Part 13 (2/2)
So, after finis.h.i.+ng your seven stories (or if you're in a hurry, at least five), look through that Skills Grid, and now guess which might be your top ten favorite or your top twenty-four favorite skills. These should be your best guesses, and they should be about your favorite skills: not the ones you think the job-market will like the best, but the ones you enjoy using the most.
At this point you want to be able to prioritize those ten or those twenty-four in exact order of priority. We need something a little more scientific than guesses. Time for the Prioritizing Grid again, either the ten-item one, or the twenty-four (or fewer) one. Your choice. Run your guesses through the grid you choose, and when you're done with that grid's Section D, copy the top ten (from either grid) on to the building blocks diagram below, as well as onto your Favorite Transferable Skills petal.
To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14017 A word of explanation about this building blocks diagram. Its purpose is to show, as the Skills Petal cannot, how rearranging your skills can define a new career. Suppose for example I end up with these top ten favorite skills: a.n.a.lyze, teach, research, write, diagnose, synthesize, entertain, cla.s.sify, convey warmth, lead, motivate. (I might prefer to put them in their gerund form: a.n.a.lyzing, teaching, researching, writing, diagnosing, synthesizing, entertaining, cla.s.sifying, conveying warmth, leading, motivating.) Either way, if I enter these terms onto those building blocks, the top one helps to define the kind of job or career I'm looking for. Put ”a.n.a.lyzing” in the top block, I might seek a job as an a.n.a.lyst. But, if instead I move ”teaching” to the top block, then I might seek a job as a teacher. And so on, with ”researching,” ”writing,” ”diagnosing,” etc.
Here we see the folly of most training programs for the unemployed. They deal with roles when they should be dealing with skills. An unemployed construction worker, for example, is typically retrained for just one role: say, computer repair person. But if we see ourselves not as one role, but as ten different skills, then after retraining, there are several careers (or roles) we can pursue.
To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14011 To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14013 5. ”Flesh Out” Your Favorite Transferable Skills with Your Traits We discussed traits earlier. In general, traits describe: How you deal with time, and promptness.
How you deal with people and emotions.
How you deal with authority, and being told what to do at your job.
How you deal with supervision, and being told how to do your job.
How you deal with impulse vs. self-discipline, within yourself.
How you deal with initiative vs. response, within yourself.
How you deal with crises or problems.
You need to flesh out your skill-description for each of your favorite skills so that you are able to describe each of your talents or skills with more than just a one-word verb or gerund, like organizing.
Let's take organizing as our example. You tell us proudly: ”I'm good at organizing.” That's a fine start at defining your skills, but unfortunately it doesn't yet tell us much. Organizing WHAT? People, as at a party? Nuts and bolts, as on a workbench? Or lots of information, as on a computer? These are three entirely different skills. The one word organizing doesn't tell us which one is yours.
So, please look at your top ten favorite transferable skills, and ask yourself if you want to flesh out any of them with an object-some kind of Data/Information, or some kind of People, or some kind of Thing-or with a Trait (adverb or adjective).
Why adjectives here? Well, ”I'm good at organizing information painstakingly and logically” and ”I'm good at organizing information in a flash, by intuition,” are two entirely different skills. The difference between them is spelled out not in the verb, nor in the object, but in the adjectival or adverbial phrase there at the end. So, expand the definition of any of your ten favorite skills that you choose, in the fas.h.i.+on I have just described.
When you are face-to-face with a person-who-has-the-power-to-hire-you, you want to be able to explain what makes you different from nineteen other people who can basically do the same thing that you can do. It is often the adjective or adverb that will save your life, during that explanation.
Now, on to another side of Who You Are.
To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14018
I Am a Person Who ...
Has Favorite Working Conditions
Fourth Petal MY FAVORITE WORKING CONDITIONS.
My Favorite Working Conditions Petal
Goal in Filling Out This Petal: To state the working conditions and surroundings, that would make you happiest, and therefore enable you to do your most effective work.
What You Are Looking For: Avoiding past bad experiences.
Form of the Entries on Your Petal: Descriptors of physical surroundings.
Example of a Good Petal: A works.p.a.ce with lots of windows, nice view of greenery, relatively quiet, decent lunch period, flexibility about clocking in and clocking out, lots of shops nearby.
Example of a Bad Petal: Understanding boss, good colleagues, fun clients, etc.
Why Bad: These all belong on the petal called Preferred Kinds of People to Work With, not this one, which is just about the physical surroundings at your work. Of course, since this is your Flower Diagram, you can put any info you like on any petal you like. It's just that if you want your thinking to be clear, it's useful to preserve the difference between ”what is my physical setting going to be like?” and ”who will I be working with?”
Your physical setting where you work can cheer you up or drag your spirits down. It's important to know this before you weigh whether to take a particular job offer, or not. So, let's start with working conditions that made you unhappy in the past, and then flip them over into positives, by filling out the chart below.
To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14019 Plants that grow beautifully at sea level, often perish if they're taken ten thousand feet up the mountain. Likewise, we do our best work under certain conditions, but not under others. Thus, the question: ”What are your favorite working conditions?” actually is a question about ”Under what circ.u.mstances do you do your most effective work?”
As I just mentioned, the best way to approach this is by starting with the things you disliked about all your previous jobs, using the chart to list these. Copy this chart onto a larger piece of notebook paper if you wish, before you begin filling it out. Column A may begin with such factors as: ”too noisy,” ”too much supervision,” ”no windows in my workplace,” ”having to be at work by 6 a.m.,” etc.
If you are baffled as to how to prioritize the Column A list in the s.p.a.ce provided for that ranking (Column B), I recommend you use the ten-item Prioritizing Grid. (For a refresher on how to use it, turn to ”Instructions for Using the Prioritizing Grid,”.) This time, when you compare each two items, the question you must ask yourself is, ”If I were offered two jobs, and in the first job offer I would be rid of my first distasteful working condition (1) but not the second (2), while in the second job offer I would be rid of my second distasteful working condition (2), but not the first (1), which job offer would I take?”
To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit rhlink.com/para14011 After you've finished prioritizing, what have you ended up with, in Section D? The exact list you copy into Column B of your Distasteful Working Conditions chart.
Now that you have that list in Column B, ranked in terms of most distasteful down to least distasteful working conditions, turn to Column C in that chart and write the opposite, or something near the opposite, directly opposite each item in Column B.
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