How Are Your Skills Shaped? (Book Excerpt)
The following is an excerpt for the upcoming eBook, “Football Coding and Startups”.
Skill Shapes
T-Shaped
This is the “Generalising Specialist. Having a “T-Shaped” skillset is a way of describing someone who is in many ways a specialist in a particular skill or domain, but still has light and high-level knowledge over a breadth of different topics. When someone knows that they must be very focused on a particular domain but does not want the other ones to be a complete blackbox (where they have no idea what other topics are about), but rather a greybox (where they have basic understanding of the purpose of what’s happing), this seems to be that ideal descriptor.
Perhaps a business professional or an MBA candidate knows some of the purposes behind why they hire cryptography and security experts for their business. It does not mean they have to architect, build, quality check and upkeep the entire thing.
I-Shaped
This is the specialist. This individual has world-class theoretical knowledge about one domain or subject. A PhD student is an excellent example of someone who fits into this category.
This site has a great visual of the reasons.
Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge:
With a bachelor’s degree, you gain a specialty (the little bump on the diagram of your knowledge). Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge, and once you’re at the boundary, you focus: You push at the boundary for a few years until one day, the boundary gives way and that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:
[…]
Pi-Shaped
This is very similar to T-Shaped skills. The main difference is that this individual has two domains of expertise.
Comb-Shaped
This is the epitome of a functional generalist/multipotentialite with a wide, but applicable and specialized skill set in a variety of deep skills. This is the hardest to maintain. In reality, some skills would be more.
It is important to be honest with yourself in how much energy you can invest in each skill.
Skill Value Building and Spillover
With a set of skills we have, the more time we put into developing them, the stronger they become. As such, these skills grow in value to the market you can use them in and they become skills that can generate revenue for you. In my opinion, monetizablility is not the end goal of developing the skill. It simply brings the skill to a level of sustainability. Once this skill becomes marketable and generates revenue, you are able to safely spend more and more time developing it. The passion exercise in this book helps staunchly determine which passions/skills are hobbies versus revenue-generating.
Hungry for more? Read the rest in the eBook! Head to natubook.com to get the full passage, free exercises, and more to help you fulfill your potential.
Click here (Natubook.com)
