quality. These three have some large skills, knowledge, and experience. No one who knows them would suggest they flaunting it. You’re more likely to be unaware of it than see them showing off.

Justin, Kathryn, and Eric are each what I would call “studious.” They see a thing they want to know and apply themselves to knowing it. Kathryn has a Ph.D. Justin knows more about our shared martial art than people twice his age, experience, and rank. Eric is a perpetual fount of cropping up with years of knowledge or experience in all sorts of areas, just as you need that exact thing. In terms of rigor, I’ve taken his First Aid and CPR classes. That’s one specialty he’s a humble master of.

To be precise, these folks don’t just know things. They exhibit a very specific quality of knowing things. I don’t at all want to suggest that Competence and Introversion go together. These three just happen to be introverts. But introversion might help when it comes to knowing a formidable amount and not overshadowing everyone around you. Justin, Kathryn, and Eric each play their cards close to the vest. Inside the vest. The vest may actually be plate armor. If they have cards, good luck knowing how many. As friends of mine for many years, I’ve come to accept that these three have a whole lot going on, and only a bit sticking up above the surface. Those bits are plenty of worth knowing. Occasionally the tide shifts and a new bit sticks out. Shrug and enjoy the new view. In Senior Yearbook style, I might vote them “Most likely to be running a side business in another country.” And if someone asked “which of your friends has a Guinness World Record you’re not aware of?” They’d be my top picks. If I suddenly needed a bartender on the spur of the moment, I might ask if any of them happened to have that training. (Spoiler, at least one of them does. Which I know only because they took the class with another friend and I found out about it.) But for all I know, they’re all bartenders as a side gig. Or Optometrists. Or magicians.

Let’s start with Eric. I think I’ve known him the longest. He’s one of those folks who you just accept in a group. He’s there. Quiet. Always happy to join in, and good company to have. Good at games (good at most things). I don’t have a distinct memory of when we met. It is challenging to form distinct memories of Eric, and I suspect he does that on purpose. But he’s also got the wit you expect in a smart geek. Expect a good comeback from Eric. If you’ve been reading these articles, you’ll see how someone welcomed in any group, smart, capable, and likely to advance the success of any shared endeavor fits the Competent standard.

Eric participates in a whole lot of things. He’s an EMT for one. Martial arts of course. Diving (again, rigor. He’s got multiple certifications.) He’s a hackathon junkie. He also travels. He’ll just not be around for a couple of weeks because he’s off somewhere. Then poof, he’s got a new diving certification, or some excellent photos of another country.

Eric is who you want on any team. Speaking for our Trivia team, and escape room groups, Eric is someone you can rely on to crop up with an unexpected burst of knowledge or insight. But until you need exactly what he has, you wouldn’t guess it. I was organizing First Aid classes for our martial arts school, and somehow it came out that he teaches them. Pulling on that thread a little harder, his EMT work came out. Several years later, in an ER with someone important to me and not getting anywhere, he’s the call I made to find out what I should be asking and how much I should be worried about it. He provided the support that people in the ER couldn’t or didn’t.

Kathryn is also an asset on the escape room team, and for Trivia. For the same reasons. She’ll just happen to have read about whatever it is. She’ll see patterns where others don’t. And when it comes to discipline, well, she’s a violin player, she’s an expert in her highly technical field, and she’s a black-belt. You can hand Kathryn a hard problem and be handed back a solution.

But like Eric, you can know her for years and then learn something completely new about her background. The violin playing came out when my son took up the violin. Little by little, the extent of that experience showed above the surface. Playing, teaching…quite a big part of her life that she didn’t show off until there was a reason. You might think that a performer would go out of their way to make sure you know they’re a performer. But unless Kathryn has a context reason to tell you a thing, you’ll never hear it. Years of Trivia with her have been like that too. A question will nibble around the edges of one of her areas of deep knowledge, and we’ll get a glimpse of some bit of the iceberg breaking the surface.

