Fresh skills we want to learn

How does a team adapt in an environment of change like the world is experiencing now? 

What skills do leaders need to better lead in these times?

Remote work, extreme uncertainty and ongoing complex change are impacting so many sectors and organisations. 

Old learning topics like body language, negotiation skills and time management are being overtaken by more contemporary, practical and inspiring skills. 

These skills are more related to today’s workplace and aligned to the capabilities people need to be able to work better together. 

Plus they’re the kinds of skills people want to learn!

They are: 
Ingenuity 
Empathy
Creativity 
Curiosity 

Facilitation 
Visualization 
Experimentation 
Improvisation 

Sensemaking
Listening
Learning
Collaborating.


These kinds of skills help us stay relevant and motivated in the learning ... as well as the daily application. 

Notice when you have an idea

Do you capture them... the ideas and thoughts you have while you’re reading, listening or thinking? 

We overestimate the number of ideas we think we’ll remember. Our train of thought is interrupted with the mundane ... and boom, the thought is gone! 

Worry less about a perfect system for collecting ideas and start with ANY system! 

> Write a few words on a post it 
> Say a few phrases into a voice memo
> Jot a note in a journal. 

We undervalue the creative thoughts that come to us - either by not noticing them at all, or noticing them but judging them as unworthy.

Still after the perfect system? But having it may not mean you firstly notice when you’re having an idea! We can have a shed of tools and not use them. Or a device of apps we rarely tap!

The point is, to become more aware you’ve had an idea or thought that could be captured ... and could be useful in the future. 

Notice ideas and more ideas will come. 

Minds in a fog

If you had to get a lot of information across to someone... how would you do it? If you had to explain a complex thing or a detailed project or the purpose of something, how would you do that?

We usually start with words, the verbals. Now that many more of us are in online training, meetings and workshops more frequently, it’s becoming clear we need to use tools that go beyond the ‘blah blah’ of talk.

Many of us are experiencing a kind of brain fog. It’s not a normal communication situation. Many people have already done my 90-minute online workshop, where I show you plenty of options and ideas for bringing more visuals to help convey information.

It’s available as a tailored session with your work team too. ‘How to use visuals in workshops and meetings’ doesn’t require you to be an artist, but it does get you doing something a little new.

The impact, engagement and influence you’ll gain will be worth it.

Everyone’s got note pads but no one is making sense

A meeting room I was in recently had a table with 8 people seated at it. Each person had arrived at the meeting with a collection of props and belongings:

- a water bottle

- their ID/security card

- their mobile device

- notepad and pen.

The notepad and pen - yes, an analogue tool, but powerful nonetheless.

Everyone in the meeting was writing their own notes down. Their own insights, their own wording, their own triggers for ideas, their own recollection.

It was very singular, individual even though it was a group meeting. Great! They’re making sense of things, but oh no ...they're doing it alone. Someone says something, then everyone’s head drops down and they all write it down in their own notepad, their own 'map' of the world they're talking about.

We’re individuals trying to work this stuff out as a group.

Sensemaking - it can be done alone or better... together.

Rather than everyone looking at their own 'map', make a group map, a central map on a whiteboard or flipchart.

More progress is made in uncertainty when we have a common point of visual context. 

Developing adaptability - your willingness to change

The next 4 ideas I’m posting on adaptability are:

5️⃣ Facilitation

Our world of work needs greater ease and progress, less red tape. Facilitation is about making things easier and to facilitate we'll need to give up being a control freak and be able to flex.

6️⃣ Visualisation

We're drowning in information! We need quicker and clearer ways to convey ideas and thinking. It's time to get over our ‘I can’t draw’ complex, and start making sketching, imagery and visualising an everyday kind of thing.

7️⃣ Experimentation

Do you test, try, fail and learn? That's adaptability right there! Good things are often brought about through advancing and pioneering schools of thought. Today’s workplaces need to be more laboratory than court room.

8️⃣ Improvisation

Responding to uncertainty is a daily requirement. Operating from principles rather than prescriptions can help because no two situations are the same, no two people are the same. Improv doesn’t just belong on the stage, in comedy festivals or on TV.