How to Cope with an Incompetent Colleague
An incompetent colleague can be a bit of a bugbear if we have to work beside such a person, and perhaps even more so, if we have the job of being their supervisor.
Incompetence might be endemic in the person, or it might only be present in respect to performing certain tasks. On the other hand, competence on one day might be not present on the next. Their are many factors involved here that might be causing this problem.
Some people are lazy, and they are just not interested in doing a good job, or performing to the best of their own ability. These type of people are, you could say then, purposely being incompetent.
In either case though, of deliberate, or of real incompetence, we still have the problem of working with someone who appears to be incompetent.
Here are a few tips of mine that might allow you to better cope with this trying, and often very frustrating situation.
First off, I think it is a good idea to try to ascertain if the incompetence is actually real, or not.
Maybe the employee concerned does not trust management, or is suspicious of people generally. This might be an attitude or personality problem then, rather than one of incompetence, or it might be some mixture of all of these factors.
A different approach might work wonders with this type of person.
As they begin to feel that you are genuinely interested in them, and in helping them to improve their on the job levels of performance, their competence might improve. This could happen simply because their attitude has changed, and so they are trying harder now to do a better job, and perhaps to please you, and to play their part in the team by putting in a bit more, and so to try also to become a better team player.
If the incompetence is indeed very real, does the person themselves know of their own incompetence. Sometimes the incompetent actually believe in themselves that they are supremely competent, and that they are in fact one of your best workers.
This psychologically true twist occurs because it takes competence to recognise competence. These types of people usually also have a false sense of ability or confidence in their own achievements, and in the way that they are doing things.
The truth is though that they make easily recognizable mistakes, misjudge things, and often come to the wrong conclusion, or assess situations inaccurately. They are blind to their own real state of behaviour, and usually quite unaware that a problem even exists. They distort the real, and only see either what they want to see, as in the first case mentioned above of purposefully being incompetent, or more pointedly, they can only see as far as their level of competence allows them to see.
The more incompetent a person is, the more unaware they usually are about what is really happening here for you, and for everyone else around themselves.
In a game, such as chess, or tennis, for example, it is far more easy to recognise your own incompetence than in might be in a working environment. This is why in the work situation feedback for this type of person is so vitally necessary.
If you could provide accurate, unbiased, friendly feedback, rather than taking a bullying, bossing, hostile or antagonisingly aggressive approach, this would help this type of a situation enormously. Feedback is always better received if it is not being perceived in the wrong way as criticism ,and so only creating resentment, and probably as a result, more of the presently being exhibited, incompetent behaviours.
Incompetence does not usually exist on its own, and usually it is being drawn out of an employee for some reason, or another. Maybe they have been over-promoted, and so feel out of their own depth, or maybe they were wrongly chosen for this particularly challenging role, for their abilities to talk well at interview. This would mean then that their lack of other necessary abilities for performing this particular job, might simply have been overlooked.
Some wise incompetent person once made a slip of the tongue, and said that people rise to their level of incompetence. He had meant to say to their level of competence, but what he did actually say might just have had some level of truth to it anyway.
Unfortunately, this is never true within most businesses though.
Everyone with enough time will usually be pushed past their level of competence, and so they will begin to take on some incompetence factors in their job. This is inevitable, because most of the competent employees have been busy improving their competence even more so, and therefore are usually not around anymore. They have been head hunted or recruited upwards to another job, and usually in another firm.
Incompetence matched with maliciousness is usually not real incompetence. The malicious usually know exactly what they are doing, and this means that they are using their higher levels of competence, although misdirected, to achieve what they want to achieve.
That said then, do not allow yourself to become too upset with the incompetent worker. They usually are well meaning, simple minded type of persons, who are not really trying to cause the problems that they are actually causing.
They are sometimes too incompetent or unaware to even realise that something is wrong.
Have a quiet word to them, and coach them more in their jobs. Do this for them especially if their incompetence is so pronounced that they have not got the skills to handle their job. Talk to them about moving to a more suitable role or of taking a sidestep, but in a way that it does not demean them, or feel like to them, that they are being mistreated, or demoted in some way.
Being nice to people, remember, fosters the motivation for them to try to help you, and to follow your suggestions for them, even if they do remain incompetent at their previous levels. Incompetence rarely can improve itself, and usually must be accepted for what it is, and so worked around.
What else can I add here about living or working with someone who is incompetent, or just plain incapable of operating from the higher levels of intelligence that are possible for some other people.
In other words, with those individuals who were unfortunately not born with a high level of intelligence.
My own interest in spiritual matters prompts me to offer another perhaps outer world perspective here. This might seem a bit way off in the left field to most of you, but I will finish my article with these reflective observations of my own anyway.
I think that incompetence is actually chosen by a soul in order for themselves to now experience a lack of motivation for them to be moving so much away from love by the following of their mind too strongly. This is usually a reincarnated soul that has been rather strictly only a mind person in their last life, and so they need to step back into their heart for a while.
Metaphysically speaking, incompetence is merely a lack of not awareness, but of the ability to judge from the mind, a situation. This means that they can still see and feel what is going on with their hearts, but incompetence is a brain status that restricts the person simply because of the size of machine that they are carrying around.
Awareness accepts this, and in this case a person will recognise their own limitations, and so they can be helped to do this, and so work with who they are, instead of working against themselves.
If we can be more patient, understanding, and tolerant of the incompetent person, we can help them to feel the truth of the situation in their own hearts, and so they will then work with us more, and listen more to our suggestions, if honestly and sincerely put to them.
A willing worker, eager to follow what we tell them, will go at least half way, and probably more than half way, to alleviating this problem of our difficulty of having to either work with, or supervise an incompetent employee.
