Coursera : Skills and Strength
How skillful are you?
It's an unfortunate fact that many people actually overestimate their level of skills in particular area. They often overestimate their intelligence, or their communication skills, a whole range of different things. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect if you want to look it up. It's often illustrated by the fact that most people estimate their level of skill as being above average, which is of course statistically impossible. Part of the problem is that if you're inexperienced in using a skill, you don't necessarily know what really good actually looks like.And so you don't know what the end of the scale for that skill actually is. And so, one of the things you need to do, in order to be able to estimate your skills and your worth to an employer is to be realistic about how good you actually are, compared to other people. But also, compared to the demands of the job. One of the characteristics you often find in people who are very skillful is that they are constantly aware of how they need to develop, and they are constantly looking for ways to improve.And that's always a really good starting point when it comes to thinking about your skills.
Do transferable skills actually exist?
Lot of people talk about transferable skills. Even in this course, we all talk about them ourselves. But it's important to ask, what do we actually really mean by that? Because skills, generally, are actually quite a broad concept, they cover a whole range of different behaviors. What they actually mean will vary from context to context. So, when we talk about communication skills, that will actually mean very different things. If you're talking about a teacher or a broadcaster, okay, there'll be some overlap, but there'll also be something things that are actually very different about how they use communication skills within their jobs. And so, maybe a better concept to think about are translatable skills.How do you translate how a skill is used in one setting, in one job and convert that to understand how it's used in a different setting, in a different job? And that will make you more effective when you are promoting your skills to an employer, especially if you're moving sectors or moving roles, or even moving into a, a, a higher level job through promotion.It's not, no good just talking about the skills that you have used before. You've got to think about how you translate those skills into the new context, to face the new challenges in this new role.
How can you avoid going round and round in circles in career decision making.
Sometimes our clients have found it difficult to make career decisions, because they don't spent long enough, on one option, to really evaluate the implications. They just flit, from one option to the other. Backwards and forwards without really making any progress. So one thing you can do is pretend, that you've chosen an option, and just live with it for a few days. Do what you would do, if you had chosen that option. Behave in the way, you'd behave, if that was the choice you made. Start to take action, as to follow up to that choice. And see how you feel about it. So, when you're considering different career options, one thing you can do, is to take one of your options. And pretend that, that is your choice, and that you've ruled out the other options. And then live with it, for a little while. Start to behave as if, this is the choice you've made. Start to follow it up, until you get to the point of no return. And then stop.Go back, to the next option on your list, and pretend that you've chosen that one instead. And then follow that through and behave as if that's the choice you've made.This allows you to spend a little bit more time with each option, without other options interfering in getting in the way of you finding out what the implications are. And so it's a way of, focusing on exploring in a little bit more detail.
So what are the skills you're developing in your current role?
We often find that clients find it difficult to identify what their skills are they, they are actually using on a day to day basis. The one exercise that we sometimes get people to do is to imagine you are recruiting your replacement. You're about to leave and it's your responsibility to find somebody to take over your job. What kind of challenges will they face? What are the things that they'll have to deal with, in that job that make it difficult? And what kind of qualities will they need to demonstrate, in order to do the job as well as you do it? And sometimes taking that outside perspective,just looking at the job rather than look at yourself, helps you to identify the skills more easily
Can you illustrate your own personal values?
In some of the forth coming weeks, we'll talk about how you present yourself effectively to other people. And one of the things you might want to think about is, how do you present your values to other people? What examples can you give that illustrate you putting your own values into action? How would somebody else know that this is more important to you than other things? How can you use your values systematically to help you make a better decision?
My first question always is, what do you want?
And in that answer, you, I mean Candace tell me the idea of where they see themself when they do that. It's so important to be really clear about what you want, because someone that has come across very clear, it's much easier to find the right position.It's much easier.So self awareness and the question that I typically ask to give self awareness is how, for more experience typically, is how you compare yourself with your peers. What makes you different to them? And that is such a difficult question to answer because not everyone is really clear. But that question makes them think and if someone is [INAUDIBLE] answer the question, for me it makes my life easier.
What's a skill and what's a strength?
