Competences have come under attack in recent years. They are either used wrongly or picked apart to find fault. David Sleightholm comes to their defence

I’ve been involved with competences in their various forms for many years, and I’m noticing a pattern in articles written about them in coaching journals. They tend either to set them up to do things they were never intended to do, and then analyse how and why they fail, or they document poor practice in their deployment. The conclusion is that they are a bad thing. I...