The Gym of Skills and Capabilities

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In the Gym, we identify and grow the essential skills we need for the future.

Members: 5
Latest Activity: Apr 5, 2010

"A journey of individual, personal, continuous improvement. ‘Journey’ and ‘continuous’ emphasize the ongoing nature of our pursuit of Personal Mastery. We do not march toward a destination but mine the gold along the way and relish its joys. Individual and personal remind us that while our growth is set in a context of other people and systems, we are responsible, we are in charge of our Personal Mastery." Fran Sayers, 1996

Every member of an organization has their genuine mixtures of skills, attitudes, skills and behaviours. They are the result of a lifelong learning process. Using this diversity is the key to success. In change processes, we have to recognize the resources that we have and support people in their own individual growth.

Personal mastery means to cultivate one’s own strengths, and build new areas of competence. Without encouraging people to travel on their own personal mastery journey, no change project can be successful.

At the same time, organizations have built up their specific skill set which was helpful in the past but often is a barrier to change. Identifying the key capabilities for the future is one step; making people aware of them, a second. Giving them exposure to these new skills and finally embedding the skills in daily practice is part of the art of change facilitation.

(Courtesy of Will Taylor, Chair, Department of Homeopathic Medicine, National College of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon, USA, March 2007. Please reference the diagram accordingly if you use it. Taken from: Businessballs)

Questions for Deeper Exploration

What are the key skills that we need for the future?
What do others better than we do?
How can we help people to unlearn skills, behaviors and attitudes that block our way to the future?
How do we cultivate the skills, behaviors and attitudes which are essential?

Agora

What tools would you use in the Gym?

Please add tools, practices, links, articles etc. for exploring, planning and implementing new skill sets.Continue

Started by Holger Nauheimer. Last reply by Holger Nauheimer Mar 5, 2010.

The basic, fundamental skill

From my perspective, the fundamental skill is the skill of thinking and thinking skills. The way we think about the world and ourselves shapes both us and the world we inhabit.Thinking is a…Continue

Tags: cognition, skill, thinking

Started by Steve Banhegyi Mar 3, 2010.

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Comment by Nadia Gabriela Dresscher on March 5, 2010 at 5:34pm: Somehow I'm having trouble posting a the link of the interactive Thinking Model:

Please excuse the redundancy of comments because of this

Comment by Nadia Gabriela Dresscher on March 5, 2010 at 5:31pm: Ooops I accidentally post my first comment during the process of attaching the sources: here they are

a interactive model for critical thinking:

this a very illustrative youtube video on the subject. I use this with my students.
here is the link (I can't find the button in our community to attach an widget in the discussion forum) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLPL5p0fMg

Holgner, is it an idea that we can structurize this place into different skills? Then maybe we can categorize all the sources.

Looking forward to continuation of the dialogue.

Regards,
Nadia

Comment by Nadia Gabriela Dresscher on March 5, 2010 at 5:21pm: Hi fellow travelers,

One of the essentials to start the journey of personal mastery, is being conscious of the fact, that our development, and human capacity for this is a fluid, ongoing process of learning. Both on the individual as on the social sphere (social cognition). Learning is ubiquitous: our essence. Like Dewey once said: "live to learn and to learn to live". Being aware of this, puts us in a state that we are open to learn (the learning mode). This is a divine state of being, since you begin to see connections and continuously develop the skill of self-reflection. Self-reflection is also an essential for the journey of change.

I agree with Steve,
Great insights on our thinking process. Being aware of how we think can make us aware of all the multi-levels (meta-thinking: frameworks, mental models, metaphors) of filters we first have to break through to truly think. (okay, I don't dare to say at this moment that this is easy).

Here are some additional sources on the subject of thinking. One of the courses I teach is on Critical Literacy, and the subject of how to think critically and what this means is an essential in the course.