We don’t execute skills in a silo

Skills, Capabilities, and Competencies! OH MY!

We all seem to be working on them these days - identifying them, assessing them, figuring out what they mean.

Regardless of which word you prefer, we’re all trying to do the same thing, which is to figure out how to make each employee perform better. So, we can create teams that perform better. So, we can improve the company’s performance and bottom line.

We document each skill or capability, define each one, and ask ourselves, how do you teach this skill? What would a good course on analytics look like? What would a good course on influencing look like? ????♀?

That’s when we create a beautiful learning program that will tell your employee what this skill is and how to use it. Then, they’ll practice the skill, and say what they will apply to their work to improve. ??

Then, weeks and months go by, and well, we don’t see improvement in how they work. The team doesn’t improve how they work. And the company’s performance and bottom line, well, stays the same.

But why?

Because we don’t use skills in a silo. In any interaction, activity, or task you do, you are applying more than one skill. For example, when creating a budget tracker in Excel, you are using all the Excel skills you know to build the tracker. You are using problem solving skills to figure out which formulas you need. You are using design skills as you consider how the tracker should look for easy viewing. You are using analytical skills as you determine what all the numbers are telling you about the state of your budget.

You could learn those skills separately and practice them separately. But, what you haven’t done is practice them together. You haven’t learned how to apply them together to get your work done.

Once you learn how to combine the application of your various skills to do any task or role, that’s when you will improve how you work and your performance. Once your team learns how to combine your skills with your various team members’ skills to complete a project, that’s when you improve how your team works and performs. And, once all the teams in your organization?learn how to combine each team’s skills, that’s when the company’s performance and bottom line will improve.

So, how do you do this?

Don’t build learning around a single skill. Build learning around the behaviors associated with a task, project, or role. The behaviors will be a mix of the skills required to complete the task, project, or role successfully.

Scenario-based learning, simulations, project-based learning, and other similar story-based types of learning are great for practicing behaviors and giving employees a safe space to practice combining skills in different ways to be successful. If created correctly, these experiences will have opportunities where the employee could fail, just like in real life so they can learn how not to combine and apply the skills.

Employees have mastered their skills when they can instinctively adapt how they combine their skills to complete any situation that comes their way, including ones not covered in the learning experience. ??

So, let me repeat: We don’t execute skills in a silo. So, why are we learning them in a silo? And, why are we creating learning centered around one skill? ????♀?