6 Tips for Developing Skills

Note: This article is by Celestine Chua, who talks about the importance of skill development and provides essential tips for that.

Here comes the role of skills development. In this article, I share more information about skills development, its importance in achieving goals, and how to do it.

What is Skills Development?

Skills development is a process that involves two parts:

1. Identifying your skills gap (the skills required to achieve a particular goal that you lack).
2. Developing and refining these skills.

It is a very critical process because your abilities determine how well you can carry out your plans. Imagine a carpenter attempting to construct a house out of raw materials without the necessary tools, and they only have a tiny screwdriver and a flimsy hammer. They cannot transform these raw materials into usable wooden pieces for building a house without the proper tools, such as a hand saw.

The same applies to achieving goals. When you want to achieve a goal, home is your goal, your skills are your tools, and just as you need the right tools to build a home, you need the right skills to achieve your goal.

Without the right skills, you will frustrate yourself and waste your time facing primitive problems caused by your lack of knowledge or lack of skills instead of progress towards your purpose, while suffering and difficulty are integral to the pursuit of any goal. Without the proper skills, you will find yourself suffering too much, and worse, this struggle is not constructive and does not help you make any progress.

Why do we neglect skills development?

There are two main reasons for this. First, people are often surprised by what others have accomplished without realizing what they've gone through to achieve their goals. We see their rewards and victories. We mistakenly assume that we know what it takes to succeed, and then we're very disappointed when we try to achieve the goal and discover that it's not as easy as it seems.

People see famous bloggers on the Internet who make a lot of money from blogging, and they think that it is simple, which is fueled by the claims of the said bloggers who market their training courses that are supposed to help you achieve similar success. These people also start blogging and expect to achieve the same results in a short period. Then, they are shocked that the rate of visits to their blogs remains low after a few months without earning any income, and then some of them continue, and many surrender.

Second, some people are very critical of themselves. We see the success of others, the top coaches, online bloggers, award-winning artists, and winners of anything, and we conclude that we cannot achieve the same thing. We feel that these people have a unique power that we do not have. Often, clients come to me saying that they want to achieve a specific goal, but after seeing very successful people in this field lose their confidence in their abilities, they ask themselves: "What makes me think that I can succeed? I only have to give up because these people are so good and experienced, and who am I to compete with them?”

But it is about developing skills. When we see the success of others, we do not see the countless hours they have spent building and refining their skills. What we see as talent in others is the result of thousands of hours of hard work that turned their passion and potential into solid skills. Skills development is the process in which you move from beginner to emerging to medium to veteran and then to an expert, and then it is what gives you the ability to achieve your goal.

For example, my writing

When I created my blog, I knew that blogging would be a very critical skill to master, but I was not a specialist in English and had not attended any writing courses before. I was a student in the College of Business Administration. We conducted many projects and studies that were further from literary writing. The only lesson I attended that was closer to writing was business communication, and even then, I studied things entirely different from blogging.

So, before I started my blog, I spent weeks reading about how to write good content, including choosing great topics, writing attractive titles, and understanding the features of good articles. I also analyzed some articles from well-known blogs, including the ones I followed. To realize how their publications are structured, in the end, if they are successful, they must do it the right way.

I analyzed each article as I tried to understand the author's way of thinking and then sought to apply this in my writing. I also created a map of the articles and thought carefully about the topics I would write about; topics that were common and met the needs of people and valid for all time, yet I took a long time to write my first articles.

My first series was titled How to Find Your Purpose in Life. Because the goal is the starting point for living a conscious life, I took more than a week to design the 7-part series. I rewrote some parts completely before I published them. Some of my previous articles were also very bad. I was ashamed when I read them and thought, “Did I really write this?” Then, to enhance the content, I omit those inappropriate articles and reformat a few others, then I improved.

Today, I think that my writing has become more accurate and influential. My language skills have also improved, and I detect slight grammatical differences. I also notice the subtle differences between American and British English, including the abnormality of punctuation marks. Some of my articles have been used in school curricula, media publications, and business newspapers, and many have been published in forums and social media.

