From what we value to where we can go
There is an unspoken truth about how we value skills and it’s impacting our progress. Skills labeled “hard” rule our thinking about what matters most, while the skills that allow people and organizations to function and thrive are not given their share of focus, attention, and care. From education to work, we have underinvested in certain skills that some believe are innate and can’t be taught.
Why?
In part, because these skills are hard to measure. In part, because we’ve convinced ourselves that these skills are less important or urgent. Ultimately, organizations don’t hire based on these skills so people devalue them as well.
But what are we missing when we miss the real skills that help people and organizations thrive?
A lot.
A study by the Society of Human Resource Management found that it takes the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary to find and train a replacement. That means for a position that makes $60,000 a year, you can expect to spend $30,000 to $45,000 to replace them. It gets worse with highly skilled jobs, according to the Center for American Progress. They found that replacement costs for positions at a senior or executive level can go up to 213% of the employee’s salary.
One of the most common reasons professionals change jobs are their managers and company culture. The cost of this voluntary turnover adds up. According to Gallup, U.S. businesses lost a trillion dollars each year due to voluntary departures before the Great Resignation. High turnover means lost money for the employee and the employer, and are directly influenced by undervalued real skills.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Real skills aren’t set in stone
When someone asks you what skills you have, you might focus on what society sees as teachable vocational skills. These are skills we are taught in school when studying engineering, copywriting, law, medicine, data science, web development, graphic design, etc.
Think a little longer and a little deeper and you might consider other skills you have that are hugely important for personal and organizational success but that traditional education doesn’t attempt to teach or can’t be measured on a test.
Seth Godin calls these real skills and they include interpersonal skills, leadership skills, skills of charisma, diligence, making contributions, being perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring and motivated, being a deep listener with patience, and so much more.
It’s a misconception that these skills are innate. In actual fact, these skills are learned. Anyone can improve them, practice them, and change them — including you.
The real skills for transformation
Because real skills are routinely undervalued there is no definitive system to organize and explain that helps us consider the ways they contribute to progress. Think of this as well as a way to move the conversation forward so that we value, invest, and treat these skills with the importance they deserve.
To offer a start to understanding, here are five categories of real skills created by Seth Godin.
Seth Godin’s Five Categories of Real Skills
- Self Control — Once you’ve decided that something is important, are you able to persist in doing it, without letting distractions or bad habits get in the way? Doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short run.
- Productivity — Are you skilled with your instrument? Are you able to use your insights and your commitment to actually move things forward? Getting non-vocational tasks done.
- Wisdom — Have you learned things that are difficult to glean from a textbook or a manual? Experience is how we become adults.
- Perception — Do you have the experience and the practice to see the world clearly? Seeing things before others have to point them out.
- Influence — Have you developed the skills needed to persuade others to take action? Charisma is just one form of this skill.
With these categories in mind, we can begin to imagine and create personal and work environments that value the skills that build up individuals, teams, and organizations into changemakers.
Practice makes progress
At altMBA we develop and practice the real skills for success. Our curriculum uses scenario-style learning paired with writing assignments that draw on the experience within the scenario while answering a bigger leadership question. All of this focuses on the goal of helping you practice and hone real skills to transform the ways you lead and work with others.
How does this translate into real practice?
The altMBA might help you practice a collaborative mindset (self-control), facilitation of discussion (collaboration), intercultural competence from our diversity of students from all over the world (wisdom), strategic thinking (perception), and/or negotiation skills (influence). At the altMBA, you work with and learn from your students and the experiences you have together.
You will also get feedback from our team of experts who push you and your fellow students to go deeper, just like you would with submitting a deliverable or task for work. Every session the material is tweaked to keep it current and ensure that the curriculum fosters real skill development. That’s our difference. That’s the real skills at work.
The secret behind the skills
We believe that hard skills aren’t the only skills that affect change, but we need to start creating environments that show that many skills are important and all skills are teachable.
We need to re-evaluate and return to a focus on real skills needed for real-world experiences and interactions, not just the ones that look good on a paper resume or can be evaluated on a test.
We must practice self-control, productivity, wisdom, perception, and influence to create better versions of ourselves and our organizations.
The altMBA teaches these real skills because we know that the best organizations and the best people are more effective, more impactful, and find work more enjoyable when the work goes beyond what is easy, safe, and quantifiable.
We know the secret to creating transformational progress is the real skills that have existed all along. Join us in the altMBA and let us help you expand these skills so you can achieve the changes you wish to see.