Many employers have actually moved from competency based recruitment, which is focused on skills, to what's called strengths based recruitment. Now, strengths are actually skills but they're skills that you have naturally and are actually motivated to use because you enjoy using them. And, you get an intrinsic reward from behaving in those ways.And, a lot of employers are interested in those, because these aren't just things that you will do because you have to, these are things you'll do because you love doing it. And that means you'll put more effort in and also, will get better results because of that. And so it's worth thinking about, not just what your skills are, but also, what your strengths are. What are the things that you would do even if nobody paid you, because you just enjoyed doing them? What are the things that actually give you a strong sense of reward? And so actually they combine not just your skills, but your values too.
How can you investigate an organization's values?
Many organizations put their organizational values on their websites. And quite often these are a list of very nice words. But, how can you know what they really mean? Because it's worth finding out what that organization really stands for. Because that will affect how it treats you, and whether you will get the rewards and satisfaction you want from your job. So some good questions to ask around organization of values are, what do they actually mean in practice? How do they behave in a way that's consistent with their values? Can they give you examples about how those values are expressed on a day to day basis? Now you may want to ask those questions as part of the questions you can ask at the end of an interview, but that might be a little bit too late. And so I'd encourage you to, as you're investigating different options, to actually ask those questions as part of your networking investigations. Now just as we asked you about your values in terms of the costs you're willing to pay in order to receive the benefit of those values, you may want to ask a similar question to employers. For example, how much of their revenue do they reinvest back in training and development if they've decided that's important to them. You may even want to ask your own interviewers how they particularly in person demonstrate the values of the organization. Now, there's a risk in doing this. You may upset some people. But if they're not ready to demonstrate their values, how do you know that they're actually true?
Aside from the other advice that we've given you about decision making. There are some systematic ways in which you can use your values to help with your decision making.
One way is to list all the options that you're trying to make a decision about. And then, list all the values, especially, the kind of top three values that are most important to you.And then rather than trying to look at all of them together. Take one option, and one value. And just look at that option from the point of view of that value. How does it satisfy that value? Is it within your range in that value? What does that value make you feel about that particular option? And now move to the next option, using the same value.And the next option.And then stop. Move to another value, and look at all the options again from the point of view of this new value. And what that does is it helps you to focus on particular information that you need about all of your options. In relation to all of your values.It's very similar to an exercise that some people use for decision making within business called Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. It just forces you to take different perspectives sequentially.
Do you believe you can grow?
Your own beliefs about your potential for development will have a serious impact on whether you actually develop. There is a psychology researcher called Carol Dweck who's done some interesting experiments on our own beliefs. She gave some children a standard test to do. And for some of the children she gave the feedback you did really well on this test. You must be very intelligent. To some other groups of children she gave the feedback you did really well on this test. You must have worked really hard.She then gave the children an option. They could do another test at the same level, or they could do a harder test, at a more advanced level.The children who'd been told they were intelligent chose to do the test at the same level and on average did worse. The children who've been told they worked hard, chose to do the harder test and again, on average, did better. And, this lead Carol Dweck to come up with the idea of self theories, our beliefs about our potential. And there are two extremes. At one extreme what's called the fixed mindset.We believe that our talents, our intelligence, our skills, are set at birth. They're fixed.There's nothing we can do about them.So the main aim there is to preserve our assessment of ourselves.We don't want to find out that we're less intelligent than we thought we were. We don't want to find out that we're less skillful than we thought we were because, because at fixed, there's nothing we can do about it.However, at the other end, there's what's called the growth mindset, where we believe that all our abilities, our intelligence, our communication skills, whatever it is, they're subject to growth and change. The more effort we put in, the better we can get at something. And so in that mindset, you'll tend to approach new challenges with an open mind. You'll tend to take a few more risks and expand yourself a little bit more. If you do fail, it's not the end of the world because you can always learn from that and get better. And this is a really essential way of thinking about your career.It helps you, not just in your own career development, but also in terms of how you improve within a job. So it's an important lesson to remember,that your beliefs drive your behaviors and your behaviors determine your outcome, success or failure.
