Soft-skills are dead, drag meta-skills
Working as an engineer in a fairly large company that is engaged in repairing ships, I have firsthand experience of all the power of soft skills, but not those that we are under the sauce of simply necessary skills offer to learn on the Internet, and those that actually work, each of them has been tested in real life and brought in its time benefits, more than occupy all the time spent on his training and learning. Therefore, below I would like to analyze with you those skills, which only in my humble opinion will work and could be useful to you in everyday life. So let’s make a little excursion. What I personally call soft skills of a healthy person.
P.S. In the Internet a lot of different information about softskills and how to develop nothing to do with reality, which are distributed by incompetent HR and just as successfully copied by uninformed employees.
And so to the point, the soft skills of a healthy person, which I will call meta-skills.
Meta-skills are the foundation on which you can move through life and grow more consciously and qualitatively on all levels at once: personal, social, organizational. Since everything inside our thinking and psyche is interconnected in one way or another, the development of meta-skills affects the whole system at once.
Meta-skills in my understanding are soft-skills that form a system and foundation, which have real life applications, rather than on paper of another mediocre HR.
Generally speaking any combination of meta-skills can be formed, which will be useful for you in real life and which you can improve and pump up to achieve the result.
To add specificity to all of the above, below I will break down what skills I refer to the META skills and how to train them:
1.Awareness as Self-Awareness
In English there is a wonderful term Self-awareness. It seems to me to be the closest to this concept.
Self-awareness as attention to oneself is when one understands for oneself what is going on, what thoughts and feelings are in the moment, and why exactly they are there. It helps to understand oneself better and to be more in touch with reality.
Coaching through questions to oneself in the moment: “What am I doing/thinking/feeling right now? Why? Why am I doing this? What are the sensations in the body?” There are many other practices, including meditative ones, you have to try and choose for yourself.
2. Resource Management
This is also partially a case of paying attention to yourself. But here it is more about action with that resource which we observe.
Understand yourself, become aware of how much power and resources are inside and outside (the team, family, time, money, activity — this is also all a resource), and learn to manage it. This includes work-life balance, time management, and much more. It is clear why this is a meta-skill: it affects a lot of things at once.
It is trained by various practices of self-discipline, time-management, implementing routines and habits. There is no single pattern to this kind of training. You have to try it out and pick it up for yourself. The work with motivation is also found here.
3. Focus management.
Where there’s focus, there’s energy.
Here is about focus in the sense of defining meaning, short-term and long-term goals, defining one’s desires, aspirations, values, and moving toward such a “lighthouse.
A good book about focus is Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
Many face the problem of determining direction in life, that very focus, but there are ways to understand and work through it.
Practice begins with looking inward: “Who am I? What do I want? What are my values and goals?” and then in practice it is an observation of what is actually being done and whether something is being done to move toward your goals as dictated by your own values. It sounds simple, it can be difficult in practice. It’s okay. =)
It intersects with self-acceptance. Because in order to know where to go, you have to decide who is going.
4. Unity of thought and action (To be, not to seem).
Everything seems clear here. It is a question of pure rationalism. Not to waste unnecessary energy on maintaining an image that does not exist in reality. Not to live someone else’s life, live your own.
Often arises on the background of educated pseudo-rightness. Since childhood we are taught to conform, and we adapt, and then we reap the consequences, wasting a lot of extra energy living someone else’s life that is not our own. Often leads to burnout and depression.
It is coached by questions to myself: “What do I really want? What am I really thinking/feeling right now? How do I feel in my body?”. Sounds like mindfulness training, but there’s more of a focus on unbalancing “being and seeming.”
5. Emotional intelligence.
Helps you interact better with the people around you. Understand, accept, listen and hear. Can be coached, there are many practices.
Book on the subject: “Emotional Intelligence. Why it can mean more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman.
There are also separate practices on developing empathy, deep listening, non-violent communication.
6. Co-creation instead of competition.
A mega-useful thing, applicable anywhere.
Evolutionarily we are drawn to compete, but it’s more rational to “join forces. The rational brain is much younger than the emotional brain, so this skill should be separately and consciously pumped. But the result is worth it.
Trained brainstorms and masterminds with a mentor, which helps to keep the format of co-creation and not roll into competition. Also helps to pump up the skills of nonviolent communication.
7. Growth mindset.
A great book on the subject: Mindset by Carol S. Dweck.
The essence of the skill is to develop the ability in every situation to see an opportunity for growth, even if the situation is not in your favor.
It’s coached by the questions: “What exactly went wrong? How can it be fixed? What do you need to do to make sure the mistake doesn’t happen again?” No reflection on “I’m a turd.” Be sure to record successes on your own account.
8. Self-acceptance.
Affects everything in general. A super megametan skill.
Helps take away the “I’m something else” reflection, where a lot of energy goes.
It sounds simple, it’s hard to do, just like always =)
There are tons of practices on the topic to practice, but I recommend seeing a therapist to speed up the process and get it flowing in a correct and safe way.
9. Acceptance of Others
Same as the previous point, but with an outward focus. More complicated, in fact. If you can somehow understand, forgive and rationalize yourself, and our brain can even help us in this, with others is more complicated.
It is also better to work through it with a therapist. Here and conflicts with parents, and with colleagues, and with the world at large.
Imagine how much energy will be released after you inside yourself pumped the acceptance of others, and these conflicts will be resolved. And how much easier it will be to build relationships with people and collectives.
10. Accepting Uncertainty
Hello, 2020. The year that showed us how important it is to be able to live and act in the face of uncertainty. An important skill. Works in conjunction with focus control.
If you are not frustrated by uncertainty, keep your focus and skillfully manage your resources, you can achieve your goals faster and easier. Every crisis confirms the truth of this thesis. Not only the strongest survives, but the one who doesn’t lose focus in uncertainty and breaks new ground.
Conclusion
This is my vision of the meta-skills that form the foundation of my life in the highly competitive environment of engineers and managers of all kinds. Everything works on interconnections, so it’s important to build the whole system, develop it in harmony, and observe how what affects what. This helps you grow faster and more consciously, doing less pointless fidgeting.
You can assemble any number of soft skills from the listed meta-skills, their point is just that they stand above it all, that’s why they are “meta”.
Not claiming to be true, since I’m just an engineer working in a shipyard. But these skills have helped me build a career and develop…
For REDCAT Multiverse From Ellias
