Individual Effectiveness
The struggle is the same in all organisations: The brilliant engineer who has the expertise to create major advances in the organisation, but is unable to communicate clearly enough to get others in the organisation to support his or her ideas. Or the salesperson who is loved by clients and can land the big sale, but when it comes to supporting implementation is unable to plan effectively. Or the customer service representative who knows the product backwards and forwards and can effectively communicate solutions to customers, but who can’t handle the stress and conflict inherent in the position.
Creating the Effective Workforce: A Perspective on Individual Effectiveness
"People who regard themselves as highly effective act, think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves as ineffective. They produce their own future, rather than simply foretell it. Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure."
Albert Bandura
It is clear that the effective individual is more than just the sum of his or her technical or professional expertise. In the 40+ years we have studied individual performance and helped our clients develop their workforce; we have come to believe that, in addition to technical competence, what separates the effective from the highly effective individual is a core set of skills that a person acquires over his or her career, crossing from job to job, role to role. These “transferable skills” accumulate as an individual gains experience, takes advantage of developmental opportunities, and learns from mentors and coaches.
While we often spend years, sometimes decades, developing our work talents, we tend to disregard the importance of developing these transferable skills. Yet numerous studies have shown that these skills account for the majority of differences in individuals’ job performance. At Wilson Learning, we have grouped these transferable skills into three core skill domains:
- Purposeful Communication
- Inspired Thinking
- Fulfilled Self
Purposeful Communication
Studies of organisational effectiveness, individual performance, and team success have shown that an individual’s ability to communicate clearly, concisely, and openly while maintaining positive relationships with others is one of the largest contributors to performance success. The individual’s ability to communicate on purpose, with sensitivity and forethought, is Purposeful Communication.
Inspired Thinking
While there may have been a time when Inspired Thinking skills were required only by a few people at the top of the organisation, this is clearly no longer the case. Everyone in today’s organisation needs the ability to collect and organise information, create new knowledge, find innovative solutions, solve problems, and make judgment-based decisions. We believe ensuring that all employees have a broad set of Inspired Thinking skills is vital to organisational success.
Fulfilled Self
The values, personal characteristics, and sense of purpose that effective individuals bring to their lives is the Fulfilled Self. Employees who are fulfilled are more engaged and achieve higher performance levels. The Fulfilled Self is expressed and becomes evident in the consistency of behaviour – the degree to which one’s actions match one’s thoughts and words. Individuals who treat others with respect; know how to manage their own emotions; and act in the interests of others, the organisation, and themselves, can be said to have a Fulfilled Self.
Work Talents
Work Talents provide the tangible means for an individual to make a substantive contribution toward achieving personal and organisational goals. They are the “stuff” of doing good work. A person’s technical or professional expertise and knowledge of his or her own organisation and of business practices generally constitute Work Talents.
The Effective Individual
Thus, along with Work Talents, the three transferable skill domains of Purposeful Communication, Inspired Thinking, and Fulfilled Self define what all employees need in order to be successful in their work.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the three transferable skill domains in more detail. On the pages that follow, we will explore:
- The core organising principle underlying each skill domain
- The individual skills and competencies that define each domain
- How these skills can be developed in your organisation
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