Can you differentiate between your talents versus skills? Do you know what talents you have? Do you know what skills you have? This is the questions most job candidate actively seeking for a job cannot answer confidently.
For most of us, the answer to both questions will be I do not know. We might be able to say something about our skills but …. talents…. well….
Most of us have forgotten what talents we have. They have been blurred into building our career, making money, paying the mortgage, putting our kids through college, saving for retirement, etc
Talents
Let’s look at the definition of Talent. According to Dictionary.com
tal·ent [tal-uhnt]
noun
- a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
A talent is something we do naturally. It is something that we do not think about we just do it.
Think back to your childhood. What did you just love to do? What did you do that it required little thought? What did you do that left you energized?
Think back to when you entered adulthood. Ask yourself the same questions.
Is this hard?
Make a list of all of your talents. Hmmm… can’t think of any or only a few? Let’s move on.
Skills
Let us look at the definition of Skill. According to Dictionary.com
skill1 [skil]
noun
- the ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well: Carpentry was one of his many skills.
A skill is something that we learn. Skills are developed. You might attend training to learn a skill. You will practice that skill. You can master a skill such that it appears to be a talent.
This might be a hard skill like programming, hardware design, technical writing, web design, content marketing, etc
This might be a soft skill like negotiating, project management, people management, …..
Make a list of all of the skills you have. This will take a while.
What talents enabled you to learn these skills?
Again, I ask what are your talents versus skills? Getting any easier?
The Crux of the Problem
If you have been working for thirty plus years like me, you have developed a lot of skills. I have been paid a lot of money to produce products and services using those skills. The crux of the problem is many of us are now saying we are sick and tired of using those skills.
Why did we develop some of those skills? Many times it was because our employer paid us to develop those skills? Did we like using those skills? Many times using those skills was okay! When were required to use those skills over and over and over and over….. it got old real fast.
When we say, we have had enough you may hear:
- You are so good at it, why would you want to quit?
- They pay you a lot of money, why would you want to quit?
Sound familiar?
The problem is the overuse of those skills that were developed because someone else wanted you to learn those skills.
Over the last twenty-five years, I have inhaled many complex technologies and spit them back out in culturally neutral stories, analogies, pictures, animations, and other adult learning formats. I am really good at it. I enjoy the design and creation of the materials but if I have to inhale one more complex technology that has no real social value well …….
Olawepo Babatunde– your resourceful assistant