This didn't happen overnight. The writing skills that I have today didn't magically come through. I wasn't born with the innate ability to write, it came from a conscious effort to build my skills and become a better writer, and the same goes for other skills that I didn't know I had to make at the beginning of my career: coaching, new media, responsive web design, online marketing, among many others, constructing these skills has helped me thrive and pursue my passion.

If you set a new goal, you must build your skills first, except in the rare cases where one is born with a splendid innate talent, such as singers who have a wide vocal range. Although most admit that it was not just a natural ability, the product of a lot of practice.

Most people develop their talents through hard work for long hours. The best coach was not born with coaching skills, but they learned them, and the best musician was not born with the skill of playing musical instruments, but they also learned them. These are skills that people develop with their conscious effort, and you can achieve this as well.

Developing Your Skills: Solid and Soft Skills

As you develop your skills, you should consider two skill sets:

1. Solid Skills

Skills that are relevant to a specific task and are usually easily identifiable. These skills are usually cognitive skills, such as proficiency in a topic, certificates obtained by the person, technical skills, fluency in a language, skill in using a specific program, graphic design, and programming. Thay are all solid skills.

2. Soft Skills

They are personality skills and are helpful in different areas, such as communication skills, leadership, time management, stress management, decision-making, adaptability, ability to deal with adversity, and relationship building.

It is clear why hard skills are so essential. You need specialized knowledge in your field to achieve your goal. For example, to become a successful content creator on YouTube, you must have at least some video editing skills, and to be a successful blogger, you must have writing skills and good language proficiency. Also, to be a skilled software engineer, you must master programming.

But many people neglect soft skills. For example, a writer may insist that they are good at writing, but their books do not make any sales. If their writing skills are masterpieces, they may lack some soft skills necessary for success, such as communication, promotion, and marketing. Good writing skills are not enough to write a successful book. You need to:

• Present the idea to publishers and collaborators.
• Market yourself to people.
• Have an insight to help you understand people's requirements and how to write stories that affect them.

Most of today's best-selling authors are not necessarily great writers, but they are either characters with a large following (some don't even write their books, but they hire an anonymous person to write on their behalf), or ordinary people with a story to influence the audience.

It does not mean that you focus on soft skills at the expense of knowledge because both hard and soft skills are essential. When you succeed based on soft skills only without solid skills, you lack the necessary foundation to achieve new victories, and it is a matter of time before people discover your deception.

When you have solid skills only without soft skills, you lack the savvy to promote yourself and display your talent in front of a large audience, so both types of skills are equally important and complement each other.

6 tips to start developing your skills

1. Start with basic skills

If you're starting from scratch, such as learning programming, and you don't know anything about it, it can be challenging given the need to learn many things, so you need to start with basic skills first.

• Basic skills are the skills you need to achieve your goal successfully. They have a direct impact on your success.
• Secondary skills are less important than basic skills. While they boost your success, your experience with them is not a critical factor in success.

For example, when I started my job and had to acquire many skills, I started with the basic skills that I felt would be essential to my success, such as writing, coaching, training, and Internet marketing. These skills had a decisive impact on the success of my goal. On the other hand, marketing through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and web design was not essential to my success, but they helped me, of course. These were my secondary skills, and while I took some time to learn secondary skills, I devoted the bulk of my time to mastering my basic skills.

What determines whether a skill is primary or secondary? It depends on your goal. If the skill has a decisive impact on your goal, it is an essential skill. If your goal is to become a life coach with a team of coaches and assistants, then the skills of coaching, leadership, team management, and training will be your basic skills. If your goal is to become a coach life and to work online, your basic skills are Coaching, Internet marketing, content writing, and good technical skills. At times, I recommend outsourcing instead when learning specific skills is ineffective.

2. Break the learning process into small steps

When I was learning life coaching, I identified sub-skills that would make me a good coach, including listening skills, questioning skills, empathy, and patience, and then I assessed my learning for each skill on a scale of 1 to 10. I developed these skills by offering free sessions, attending a training workshop, reading books, and most importantly, treating people directly. I also prepared a coaching guide that contains some concepts and frameworks that help provide coaching to people. I also used to collect the feedback I received and review my performance after each session, and I identified the things I did correctly and those I did wrong. So, I could improve.

