Nancy was a special needs teacher and assuredly made for this special calling. She loved teaching, encouraging, motivating, entertaining, listening, and dealing with her students’ feelings. However, over time, the job became increasingly burdened with administrative work such as reporting, documenting, and maintaining records.
Despite her enjoyment of helping special needs kids, Nancy decided to leave because the administrative burdens of the role continued to expand and were too much to tolerate.
Nancy’s job no longer aligned with her motivating skills because of the administrative red tape.
To review, skills fall into four categories:
Motivated Skills – Skills you’re good at and enjoy doing consistently. For example, you might love conceptualizing, dealing with ambiguity, or working with numbers.
Burnout Skills – Skills you’re good at, but do not enjoy doing regularly. For example, you might be proficient at working with numbers but find it tedious and draining.
Developmental Skills – Skills you would like to do more but haven’t had an opportunity to develop, such as managing others. Perhaps you love managing your home budget but haven’t had a chance with budget responsibility at work.
Low Priority Skills – Skills that no matter how much time you invest you don’t seem to significantly improve your skill level. That’s OK because you don’t like to do them, either!
Your goal should be to attract motivated and developmental skills and avoid or reduce burn out and low priority skills.
You can either purchase a Knowdell Motivated Skills Sort online at www.careerplanner.com under “Career Tools for Individuals” to assess your skill interests or use the manual exercise provided below to clarify your motivated skills. The cost of the motivated skills online sort is under US$15. If you prefer to identify your motivated skills manually, you can review the list of fifty-two common skills provided below or download the exercise at MyYouMap.com.
Manual Skills Identification
Instructions: Review the following fifty-two skills and their corresponding definitions.
Check all skills you think you would enjoy consistently performing at work.
Act as Liaison – Represent, serve as a link between individuals or groups
Adapt to Change – Easily and quickly respond to changing assignments, work settings and priorities
Ambiguity (Deal with) – Be comfortable and effective with issues that lack clarity, structure, or certainty
Analyze – Break down and figure out problems logically
Budget – Economize, save, stretch money or other resources
Classify – Group, categorize, systematize data, people, or things
Computer Literate – Develop, organize, complete tasks/projects using software: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
Conceptualize – Conceive and internally develop concepts and ideas
Counsel – Facilitate insight and personal growth, guide, advise, coach students, employees, or clients
Customer Service – Effectively solve problems and challenges to satisfy customers
Deal with Feelings – Listen, accept, empathize, show sensitivity, defuse anger, use humor, appreciate
Delegate – Achieve effective results by assigning tasks to others
Design – Structure new or innovative practices, programs, products or environments
Entertain/Perform – Amuse, sing, dance, create art, play music for, demonstrate or speak to an audience
Estimating – Appraise value or cost
Evaluate – Assess, review, or critique feasibility or quality
Expedite – Speed up production or services, troubleshoot problems, streamline procedures
Ideas (Generate) – Reflect upon, conceive of, dream up, brainstorm ideas
Initiate Change – Exert influence to change status quo, exercise leadership to bring about new direction
Implement – Provide detailed follow-through of policies and plans
Improvise – To effectively think, speak, and act without preparation
Innovate/Invent – Create unique ideas or combine existing ideas to obtain a new or unique result
Interview for Information – Draw out subjects through insightful questioning
Leadership – Organizing, motivating, providing direction to a group of people to achieve a common goal
Maintain Records – Keep accurate and up-to-date records, log, record, itemize, collate, tabulate data
Make Arrangements – Coordinate events and handle logistics
Make Decisions – Make major, complex, or frequent decisions
Manage Time – Ability to prioritize, structure and schedule tasks to maximize effort and meet deadlines
Mentor – Educate, guide, coach, or counsel a less accomplished or junior colleague
Mediate – Manage conflict and reconcile differences
Monitor – Keep track of the movement of data, people, and things
Motivate – Recruit involvement, mobilize energy, stimulate peak performance
Multi-task – Effectively manage a variety of tasks and projects simultaneously
Negotiate – Bargain for rights or advantages
Numbers (Work with) – Calculate, compute, understand, solve numerical/quantitative problems
Observe – Study, scrutinize, examine data, people or things, scientifically.
Perceive Intuitively – Sense, show insight, and foresight
Plan/Organize – Define goals and objectives, schedule and develop projects or programs
Portray Images – Sketch, draw, illustrate, paint, photograph
Proofread/Edit – Check writing for proper usage and stylistic flair, make improvements
Read for Information – Research written resources efficiently and exhaustively
Research Online – Use search engines on the Internet to gather and organize information and data
Sell – Promote a person, company, goods or services, convince of merits, raise money
Supervise – Oversee and direct the work of others
Synthesize – Integrate ideas and information, combine diverse elements into a coherent whole
Teach/Train – Inform, explain, give instruction to students, employees, or customers
Team Work – Easily and effectively work with others to obtain results
Test – Measure proficiency, quality, or validity, check and double check
Use Mechanical Abilities – Assemble, tune, repair, or operate engines or other machinery
Visualize – Imagine possibility, see in “mind’s eye”
Write – Compose reports, letters, articles, ads, stories, or educational materials
Skill Theme Identification
The same fifty-two skills are listed again below, this time grouped by skill relatedness, or category, such as Administrative, Leadership, and Interpersonal skills.
At this point, you should have finished selecting your motivated skills. Now, transfer your motivated skills to the table below by underlining or highlighting.