Justin is that way and then some. I met him when he first started as a white-belt. He was a college student, and he dived in to training with unusual intensity. Being able to watch him for many years, I’ve learned a lot about the process of tucking skills away for later use. Seeing Competent building in a younger person has given me a lot of what you’re reading in these articles. The young guy who walked in to train was not obviously going to become an adult with an impressive portfolio and perfect demeanor. If I’d lined him up with dozens of others who started that year, I’d have been flat out wrong picking “which of these will you describe as Competent in a decade.” But Justin’s voracious approach to learning both knowledge and skill have built to an elite level. And unless you were right in the room when he tucked away some new ability or piece of data, you’ll never know he’s got it unless he has to apply it later while you’re watching.

Justin is the picture of equanimity. Fun, always great to have in a group, and almost certainly keeping big secrets. At one point I stopped even trying to remember the Japanese words for things in our martial art, because it was much easier to ask Justin, who was always around, and who studies. Like really studies. Need to know the five different variations on the throw unique to our art? Many of us can do them (more or less). Justin can name them, describe them, trace them to the original school, and likely make a pun on their names (in Japanese) that would help you distinguish them, and of course can also do them, teach them, and probably refine them. But Justin is self-effacing. It is not threatening or intimidating for Justin to know way more than you. Which is a good thing, because he’s going to go ahead and know it whether you like it or not.

It isn’t the introversion, or not putting themselves forward, that makes the extreme knowledge of these three and people like them welcomed rather than intimidating. Because in a way they do put themselves forward. To the right place, at the right time, with the right skill or knowledge. You might wonder afterward how they always manage to do that.

That is exactly the nature of Competence I’m trying to convey. Competence is almost magic. Applying what’s needed at the right time and place, doing it in a way that makes folks involved feel happy rather than competitive, supported rather than stepped-on. That’s a Competent person. I think it’s also why Competence takes a good while to grow into. Justin aged 20 was proto-Competent at best. Justin now is formidable. Likely the same for Eric, Kathryn, and every other Competent person. Aside from ever-growing skills that take time to acquire, I think the ability to use skills well takes time too. Folks have a box of metal and little gears, and over time they put things together, manufacture more parts, and some of them go from “box of parts” to the human equivalent of a really good Apple product.

So how does the “big” aspect of this skill come into play, and how does it engage with “right place, right time?”

We’ve all been in meetings where you need participation, for example. There’s a hard problem to solve, or a really ambiguous hazy situation, and what you need is for people to throw ideas on the table and engage the problem. We’ve all been in groups where that doesn’t happen. Those groups never included Justin, Kathryn, or Eric.

Unlike people “brainstorming” and just sharing whatever nonsense comes into their heads so you can pan the slag for little flakes of gold, it’s likely that what these three will give you will be sourced from their extensive knowledge. It will be a good idea or at least always one worth pursuing. There will be a chunk of gold in that pan. They don’t talk to hear themselves talk. They don’t ‘splain, what they have is offered deftly.

This skill ties to others we’ve discussed. They are all connected. Competent folks aren’t rubbing your face in your inferiority out of kindness, or shyness, or anything like that. They know what they have, the good kind of confidence we talked about much earlier for example. Other Competence skills connect to make them effective communicators. Collegial, if not touchy-feely. They have enough awareness of their value to have assurance and confidence, but not an overestimation that would come out as arrogance. Having lost many a game to each of these three, I can attest that they’re likely to deny they win through anything other than luck, which is nonsense, but nice to hear.

So what is this skill exactly? “Competent people are icebergs” isn’t the analogy really. Try: Competent people know things when you need them. They have knowledge available in a way that helps rather than hinders. Not false modesty, but also not lacking awareness of what they’re good at. It’s a nuanced kind of modesty that I’ve only seen in people who have depth. People who have nothing to prove.

Think about your go-to people, the ones who just know things. Do you hesitate to ask sometimes because it might be more trouble than it’s worth? I recognize myself in that. Whether it’s condescension, or “telling you how to build the watch when you ask for the time” or ‘splaining more than you asked…however skilled, someone like that might as well not know anything at all for all they’ll be included.

Getting from “I know things,” to being a welcome resource, means picking up some of those other skills. I notice that Kathryn, Justin, and Eric are listeners. When a problem is presented, they listen first, ask questions to be sure they understand, and only then will they offer something you couldn’t have guessed they had.

Think about the icebergs in your life, and how nice they are to have around!