Taking these steps helped me become proficient quickly. I went from training one person to 10 people in a few months, and soon I had twenty, then fifty, then one hundred clients. It wasn't long before I noticed clear trends in my clients' aspirations and problems, and then I was able to help them in a precise and specific way. I also became proficient in a way that enabled me to analyze each client's problems accurately through some brief basic information and ask simple questions, and then guide them out of their psychological crises.

Skills development can be a big project, so break it down into small parts. Don't expect to master the skill immediately, but focus on mastering each section separately. For soft skills that are difficult to measure your progress in, set some measurable goals to guide you.

For example, if you want to develop communication skills, you can start by going to new events and connecting with new people every week. Then, practice how to introduce yourself and promote your ideas in front of others, and repeat it.

3. Learn from the best

The best way to learn is to learn from the best because you can learn from someone who has achieved your goal and benefit from their wisdom instead of working without guidance. Here are some tips:

• Who do you know has experience in this field? Contact them for advice, and ask them how you should build your skills in this area, what advice they can give you, and what you should pay attention to.
• Hire a coach: Hiring a coach is not cheap, but if you have the financial resources and the right coach, you can save hundreds of hours of learning. Through our sessions, my clients saved hundreds of hours and achieved their goals more quickly than if they had suffered and treated these problems alone.
• Find a Mentor: Is there a senior official in your company or acquaintances willing to introduce you to Mentoring?
• Study the experts in your field, understand what made them good at what they do, imitate their behavior, and modify it to suit you.

4. Do research

Do your research to gather different insights and perspectives. The internet has made information more accessible than ever, and you can do your research with these tools:

4.1. Blogs

Blogs have become the primary way to receive information, search Google to find new blogs, and bookmark blogs that look promising.

4.2. Podcasts

In our modern world, we spend most of our time on computers, and I find sound a fun way to learn. iTunes and Stitcher volumes of podcasts contain a lot of free episodes, while Audible is an audiobook platform (it's a paid service; your first audiobook is free).

4.3. Books

Books are a great source of information because they organize content with high accuracy and usually gather the author's knowledge and wisdom on a particular topic. Is there a library near you? If yes, go to the library and check out the books on the subject, and if not, visit the bookstores and see the recommended books.

4.4. Free Online Courses

Online courses have spread in recent years; Here are some platforms that offer free courses, and some belong to famous universities:

• Coursera.
• EdX.
• Harvard University Online Courses.
• Stanford University Courses (Stanford Online Courses).
• Academy of the Earth (Academic Earth).

5. Attend Training Courses

Courses and workshops are great ways to develop skills quickly, as they are an intensive source of information coordinated in a structured program. Also, some workshops with a lot of activities allow for experiential learning, which means that you are conducting a practical exercise instead of just theoretical education. When you attend a training course, you are learning with people who think like you, which gives you additional motivation and social support.

When searching for a course, look for a course that offers genuine content taught by a trusted instructor, and ask for more details about the course curriculum. Today, many courses are filled with fillers and taught by people who care more about profits than teaching. You should stay away from these people.

6. Take action

I mentioned earlier that I developed my coaching skills through reading, attending a workshop, and treating people. The latter was the most essential part of the learning process. If I had never trained by working with real people, I would never have known what people needed help with, how I could best help them, and whether my methods were helpful. What builds experience is not theoretical learning, but practice.

This is especially true if your skill is practical. Then, you can know how good you are, your weaknesses, the gap between your perceptions and reality, and the areas you need to improve.

The "action" here depends on the skill you build. If you are learning to code, it means writing code, creating simple programs, and experimenting with them. If you are learning to speak, it means practicing in front of a mirror, photographing yourself and reviewing your performance, and speaking in front of real people and events.

Although the work stage is the most frightening, it is also the most rewarding stage because you are learning more than others. At this stage, you stop hiding in your bubble, go beyond your fear, and start true learning. The longer you work, the better you become. So, allocate time to practice every day.

In conclusion

• What goal are you pursuing now?
• What hard and soft skills are needed to achieve this goal?
• Among these skills, what are the basic skills and what are the secondary skills?
• How can you start developing your basic skills? How can you apply the aforementioned advice?
• When can you start taking real action?

Start developing your skills, and soon you will see the results of your work and effort.