Why Develop a Skills Portfolio?

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Every­one is born with nat­ural tal­ents but no-one is born with the skills needed to take advan­tage of these nat­ural talents.

Nat­ural tal­ents tend to be asso­ci­ated with activ­i­ties that are so easy for us to do that we do them with­out really hav­ing to think about them or make much of an effort. Nat­ural tal­ents include such attrib­utes as: artis­tic, cre­ative, entre­pre­neur­ial, detail ori­ented, math­e­mat­i­cal, imag­i­na­tive, inno­v­a­tive, mechan­i­cally minded,  prac­ti­cal, lit­er­ary, per­sua­sive, artic­u­late, etc.

Nat­ural tal­ents on their own don’t really count for much. They are merely unful­filled poten­tial with­out the devel­op­ment of skills.

By devel­op­ing a ‘skills port­fo­lio’ you can iden­tify pat­terns that can help you dis­cover your nat­ural tal­ents, as well as help you iden­tify skills that you would like to develop in order to ful­fill spe­cific per­sonal goals.

What Are Skills?

I’m glad you asked that ques­tion. Skills are learned and prac­ticed abil­i­ties. They are influ­enced by our nat­ural tal­ents. Skills are much eas­ier to develop in areas we have a nat­ural tal­ent for. How­ever, even with­out a nat­ural tal­ent, skills can still be devel­oped for activ­i­ties and top­ics that a per­son has an inter­est in.

As an exam­ple, if a per­son has  a nat­ural entre­pre­neur­ial tal­ent , they still need to develop spe­cific entre­pre­neur­ial skills, such as devel­op­ing a viable busi­ness plan, find­ing clients, mar­ket­ing, etc., for the nat­ural entre­pre­neur­ial tal­ent to be of any value.

On the other hand, if an indi­vid­ual has a per­sonal inter­est in becom­ing an entre­pre­neur but they don’t have a nat­ural entre­pre­neur­ial tal­ent, they can still become an entre­pre­neur by learn­ing and devel­op­ing entre­pre­neur­ial skills. The process of becom­ing an entre­pre­neur will take longer and be more chal­leng­ing for a per­son who does not pos­sess a nat­ural entre­pre­neur­ial tal­ent, but it is still doable.

5 Basic Skills Groups

For any­one inter­ested in under­go­ing a major tran­si­tion in their life, it is a good idea to begin by iden­tify our cur­rent skills set, includ­ing those asso­ci­ated with our nat­ural tal­ents. Know­ing our cur­rent skills set can help us iden­tify activ­i­ties we want to include in, for example:

• a new lifestyle we are try­ing to design (includ­ing a nomadic one); or
• a new career we are try­ing to break into; or
• a new enter­prise we are try­ing to develop.

The catch here (and there is gen­er­ally a catch with this type of activ­ity) is that iden­ti­fy­ing skills, par­tic­u­larly those asso­ci­ated with a nat­ural tal­ent, is not an easy task.

In her book, The New Zealand Guide to Trans­fer­able Skills, Chris­tine Dekker iden­ti­fies and defines 5 basic skills groups that are very use­ful at help­ing peo­ple iden­tify what skills they have developed.

These skills groups are:

1. Physical/Practical
   1. Work­ing with things and the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment; using your hands and body skillfully.
   2. Exam­ples of physical/practical skills include: assem­bling, build­ing, fit­ting, fix­ing, installing, main­tain­ing, repair­ing, restor­ing, order­ing, using.
2. Creative/Artistic
   1. Work­ing in a visual medium or with words or sound to express ideas/emotions; using imag­i­na­tion; being innovative.
   2. This group can be divided into: words and ideas; visual; performing.
   3. Exam­ples of creative/artistic skills include: (words and ideas) writ­ing, sym­bol­is­ing, inter­pret­ing, mod­i­fy­ing, express­ing, script­ing (visual) color coor­di­nat­ing, dec­o­rat­ing, fash­ion­ing, styling, form­ing, draw­ing, (per­form­ing) act­ing, com­pos­ing, enter­tain­ing, mod­el­ing, role-playing, staging.
3. Communication/Interpersonal
   1. Work­ing with peo­ple; any inter­ac­tion or infor­ma­tion exchange between peo­ple; using lan­guage; understanding.
   2. This group can be divided into: ‘key’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills; teach­ing; relationship-building; facilitating/leading; problem-solving; marketing.
   3. Exam­ples of communication/interpersonal skills include: (‘key’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills) answer­ing, brief­ing, artic­u­lat­ing, writ­ing, report­ing, describ­ing, enquir­ing, con­vers­ing; (teach­ing) advis­ing, coach­ing, dis­sem­i­nat­ing, explain­ing, train­ing, instruct­ing; (relationship-building) affirm­ing, appre­ci­at­ing, nur­tur­ing, team-building, guid­ing, empow­er­ing, lis­ten­ing, sup­port­ing; (facilitating/leading) brain­storm­ing, chair­ing, direct­ing, moti­vat­ing, stim­u­lat­ing; (problem-solving) arbi­trat­ing, con­cil­i­at­ing, medi­at­ing, nego­ti­at­ing, rec­on­cil­ing, resolv­ing; (mar­ket­ing) adver­tis­ing, rep­re­sent­ing, sell­ing, convincing.
4. Organization/Management
   1. Bring­ing resources/people together; mak­ing some­thing work together as a whole; using ini­tia­tive and vision; hav­ing an over­all pic­ture or goal.
   2. This group can be divided into: to do with time; to do with resources; to do with peo­ple and tasks.
   3. Exam­ples of organization/management skills include: (to do with time) fore­cast­ing, plan­ning, pre­dict­ing, sched­ul­ing; (to do with resources) allo­cat­ing, bud­get­ing, group­ing, pur­chas­ing, sort­ing; (to do with peo­ple and tasks) admin­is­trat­ing, coor­di­nat­ing, del­e­gat­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, net­work­ing, recruit­ing, review­ing, supervising.
5. Infor­ma­tion Pro­cess­ing
   1. Work­ing with facts, fig­ures, con­cepts; using thinking/computing skills.
   2. This group can be divided into:‘key’ think­ing skills; lan­guage and ideas; facts and figures.
   3. Exam­ples of infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing skills include: (‘key’ think­ing skills) com­pre­hend­ing, think­ing, study­ing, per­ceiv­ing, read­ing, judg­ing, lis­ten­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing; (lan­guage and ideas) apprais­ing, prepar­ing, con­cep­tu­al­is­ing, defin­ing, report­ing, edit­ing, sum­maris­ing, the­o­ris­ing, revis­ing; (facts and fig­ures) analysing, audit­ing, assess­ing, com­pil­ing, esti­mat­ing, eval­u­at­ing, record­ing, quot­ing, pro­cess­ing, map­ping, measuring.

How do you know if you have iden­ti­fied a skill?

Skills can be so many dif­fer­ent things. In the book men­tioned above, the author listed over 300 unique skills. Each skill is iden­ti­fied as an action verb, and in the lists pre­sented in the book each skill gen­er­ally ended with an –ing.

To begin iden­ti­fy­ing your skills, try com­plet­ing the fol­low­ing sentence:

I am good at _________________________.

Now that I have Iden­ti­fied a List of Skills, What do I do Next?

Use the skills you have iden­ti­fied in the 5 basic skills groups to develop a skills port­fo­lio by identifying:

1. which skills you are best at;
2. which skills you enjoy using the most; and
3. which skills you would like to improve.

Now, using your skills port­fo­lio, try answer­ing the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Can you iden­tify any pat­terns emerg­ing from your skills port­fo­lio? Any activ­i­ties that you enjoy doing, have strong skills in, and can be used to enhance your lifestyle?
2. Are there a group of skills that you have iden­ti­fied that can be asso­ci­ated with a spe­cific nat­ural tal­ent? Are there other skills that you can develop that will help you enhance this nat­ural talent?
3. Are there skills that you can use that will help you iden­tify activ­i­ties you would like to try, new activ­i­ties that you can use to help you design a new authen­tic lifestyle with?
4. Are there skills that you can build on in order to develop an enter­prise with? One that you have already devel­oped skills in so you know that you would enjoy doing, and feel con­fi­dent you could turn into a suc­cess­ful money-making enterprise?
5. Have you iden­ti­fied any new skills that you would like to develop? Or old skills that you absolutely want to have noth­ing more to do with?

Tip: If you are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties iden­ti­fy­ing your skills, ask friends, fam­ily mem­bers, co-workers, etc., if they can iden­tify some of your skills for you, to get you started. We tend to devalue or over­look skills that are asso­ci­ated with nat­ural tal­ents because we find them so easy and effort­less to do, whereas peo­ple who know us would eas­ily be able to iden­tify these skills for us.

TTFN

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