Role Competence
What is at first experienced as a promise (“You will be going to school soon!”), can also turn out unfavourably (“So much homework again!”). Once upon a time one was a ruler or farmer for life. Dealing with roles, in this society, must be learned from childhood on. Where does the challenge lie?
- One must be able to adequately fulfil different roles (i.e. able to obey as well as give instructions)
- One must find suitable roles for oneself and obtain qualifications for these
- One requires an inner independence for each of these roles. One must not completely merge with any of these roles (“Being a mother is everything!”, “Without my job I could not live!”), because otherwise the risk is too high in the event that one loses a role.
- One must be able to say goodbye to and separate from roles well, because nowadays it is highly unusual that one can remain in one or two roles for life.
- In today’s life one can hardly escape roles anymore: Even an Alpine farmer without a wife and family, without pension and without membership to a club remains accountable for the environmental specifications of the EU.
Organisations are dependent upon their members educating themselves for, or bringing role competence with them. Interesting is the fact that schooling for this competence has a very subordinate role in both the classical education systems as well as, often, in the internal organisational personnel development provisions.