WHAT NEW SKILLS ARE YOU DEVELOPING?

While home between trips one morning, and while at Starbucks for my reading time, I recently talked with a young man who was unemployed and was looking for work. He had just returned from a job interview and so when I asked him how it went, he waved his right hand back and forth in a gesture indicating it could have gone good or bad. He didn’t know and didn’t have a sense. As he gestured, he said, “just so so” and then he commented, “I don’t expect to get the job.” That’s when I asked, “So what skills do you have which you presented to the interviewer that you felt would get you that job?”

I supposed I could have asked the question too quickly because he asked me to repeat what I just said. When I did, he said, “I didn’t do that, I just gave him my resume and waited for his questions.” I then reflected back to him that it sounded to me that he had taken a passive role in the interview rather than an active role. Saying that, hie eyes widened. I said that it sounded to me that he was expecting his resume to sell himself to the employer instead of taking a proactive role of selling himself.

“Selling myself? Do you think that’s what I should do? [pause] That’s kind of strange, and I don’t know that I want to do that.”

“So it seems strange to you? [pause] Really? I thought you wanted a job and went to an interview to see if you could get a job. Maybe I misunderstood your intentions?” “No, that’s what I wanted.” I then asked him if getting the job was important enough to take an active role and a role of selling himself and the value that he would add to the company? He said, “Yes it was.” So I then asked if I could ask him a series of questions that would help him with that. He said that would be great. So I asked him the following allowing some time between the questions for him to reflect.

“What skills could you present to the interviewer that would indicate that you are able to add value to his business? ... And what other skills? . . . What new skills have you developed in the past two or three years that has made you more valued as an employee? . . . What skills are you currently working on developing? . . . How are you testing and refining those new skills?”

After the questions he told me that he had simply never thought about things in this way. “So how have you thought about things?” After he described how he had been thinking, I asked if thinking in terms of the skills that he had, that he was developing, and that he would be developing would be a useful way to think? He immediately said, “Yes, of course.” So I asked, “What would be the benefit to you to begin thinking this way? How would this new frame of mind support you in your own personal development?”

After we completed that conversation, he asked me about myself and what I do. I said that I model

human excellence. Then I told him about the Meta-Coach Training that I was bringing to Colorado this July and how that a professional coach enables people to identify and unleash potential knowledge and skill to be more effective and productive. When he then wanted to know more about what that entailed, I talked about closing the knowing—doing gap and about the unleashing process.

He said that the idea of developing skills seemed abstract and that he didn’t know where to begin. So I described about the idea of modeling excellence as simply looking for what people do when they operate at their best and then interviewing them about how they do that. It is about being very curious and asking a lot of questions: What job do you want? What job do you want to eventually have? Who is currently able to do that job? What is that person doing that you want to be able to do that you want to be able to do? What does that person think, believe, understand, conceptualize, etc. about that? What does that person feel about it? What emotional state is that person in when he or she performs that skill at his or her very best? How does the person talk when dong that skill? What is the language or linguistics that facilitate that skill? What are the actions and behaviors of that performance?

Upon asking this I asked if he knew and could distinguish his four human responses or powers which are the component parts of a skill— of any skill. I commented that I had just presented them. “Did you notice? They are so obvious that most people do not. Yet the fact is that we can break down any skill to four things: The person’s mental or mind and how the person thinks. The person’s emotional state and feelings. The person’s language and linguistics. The person’s actions and behaviors.

“Just find out what an expert in this field or area thinks, feels, says, and does and you will find out the component aspects of the desired skill.” “Really?” “Yes, it is really that easy and, at the same time, it is that profound. It’s one of the things we teach in the trainings.”

Precisely because new skills can be developed, and every new skill provides you a more extensive foundation for your career as well as your effectiveness as a human being, that’s one reason why every year I identify some new skill or skills that I personally want. Once I do that it is simply a matter of finding people really good at that skill, learning as much as I can about it, and then establishing a development plan for deliberately practicing that skill. How about you? What new skills are you learning and developing right now? What will be the next skill you’ll develop? Here’s to your ever-developing and unleashing of your potentials!