Shirley’s partner in their little business had the peculiar knack of being very good at what she did without seeming to know much about it. Shirley had joined her partner right out of school, when her partner had already been in the business for about ten years. Shirley had expected to learn a lot of information from her partner, who had all the skills of a master in their thriving small business. But Shirley quickly discovered that Shirley knew much more than her partner did. Indeed, whatever her partner had learned in school, her partner seemed to have forgotten. Her partner often relied on Shirley for the terminology and wording, when they needed it for contracts or communications. But otherwise, Shirley’s partner definitely ran the show. Everything Shirley’s partner did was sound, insightful, and unerring, even if her partner couldn’t describe it. Her partner’s gift was in skill, not knowledge.
Skills
As much as career fields depend on acquiring a body of specialized knowledge, especially but not exclusively in the professions, knowledge isn’t everything one needs for a career. One needs skills, too, referring to the ability to do something well. Knowledge without the ability to deploy it is useless. Indeed, knowledge consistently deployed in the wrong way that the circumstances require is worse than useless. It’s actively harmful. We’ve all known a fool who could tell you everything you didn’t know but nothing you needed to know. Sometimes, the most knowledgeable one along for the ride is the one least likely to know the direction but most likely to supply it, in the wrong direction. Take your pick: which would you rather have for your career, knowledge or skills? Me, too. I’d pick skills every day of the week and again on Sunday. Let me learn from someone who is good, even great, at what they do, rather than one who can only tell me how to do it.
Mastery
Mastery implies a level of skill high enough to accomplish with alacrity anything common to the field. Employers generally want to employ masters in the field, although they may instead have to hire individuals having too little experience to possess anything more than relevant skills. Employers often expect to develop skilled hires into masterful workers. Mastery doesn’t typically arrive with education alone. Mastery generally takes education, training, skill, and experience. Customers, clients, patients, and others who depend on skilled services are also looking for masters, although they’ll accept skilled service from someone lacking the experience to have mastered everything in the field, as long as the worker sticks to what they know and has sufficient supervision. You don’t have to be a master to get started in a field. But you’d better arrive at mastery fairly soon, or your employer may be letting you go in favor of another worker who can pick things up quicker.
Technique
Mastery relies on skills, and skills rely on techniques. You may know techniques without having skill or approaching any degree of mastery. Take fly fishing, for example. You may know how to tie a fly on a line. Well, good. That’s a start. You may even know how to assemble the rod, reel, and line. You’re farther along. But if that’s all you can do, you still have essentially zero skill at fly fishing. Or maybe you can make a halfway decent cast but nothing else, like assembling the rod, reel, and line, and getting a fly tied on the line. You still have no real skill, certainly no mastery. If, on the other hand, you can do all those things and catch a fish, then you have at least a little skill. But you won’t be a master until you can find the right waters under the right conditions to catch fish, in varied locales. Accomplish with consistency all the things common to fly fishing, and you’ll have assembled techniques to acquire skill to develop mastery. Techniques are critical to careers in the sense that they are the smallest building blocks toward mastery. Value the techniques you have or are acquiring.
Currency
When the question comes to what you can do that approaches skill or mastery in a career sector or field, currency is also important. Currency in this context means that you can do what jobs within the sector or field require at the moment, not two, five, ten, or twenty years ago. Fields can change, some slowly but most relatively quickly and a few at lightning speed. Technology is one reason. We are nearly all using devices and processes today that didn’t exist five, ten, or twenty years ago. Indeed, we may be doing jobs that didn’t exist a few years ago. Consider where your skills are most current. If you know you lack current skills in the career that is calling you, investigate how you could most quickly and surely update your skills. More formal education may not be necessary. The examples given in the prior section on acquiring or updating current knowledge, like training, apprenticeships, internships, or partnering, might do just as well for updating current skills. Don’t let your lack of current skills keep you from answering a career call. We build skill like we build knowledge, from a foundation. Your incomplete or out-of-date skills may be just the foundation you need to quickly acquire current skills.
