It depends on who you are, what you are trying to achieve, and what you are working towards. You will use competencies in many different scenarios and contexts. Depending on the context some competencies will be more apparent than others but it will continue to move and shift. You can’t have the 6 clusters of competencies without the other 5.

For 40 years, economic, social, and cultural factors such as advanced technology and globalization have changed how cities compete to attract new citizens. A city’s proximity to natural resources is no longer the driver of its competitive advantage. Instead, a city’s ability to attract, develop and retain talent (the people who will live and work there) is the greatest predictor of social, and economic prosperity. That means how cities grow and develop their talent pool is crucial. Today's workplaces demand that people have the capacity to live with uncertainty, adapt to new roles and learn new skills quickly. These skills transcend industries and professions. If there were such a thing as a defining competency, it would be adaptability.

Adaptable people can adjust to the dynamic context of the world today. Adaptability can be reactive, like how many are learning to live in a new reality during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, adaptability can also be proactive and intentional, characterized by anticipating change and planning our response in advance.

At the root of adaptation is learning. Historically, job-specific competencies were highly valued by society as they were essential to generating short-term economic value. However, today, job-specific competencies often become dated and demand continual training to maintain relevancy. This means that lifelong learning looks more like a climbing wall than a ladder. So to become a city that adapts, Calgary must become a city that can learn faster and better than others.

Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Experts believe curiosity is something all people are born with. Curiosity got us the wheel. Curiosity got us to Mars. Curiosity gave us the Internet. Curiosity is a competency when it has a purpose. We call this intentional curiosity.

Intentionally curious people are humble enough to recognize they don’t know it all. When you were five years old, you were full of questions and you didn’t care that you didn’t know everything. How could you? Great product designers never lost that. How could you know everything even now? Humility creates a hunger that can only be fed by answers.

Intentionally curious people look at the world (and their place in it) and see big questions: How do things work together? How do these pieces connect? How can I influence things? How can I improve things? You’ll need to develop this intentional curiosity to explore and adapt the world as it changes.

Having a competency is really important. Having a competency that no one knows you have is a big problem. Have you ever bought a product you didn’t know existed? Of course not. It’s not an accident that when you’re in a particular store or mall you often come across the exact product you’re looking for. It’s because the product designers were one step ahead of you. To find just the right spot for their product, the product designers did a bunch of research to learn where people like you shop and what things you tend to buy. This helped them decide how and where they want to sell their product to you.

You are the exact same. You sell yourself by making sure your audience (e.g., maybe a future employer) believes you are the perfect person to meet their needs. In the context of selling you and your competencies, think about how and where you want to sell yourself. Do you want to use an online social platform that already has your target audience engaged (e.g., LinkedIn), or do you want to build your own website, or do you want to use a combination of platforms? Wherever you choose to host it, we recommend you develop a portfolio as the home to provide evidence of your competencies.

Your portfolio is a dynamic and public collection of experiences, materials, relationships, and evidence that proves that you’re rare, valuable, and able to deliver benefits to your target audience. It follows the old adage, “Show, don’t tell.”

We highly recommend you build your portfolio on a dynamic online platform, such as LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, you have a portfolio that is intuitive, relevant, has no cost and is used by more than 90 per cent of employers when hiring. LinkedIn as a platform has a variety of advantages, and because one in three people in North America are already on it, it’s the most likely place your target audience is already hanging out.

Developing your portfolio on LinkedIn takes some time. Your portfolio is typically the first impression anchor, and it sticks with influential people. You need to ensure it tells your story directly to them and offers evidence of your competencies.

For any organization, big or small, hiring the right people is critical to their success. They aren’t only risking their financial resources on salaries, but a bad hire means that the important problem they wanted solved isn’t getting solved. Therefore, your portfolio is not only intended to position your competencies, but also designed to minimize your audience’s risk.

The 25 Competencies for Life are all foundational, so you’ll ultimately want to have a good foundation in them all. However, for some you may only need to be good at, while others you may want to be great at. This will be defined by what you really want to do in life, both professionally and personally. A good place to start exploring some of these questions is in Designing YOU. This process will start to give you a sense of what you are good at, what you love to do, and what you can make a living doing.

If you are focused, your competencies can be developed through an endless number of ways. Some of these may be self-directed, like listening to podcasts, reading a book, or practicing improving a specific competency. However, there are thousands of organizations in Calgary that will help you develop your competencies. The obvious one is going to school. The not so obvious ones are through the amazing programs taught by one of our many community partners. These programs can help you develop core workplace skills, or maybe it will stimulate your creativity and curiosity through art, or maybe your leadership and teamwork through sports.

To see our Competencies for Life partners, go to the competency for life website and check out their amazing programs to help you develop your own competencies.

Designing You is a program that can be done at your own pace. There is no specific length of time it needs to be completed in.

You can start at any module or section in Designing You, they do not have to be done in order.

Each module in Designing You has an option to download all activity sheets directly to your device. You can save these activity sheets to go back and update or change them as you wish. These activity sheets will act as your Journal as you work through the Designing You sections.

In 2019-20, a team of researchers from the University of Calgary, Mount Royal University, Alberta University for the Arts, and the University of Guelph conducted a mixed-methods study, including hosting a workshop of over 100 Calgary-based talent seekers and talent developers. Based on the findings of this workshop, they empirically analyzed 20 leading competency models to identify the competencies that transcend industries and occupation. The final enabling competencies embedded in the Competencies for Life appeared on average in 2/3rds of all models mapped in this study.

Through research and hosting a workshop of over 100 Calgary-based talent seekers and talent developers in 2019/20, an audit of leading enabling competency models and leading occupation/industry specific models was completed. This process identified 28 major enabling competencies that were included in the majority of the four models and a list of competency definitions. We found through this research that there was a lack of common language between the models and certain competencies and skill sets were missing. Only 2/3rds of the competencies identified were represented in the 28 and 1/3rd of the competencies were job specific. Our research involved developing a model that could be adopted broadly with simplified terminology and defining competencies clusters to increase the recall and advocacy. From this, the Competencies for Life model was developed. Click here to learn more about the research behind the Competencies for Life.

All competency models require mechanisms to allow individual talent, talent developers, and talent seekers to assess competency proficiency. During this pilot, we are not testing an overarching architecture. Rather, we encourage individuals and talent developers to reflect on the different forms of evidence required to demonstrate the proficiency of a specific competency. Through this pilot project, we bring attention to the Talent Marketplace where Talent Developer and Talent Seeker partners work together to help Individual Talent map their professional path. Based on the results of the pilot, the next phase of this project would involve developing and deploying a comprehensive Competency for Life architecture to support individuals, talent developers and talent seekers assess competency proficiency. It is our hope that through this model, we can shape the growth of the talent marketplace in the new economy and make Calgary a hub for talent. There is more than one path. You need to recognize what you have so when you go into new experiences you know what you have and what you can work on. With talent you can go down any path, there is no right or wrong.