How many skills are there in your tool box?

Do you have a couple of good skills and a few that you think you need to develop? Do you believe that you have many skills? Can you list them effortlessly? That’s what happened to me…..

Can you list your top 10 skills in 10 seconds?

The first time I came across this question was during reading a tweet asking to write down your top 10 skills. I thought It is easy and it would popup in less than 10 seconds. However I felled in the traditional trap. Currently, I conduct training sessions online for maintenance and technical skills. Those skills I jotted down quickly were teaching, simplifying, maintenance , management, coding, then I came to a halt. What’s next? I was frustrated so I went online to check what are my skills. I had stumbled to a web site with a quiz titled “Your skills are the things you’ve learned to do well and are an important part of who you are.“.

It was good to remind me of some more skills. I am good at making videos &presentations, using my computer, driving any car, using any software and computer language, learning new topics and reflecting upon them easily and quickly. That was great but I had barely touched the 10 skills seal. I wasn’t that satisfied.

After 25 years of diversified field and projects experience I can’t be that limited. What popped up a new set of skills was a question: what I was doing along those years?

A deep digging question, what are you doing regularly?

I used to quickly comprehend the tasks that was required from me. You know, usually when you are starting, you never get a clear set of requirements for your tasks. They consider it a part of the practical training to come up with the steps that will lead you to accomplish the task. I used to be good at this. But what can I call it. I remembered that When I was acquiring my PMP (Project Management professional) Certification we call it WBS (Work Breakdown structure). WBS is a way to divide large projects to get things done faster and more efficiently. The goal of a WBS is to make a large project more manageable.

May be back to those days my first project was adding a push button to a local operation panel but had accomplished it good from the first time. That gifted me within my first working year a project of a complete operation room. That’s a long story that needs a chat of its own. But any how, I can add projects related skills to my skills. Engineers by default hold those skills during their daily jobs. Many of the manufacturing shop platform jobs and even office jobs that are occupied by engineers needs project management skills. Examples of those skills are communication, communication management, budgeting, budget management, organizing skills, time management, and many more.

To be frank and not biased to engineers and project managers, everyone of us has project management skills regardless of what you are doing. Once you are doing something successfully, then you had managed its project components successfully.

Why we need to know our personal skills?

This question might be confusing for those who didn’t try a skills quiz before. So we need to be sure of the reality of the huge amount of skills each of us has at any moment of time

When I continued to read more on this quiz, it was highly optimistic it says that at any moment we have around 700 skills and they had started listing the essential 76 one. You can read it in this link. Those skills was basic but actually they seemed to me as skills that not everyone carry in their toolbox.

The routine daily jobs and the tasks that we do easily are usually overlooked when we think of our skills. When someone speaks about skills, usually the examples given are those of the extraordinary skills. Moreover skills related to achievements are more in our focus.

Why we need to know the reality of the huge amount of skills each of us has? As usual when you bring something to your attention you can use it efficiently. And, you can find creative ways of applying it. When you are using it in the autopilot mode, it is there but you don’t know about it. Moreover, you won’t be able to build upon it.

If we believe that each one of us has some shadow areas, then part of the truth about the undetected skills is the denial of those skills. You can find good examples both outside and inside the business arena. One of them is hiding your comic ability in favor or pursuing a serious job or a title.

Why our skills are not obvious?

Unfortunately, when I looked over the web, the main usage of a skill was to land you a job. Skills that do not find a place in our job resume usually find themselves among the drawers of the hobbies toolbox. Employers when post a job to look for an employee to fill a gap, they ask for the most critical skills to the job. Recruiting team needs a well itemized skills and talents that they can measure to nominate a successful candidate. The silo or department where the new comer is going to land might not have awareness of the full scale of the skills needed in this job.

When looking for an Electrical team leader, you would look for some skills as managing a team, reading electrical drawings, troubleshooting, etc. Some other skills that are industry related might be considered. Examples are experienced in central climate control units, DC drives, etc. However there is a whole range of skills behind those obvious hands-on ones. Those skills are crucial for the job but are never looked for. Few examples are the time estimation, the numerical skills of calculations and conversions, writing reports, using web based apps, and a surprising one is having a readable hand writing. Those skills might not be core for the job but would give you hard time receiving and validating this new employee’s output.

Anyhow, if we couldn’t see those side essential skills in ourselves. it would be hard to spot them in others. Not to mention formalizing them to be part of a job qualification.

Do you know that any team leader or any higher leading position has a role to boost his team productivity? Due know that motivating others is a skill in it self? Even more, do you know that motivating your self should be preceding to motivating others and it is a skill of its own. To know the top ten (10) things to prepare in the workplace to boost your team productivity you can read this chat: Productivity, is it a carrot or a stick?

In conclusion,

We had spotted some essential but side skills that are usually overlooked to inspire you to explore your full range of skills. Why? We need to know the reality of the huge amount of skills each of us has. Because, when you bring something to your attention you can use it efficiently. And, you can find creative ways of applying it. When you are using it in the autopilot mode, it is there but you don’t know about it. Moreover, you won’t be able to build upon it.