To many skilled professional certifications are the key to improving their competency getting recognized; advancing their careers as their gain experience and grow into a new role; finally become experts.

However, if one were to look at the above there are four keywords as below

• Skill : the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice
• Competency : possession of sufficient knowledge or skill
• Experience : skill or knowledge that you get by doing something
• Expert : one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject

Many a time we relate knowledge on-the-job to experience and discount the other aspects. However, it is important to realize that executing a job over a period does not necessarily qualify you as an expert.

So to become an expert how does one hone themselves; a simple technique is a 'cheat sheet' which is a written or graphic aid (as below) that can be referred to enable oneself to be effective in terms of developing your core-competencies, as they say practice makes a man perfect. The below depicts some 'Must-Do Tips' that can help you grow in your credibility.

Over a period, you would start perfecting some of these techniques and that is where you start advancing in your own understanding and investing in more self-learning; training on-the-job and mentoring to name a few. The folly that most of us make as we advance in building our own core competencies on our subject, we fail to combine the below:

• declarative knowledge refers to facts or information stored in the memory
• procedural knowledge refers to the knowledge of how to perform a specific skill or task

If you now go back to the first para and you reflect on competencies to advancing oneself, you now understand that it is a particular set of core competencies that make oneself recognized and credible as an expert for a particular role.

Summary : Every professional field has their own competency-based framework that is based on combination of procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge. It is important we develop a 'cheat sheet' and monitor how we are progressing to build our core competencies that help us advance as professionals and gain credibility known for our expertise contrary to just our experience over the years as skilled professionals.

Disclaimer : This article is based on my own experiences and are my personal views. I hope you enjoyed reading it and this would help you investing in reading more on how KM.

About the Author : Michael Sequeira is an independent consultant who is passionate about helping organizations discover how KM can be a key differentiator for their business, teams, and clients. If you would like to learn more about his background and get-in-touch you can connect with him on LinkedIn.