After you’re done transferring each motivated skill under the categories below, observe where your motivated skills are predominantly themed and write down your top three categories.
I intentionally did not display skills according to category during the initial selection exercise above
to avoid the category influencing the skills you chose to highlight. For example, if you’re a people manager, you could be tempted to highlight the skills under Supervise because you felt you should.
SKILLS BY CATEGORY
Administrative
Budget
Classify
Maintain Records
Artistic & Mechanical
Entertain/Perform
Portray Images
Use Mechanical Abilities
Conceptual & Creative
Ambiguity (Deal with)
Conceptualize
Design
Ideas (Generate)
Improvise
Innovate/Invent
Strategize
Synthesize
Visualize
Interpersonal
Act as Liaison
Counsel
Deal with Feelings
Mediate
Perceive Intuitively
Teach/Train
Teamwork
Leadership
Initiate Change
Leadership
Mentor
Motivate
Manage Process & Projects
Adapt to Change
Customer Service
Expedite
Implement
Make Arrangements
Manage Time
Monitor
Multitask
Plan/Organize
Research & Analysis
Analyze
Evaluate
Interview for Information
Observe
Read for Information
Research Online
Sales
Negotiate
Sell
Supervisory
Decision Making
Delegate
Supervise
Technical & Information
Computer Literacy
Estimating
Numbers (Work with)
Proofread/Edit
Test
Write
My Motivated Skills Insights
What do you notice about where your motivated skills are themed? Are you surprised by the results? Do these skills and their corresponding categories reflect the requirements of your current or most recent role? If you’re considering a career transition, how do your motivated skills align with careers you’re considering?
Capture your insights:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Word on Transferable Skills
Recently, I read survey results from a Harris poll conducted for the University of Phoenix. In that poll, a staggering 86% of workers in their twenties said they wanted to change careers, followed by 66% of those in their thirties, and 60% in their forties. Despite most workers having career plans in earlier years, 73% said they did not land in the career they expected.
With so many people desiring a career change, the ability to identify and communicate transferable skills is crucial. Regardless of role, many employers seek several key skills:
• Meeting deadlines
• Solving problems
• Organizing and managing projects
• Managing people
• Negotiation skills
• Computer skills
• Speaking in public
• Effective writing
• Managing budgets
• Customer focus
Korn Ferry reports that 85% of skills are transferable from job to job and only 15% of skills are specific to a role. For example, Bryan was a financial advisor who temporarily transitioned to a math teacher and then transitioned again into a desired role as a regional sales manager at a utilities company.
While a financial advisor and a regional sales manager at a utility company are in different industries and might not seem related, they are. Both jobs involve relationship building, persuading others, communicating ideas, strategic planning, marketing, account management, new business development, client relationship management, building rapport, being results-driven, solving problems, listening, creating customer solutions, and providing customer service.
The biggest obstacle that prevents people from seeing skills as portable is binding industry jargon to one’s skills. I frequently see people do this on their resumes. They include all the industry-specific language that prevents a skill from being perceived as stand-alone. Transferable. When you strip away the unnecessary industry lingo, a skill is a skill. Don’t believe me? Check this out:
This was one of Bryan’s resume bullets before:
Built and managed all aspects of a 65-million-dollar book of business consisting of individual, retirement, qualified plan, nonprofit and foundation assets. This included client communication, individual stock and bond selection, mutual fund analysis and selection, separate account manager due diligence and selection, pricing of advisory services, supervision of sales assistant, development and review of new business acquisition plan.
This was the same resume bullet with industry jargon removed:
Built and managed all aspects of a national $65 million book of business; included account management, client communications, development and review of new business acquisition plan, pricing, and supervision of sales staff.
Can you see how the former bullet would be a turn-off when trying to transition to a new role or industry, while the latter uses familiar and accessible language, regardless of industry?
Resumes will be covered later in “Show the World!”, but I want to drive home the point that your skills are far more transferable than you think! I will go into more depth in “Blaze Your Path” on the practical application of using your motivated skills to identify best fit roles.
Discover How You’re Wired
“There is an amazing power getting to know your inner self and learning how to use it and not fight with the world. If you know what makes you happy, your personality, interests and capabilities; just use them, and everything else flows beautifully.” – Juhi Chawla, Actress
The fourth pillar of career satisfaction is your personality-based interests. I could have used the term personality for
the fourth pillar of career satisfaction. However, I opted instead to concentrate on the career application of personality: How our personality, or “wiring”, influences career interests. I use the terms “wired” and “interests” interchangeably throughout this book with the understanding that these concepts are influenced by personality.
I met Luis, a true creative, in 2016. He had been working a routine job while his heartfelt interests were expressing creativity and having an impact on people. He told me he felt like a cork bobbing in the ocean and had completely lost sight of who he was. Luis’s problem was his work didn’t align with how he was wired, or his interests.
A discovery process prevalent in both research and practice is the personality-based Holland Occupational Themes named after American psychologist John Holland. His career interest research is also referred to as Holland’s Theory of Career Choice. Each person is inspired differently, from an interest point of view, depending on which personality pattern he or she identifies with.
In Holland’s book, Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers, he also argues that “a six-category scheme built on the assumption that there are only six kinds of people in the world is unacceptable on the strength of common sense alone, but a six-category scheme that allows a simple ordering of a person’s resemblance to each of the six models provides the possibility of seven-hundred-twenty different personality patterns.”
Holland’s six core interest types are:
Realistic – The Doers
Investigative – The Thinkers
Artistic – The Creators
Social – The Helpers
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