Enabling Skills
Skills that enable you to perform much more efficiently and effectively
Accountants, engineers, architects, teachers all have specialist knowledge and experience that defines their jobs, but they also need ‘enabling skills’ to communicate effectively, collaborate and cooperate in order to achieve goals. They may need to write proposals to obtain funding or justify how funding was spent.·
Unfortunately training and developing ‘enabling’ skills is often neglected by employers because it is assumed that these are things that have been learned during education. People who think concisely and then can express and justify their decisions effectively may just be seen as more talented than those who can't.
Enabling skills are often taken for granted in education. Educators are as impressed as anyone by students who present ideas clearly and concisely. They often assume these are just better students and give them better grades. But “weaker” students may have just as good a grasp of the basic material as the students who get the higher grades, but they are less proficient in presenting their knowledge and understanding.
KwikFixSkills is all about key ‘enabling skills’:
- Working effectively within organisations
- Working effectively with colleagues
- Examining and assessing information effectively to make and justify decisions
- Communicating effectively within working relationships and to get a case across
- Knowing how to assess new job opportunities and present effectively when you apply
- Knowing how to use appropriate software most effectively to help get things done.
Don’t just sit back like an arse waiting to be trained up in these ‘enabling’ skills. Organisations may sometimes help, but their interests are primarily with the strategic development of the organisation. Students and employees have to take responsibility themselves for developing these aspects of their studies or work. You will need to manage your own learning in order to start performing more effectively and develop.
Sharpening up your enabling skills is a good way of giving yourself an edge.
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