Chapter: Four

Technical Communication
and Competencies
• Competency refers to
certain ability coupled
with knowledge and
experience
• the ability to do
something successfully
• Competence is the ability of an
individual to do a job properly.
• A competency is a set of defined
behaviors that provide a structured
guide enabling the identification,
evaluation and development of the
behaviors in individual employees. The
term "competence" first appeared in an
article authored by R.W. White in 1959 :
Wikipedia (source)
• A competency is a quality that a company
believes is desirable for its employees to
have. Competencies can be global or
specific.
• Some examples of competencies are:
a. Teamwork
b. Responsibility
c. Leadership
d. Career Motivation 
e. Decision making 
• Trustworthiness/Ethics 
• Results Driven 
• Problem Solving 
• Oxford dictionary defines competency as
“sufficiency of qualification; capacity to deal with a
subject”
• In the book ‘Developing Professional Competence
(1994) Michael Eraut explains competency as
person’s overall capacity.
• Competencies refer to the ability to perform
specific tasks. Examples of competencies:
• ability to communicate effectively
• ability to write clearly
• ability to play an instrument
• ability to solve problems
• ability to dance
Attitudes, Values and Personality
• Attitude=state of mind
• Value: a belief
• Personality=unique feature of a person
• In psychology, an attitude is an expression of favor
or disfavor toward a person, place, thing, or event
(the attitude object).
• Attitude can be formed from a person's past and
present
• An attitude can be as a
positive or negative
evaluation of people,
objects, events,
activities, and ideas. It
could be concrete,
abstract or just about
anything in your
environment
• An attitude is our emotional state that applies
influence in that given task
• Attitude can be changed over time. The
following are the types of attitude:
a. Cognitive( how an individual perceives an
idea)
b. Affective (feelings and emotions)
c. Evaluative(positive or negative orientation
towards an object)
d. Behavioral (intensions or desires regarding
the task)
• Attitudes form directly as a result of experience.
• They may emerge due to direct personal
experience, or they may result from
observation.
• Social roles and social norms can have a strong
influence on attitudes.
• Social roles relate to how people are expected
to behave in a particular role or context.
• Social norms involve society's rules for what
behaviors are considered appropriate.
•  Attitude involves how people react to certain
situations and how they behave in general.
Examples of attitudes:
• being proactive
• being able to get along with other people
• being optimistic
• being critic towards other people
• being arrogant
• if you take a look at the picture below, you
will see that attitudes are the base of the
pyramid. One should, therefore, focus on
developing the right attitudes before
passing to the competencies and to the
knowledge. If you take a look at the five
attitudes we used as example it is clear that
one would desire to develop the first three.
Distinguishing between a desirable and a
problematic attitude is actually an easy task.
 Values
• Values refer to the principles or standards of
behavior; one's judgment of what is important
in life.
• Important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared
by the members of a culture about what is
good or bad and desirable or undesirable.
• Values have major influence on a person's
behavior and attitude and serve as broad
guidelines in all situations.
• Some common business values are fairness,
innovation and community involvement.
• Compare to attitudes values are stable
beliefs
• The following are the types of value:
a. Personal values
b. Work values
c. Social values
• A personal value is an individual's
absolute or relative and ethical value,
the assumption of which can be the
basis for ethical action.
• A value system is a set of consistent
values and measures. A principle value
is a foundation upon which other values
and measures of honesty are based.
 Personality
• Personality refers to individual
differences in characteristic patterns of
thinking, feeling and behaving
• Personal characteristics which are
innate which are not necessarily
evaluative
• Personality refers to individual
differences in characteristic patterns of
thinking, feeling and behaving.
• The study of personality focuses on two
broad areas: One is understanding
individual differences in particular
personality characteristics, such as
sociability or irritability. The other is
understanding how the various parts of
a person come together as a whole.
• According to Icek Ajzen the
following are the personality traits:
a. Dominance (power)
b. Sociable
c. Independence
d. Conscientiousness(careful)
e. Hostility
f. Helpfulness
g. Self-esteem
h. Emotional stability
i. ambitiousness
Core competencies in technical
communication
In the business or organizational
context, the required sets of skills and
knowledge are often referred to as
core competencies.
• Technical competence is the ability
to perform the activities within an
occupation to a defined standard,
consistently and over time.
• The following are the technical
competencies:
• Advocacy
• Design
• Execution (implementation)
• Innovation
• Use of media
• Research skills
• Use of support tools
• Usability
• George Hayhoe identified the
following areas of core
competencies for technical
communicator:
a. Creating and managing
knowledge
b. Designing information that
readers need
c. Communicating fluently in
various media
d. Being part of learning
community
David Dayton, Kenneth,
and Roy found the
following competencies
for technical
communicators:
a. collaborating skills
b. Writing skills
c. Technical skills
d. Self-evaluative skills