Mapping Skills To Build Teams

Each week in the?Tech Exec: The Week That Was?newsletter I share my thoughts on a topic that I've worked on or discussed with a client, colleague, or within the CTO community.

Skills Mapping, as introduced by Daniel Terhorst-North , is an approach to help you build teams of the right people for the work, and identify skill gaps and learning / teaching opportunities. The transparent, self-assessment approach also helps to identify areas where stress and burnout could occur, as well as potential disengagement.

Why Care?

Whether you are leading a large organization or a single team, you need the right people with the right skills to deliver successfully, and you need to foster the growth of everyone in the team to keep them engaged. Skills Mapping can help you with this.

What Skills Mapping Is Not

This process is about identifying skills gaps and opportunities, and should not be used for any type of performance review. If you don’t already have a culture of trust in the team then you will need to build this first in order to get the value that comes from honest reflection.

The Process

First, you need to identify all of the skills that are important for the functioning of the team. This can include both technical skills as well as “soft” skills. Then everyone will score each skill three times, based on:

• their current proficiency
• how they think others in the team view them
• their ideal future state

It is most valuable if the scores are transparent across the team, so that everyone can see who holds what skills.

Scoring Process

Simply give each skill a score from 0 to 3.

0: No experience / novice

1: Competent - can follow established patterns or work with some guidance

2: Proficient - can work to high standard independently

3: Expert - can teach the subject

Analysis: Individual Level

Look through the scores for each person in the team individually so as to discover any skill misalignments. Make sure to clarify any assumptions you make with that person and discuss strategies that you can take together for their development.

• When the team thinks someone has skills at a higher level than they do, stress and burnout could occur. To close this gap, either learning / training is required, or the team expectations need to be reset.
• When the team does not think someone has a skill that they actually have, you have a lost opportunity. This could also be frustrating for that person, particularly if they aspire to really use and develop that skill. Can these skills be used for the benefit of the team?
• When the future state score is higher than the current score there is an indication that this is an area where there is a desire to learn. Are there things you can do to support this development?

Analysis: Team Level

Now take a global look at the scores across the team. Are there any skills where no one has a high score? Does any person have a large number of skills where they are the only one with a high score? Are there any opportunities for teaching, learning, and collaboration between people?

• Low scores across a skill, or high scores only with a single person, indicate a skills gap that can either be filled with training or bringing new people into the team.
• When one person has a high score in a skill and another person has an aspiration to increase their score, then this could be a teaching / learning opportunity.

Supporting Change

After the team has spent time and been vulnerable in completing the Skills Mapping, it is important to make sure they see value coming from the exercise. Let the team know about your general observations and any new ways of working or initiatives that you are planning or considering. Take the time to explore specific opportunities with each person individually. Refer to the Skills Mapping chart during planning meetings with the team to look for learning opportunities.

Learn More

I was lucky enough to be at Yow! in 2015 when Dan North introduced his Delivery Mapping process, which incorporates Skills Mapping. You can watch his talk here:?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9KiPzMPBpE

How do you make sure your teams have the right mix of skills? Have you had experience with skills mapping? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and?subscribe to?Tech Exec: The Week That Was?to get notified when the next article drops.

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