Judgment
Judgment, like technique, is another attribute of skill. To do something well takes more than just knowing how to do each little part of it, all the small techniques. To do something well also requires knowing which technique to apply under what circumstances in what order. Judgment answers those questions. Can’t you just hear a master saying to an apprentice, I wouldn’t do that right now if I were you, just before the catastrophic failure? The need for judgment is why we tolerate bosses and supervisors. That whisper of conscience that maybe you’d better go check with the boss before doing that little thing you’re about to do? That’s because you know that you may lack judgment. If things go wrong, you want it to be on your boss, not you. Some of us seem born with good sense, while others of us must develop good sense through many errors and their painful consequences. Don’t choose a career field in which you know you’ll lack sense, unless you’re ready for that painful journey. If you can, find ways to test your judgment as you approach choosing a career field. Others will generally tell you by their reactions when you share your interest in the field. If they can’t see you doing what you announce you intend to do, consider whether you truly have or can quickly develop the judgment the field requires. Your surprised acquaintance may be giving you a clear clue.
Insight
Insight is a slightly different and more advanced attribute of skill than judgment is, when it comes to a career field. Insight signals a deep intuitive understanding of the field of the sort that education and training cannot alone supply. Insight, for example, explains why things happen or don’t happen when they should, when others in the field don’t know. Insight sees solutions, where others in the field don’t. Judgment is necessary to survive in a job and to sustain a career. Insight, though, is special. Insight, regularly exercised or shared at opportune moments, can elevate one quickly within a field. If you sense that you might have special insight to share within a certain field, seriously consider pursuing a career in that field. Your grades or professors may tell you, if you have higher education in that field. An internship or other hands-on experience in that field will tell you even more, if you find yourself regularly discerning useful things that your mentor or supervisor has missed.
Demonstration
Skill isn’t something you claim, though. Skill is something you demonstrate. Truly, you can’t tell if someone has skill until you see it because skill is an action, not a claim or description. Don’t judge your skill. Instead, prove it or test it. Don’t assume that you have skill because you have education or training. Don’t even assume that you have skill if you have experience, unless in the course of your experience you demonstrated skill. If you believe that you have skill in a certain field, then you should be able to give examples of when you exercised that skill to produce the result that the field demanded. If you want to know what you are currently qualified to do, or better yet, that you can prove you are qualified to do, then think of the evidence of your having done so. Compile and catalog your accomplishments, and analyze them for skill. That’s how you’ll know what you do well. And if you don’t have demonstrations of a skill you honestly believe that you possess, go find a place where you can make that demonstration. That’s how you test your commitment to a field and prove your fitness for it to your prospective employers.
Journal
Title What I Do the next section of your Career Journal, after the What I Know section. In the What I Do section, list your skills. Be sure to distinguish your skills from the knowledge you listed in the prior section. Focus not on the subjects you know but the actions you can do. Give special attention to the verbs you use to describe your actions, whether to analyze, inspect, design, refine, craft, draft, edit, assemble, organize, or manage. Highlight any techniques that you feel you execute better than others in the same field. Give a few examples where you have exercised judgment effectively related to your skills, examples of any unusual insights you might have reached, and examples of your currency in a field or fields. Then list any fields or niches that you feel you have mastered, meaning that you can competently and without supervision do anything in that niche or field. Then list demonstrations, examples, or illustrations of your mastery or skill. What would you want an employer, customer, or client to see or know that you did, that would give them the most confidence in what you can do?
Key Points
Jobs demand skills, the ability to do common tasks competently.
Employers expect mastery of all skills common to the job.
You must be able to assemble techniques into comprehensive skill.
Your skills should accomplish things employers currently need.
To exhibit skill, you must also judge when and how to act.
Deep intuitive insight marks you as especially fit for that career.
You must demonstrate skill by example, not claim it.