What Is YOUR Core Competency?

Once you’ve identified what you are great at, you gain the ability to diversify from that point onto tangents that fit your core competency and values.

By Scott Swinton

I took an acting class in college, because I needed the credits. I was pathetic, and I still cringe at my interpretation of the prologue to Henry V – “Oh for a muse of fire…” As if remembering the lines wasn’t hard enough, emoting them was a burden almost too great to bear. I still recall a young man with the last name Peacock, no joke, self-confidently strutting about the stage. I met some nice girls in the class but was quickly drawn back to the blunt reality that I was only there for the credits.

What are you good at? You manage HOAs and a high rise in Oakland. You’re the owner of a management company. You’re a painting contractor. You’re a tech analyst with a 1% interest in an HOA and have been elected to the board of directors. Who are you? What are you? To borrow a phrase, what is your core competency?

At your core, who are you? You are the mother of three kids and a poodle. You’re a wife, chef, taxi driver, and manager for an HOA management company.

This more robust list of roles may be closer to the truth, but when you boil yourself down to fond at the bottom of the pot, who and what are you? I sit here with my fingers hovering over the keyboard asking myself the same questions ripening in front of me. Who and what am I?

I’m not going to go all Nietzsche and Freud on you, but the exercise is worth spending time on if you haven’t really sat back and asked yourself lately this basic question – Who am I? What good do I bring to the world around me?

Pause and partake in the exercise - or don’t, your call. But now that I have guided you in a direction where I want you to head, let’s take a short walk and chat about our industry for a little.

You, at your core, are not an HOA manager, receptionist, or business owner. You know this. You feel this. When someone pigeonholes you as such, you instinctively reach out beyond the walls of the box and demonstrate that you have more nuance than that pigeonhole might suggest.

This is normal. You’re probably amazing, and possibly, I am too. But what’s this untapped potential hidden inside us at our core that makes us really amazing, and why hasn’t anyone seen it? Have I stumped you? If I have, then, it’s time for you to dabble into a piece by Jim Collins, Good to Great.

HOA managers, management company owners, and service providers alike need to stop and consider what Collins means when he says:

Good is the enemy of great. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. “

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

In directing us towards greatness, Collins addresses my previous question of “What is your core competency?” or rather “What is your “one big idea?” Collins calls this your “hedgehog principle,” and I’ll let you read his book to learn where that truly manifests from. But for now, ask yourself this: Without all your fur and feathers, what’s the one definite characteristic that remains as the final you, your core?

With your feathers and fur stripped, all that remains is your core confidently and defiantly facing you. Bring it to the board meeting. Let it sign up for the next event. Let that core find employment, relationships, an artistic outlet, or the joy where it longs to be.

Interestingly enough, you may find that your defiant core was rather clever all along and has been sitting right where it desired to be, employed where it wants to work and living where it wants to live. You may be right where you should be but ready for an awakening or unburdening, or you may just have some plumage to offload.

If this is you, listen up! It’s time to go be amazing within the industry that you’re already intimate with. Are you a coach? Align yourself with a management company that loves to coach their clients. Do you prefer to be more executive? Align yourself with a management company that directs their boards more formally. Are you a leader? Start a management or service providing company or lead from your swivel chair.

Only after you define your own core principles can you begin to confront the topic of this issue. Diversity. Diversity, you say? I thought we were trying to boil ourselves down to the core over here. How does diversity work from the fond at the bottom of the pot?

Beautifully, that’s how. Once you’ve identified what you are great at and can define who you really are, you gain the ability to diversify from that point onto tangents that fit your core competency and values. You will add accoutrement to your work and life which complements your core rather than confusing it. You won’t be as tempted to take on projects which seem good but don’t seem to fit into the stream of what you can make great.

“How do I become really amazing?,” you might ask. Start by sorting through the expectations and obligations that you’ve been peddled, and ask yourself once again the hard questions, “Who am I?” and “What am I?”

When you feel like you have reached the answer, realign what you do based on your new understandings. Afterwards, branch out and then along the way, teach someone else how to be really amazing too.

Scott Swinton

Scott Swinton is the General Contractor and Certified Construction Manager at Unlimited Property Services, Inc.