The concept and structure of meta-skills and soft-skills. What are meta-skills, and what is the best order to learn them?
I wrote this article back in 2017. But times are changing, and the relevance of this knowledge is growing. Therefore, I decided to supplement and translate it.
Each of them has either already encountered or will later face two problems — psychological and methodological.
The first problem is uncertainty, tension, and stress caused by the mismatch of our knowledge, skills, and personal qualities with external requirements and changes (demands of society, business, information technologies, economic crises, pandemics, climate change, and others).
And, in this regard, the second, methodological problem — what skills are needed in the first place and how to organize an effective self-learning process?
There are several examples of solutions:
In many large companies, the overload on the psyche (information pressure, decision-making, uncertainty, etc.) caused by work processes has led to the need to introduce “unloading” and “rebooting” meditation programs. In particular, Google has been successfully using mindfulness programs for a long time.
The imbalance in the development of rational-logical and technical skills in business has recently begun to be compensated by the development of emotional intelligence. It is believed that Emotional intellect allows you to more effectively achieve life and business goals.
A new trend has appeared in the educational sphere — lifelong learning — continuous self-motivated learning throughout life …
Despite the availability of a variety of information about these “special” skills and competencies, there is still no single structure of their relationships and the sequence of formation. Therefore, it is unclear which skills to start learning for the process to be effective and the results successful.
It is also not entirely clear what role such skills play in personal, professional development, and everyday life.
All these questions led me to create a new approach and new technologies for learning and development. In this article, we will analyze the resulting map scheme of the meta-skills that each of us needs.
What are meta-skills?
It means “skills that go beyond”. Based on this, 2 types of such skills can be distinguished.
The first type is skills that go beyond any specific activity, or, more precisely, skills that are associated with almost all possible activities. Such skills are usually referred to as cross-professional, interdisciplinary, or better known as soft skills.
The second type includes skills that require going beyond our “automatisms”: habitual vision, perception, thinking, etc. To do this, we need to “take a step back” and enter a meta-position from which we can see and give ourselves an account of the ongoing processes within us or with us.
Some of these skills are called metacognitive or metacognitive. In general, this type of skill could be designated as meta-positional, but for convenience, we will call them “subtle”, i.e. subtle and requiring a “jewelry” approach.
Subtle Skills
Subtle skills are based on a skill that has many names: awareness, self-awareness, presence, and being in the “here and now” … Of course, there are nuances and differences, but the essence is the same — this is the same internal meta-position of the “observer” or “ I am”, from which subtle skills are included.
The skill of self-awareness and mindfulness is both the easiest and the most difficult to master. A moment is enough to realize oneself, and a whole life may not be enough to learn to stay in constant awareness …
The next skill is attention management. The significance of this skill is obvious — “we become what our attention is directed to.” Attention is involved in all processes of our life. We all use the attention of other people and at the same time very often find ourselves victims of uncontrollability and “ownerlessness” of our attention.
The relevance of attention management skills will increase with the growth of the information load. And most importantly, attention is especially necessary for us to develop all subsequent meta-skills.
Self-awareness, mindfulness, and attention management are two key meta-skills that enable us to understand what is important and need to change in our lives and start the process of these changes.
Mental skills
The next big group of subtle skills is known as meta-cognitive skills. Let’s call them mental. These skills include the skills of reflection, research, and correction of their processes of perception, thinking, decision-making, learning, etc.
These skills allow us to learn how to manage our perception to see ourselves and the world around us more accurately and adequately. And also to notice and correct cognitive distortions and errors, unproductive trajectories of our thinking, and destructive, inhibiting thoughts.
As a result, we can find more suitable ways of decision-making, information processing, self-learning, etc.
Only through subtle mental skills can we improve or shape such types of our thinking as critical, creative, systemic, holistic, non-linear, etc.
Now, these mental skills are at the peak of popularity due to the active development of the sciences of the brain and human thinking. But not everything is solved “out of the mind”.
Fortunately, we have other built-in “tools” as well. By analogy with metacognitive ones, let’s call them meta-sensory. At the heart of this group of skills are our feelings and sensations.
For example, reading skill — is a cognitive skill. Meta-cognitive — track the clarity of one’s perception of the text or the degree of understanding of the material. The ability to look is a sensory skill. Meta-sensory — the ability to notice “something” in the familiar or feel what is happening around you.
Metasensory skills are divided into two groups — feelings and sensation skills.
Feelings skills
Include intuition, feelings of empathy and “first impressions”, feelings of proportion and balance, feelings of acceptance and satisfaction, the relevance of the moment and action, space, time, etc.
Unfortunately, the topic of feelings skills in comparison with mental skills is not sufficiently disclosed in our civilization. This is “eloquently” confirmed by the paucity of the language used to describe our feelings experiences.
But it is feelings experiences that often contain solutions to complex and confusing personal and business problems that our mind is not able to cope with.
Sensation skills
It’s even more confusing here. Partly because we often confuse the concepts of feeling and sensation and use these words as synonyms. And, indeed, it is not always possible to separate one from the other. However, sensations are more connected with the physical body.
Sensation skills include the ability to sense the nuances of body position and movement, as well as the degree of effort applied. Thanks to these skills, we can improve posture, mobility, coordination, and other motor characteristics of our body.
Sensation skills underlie complex motor skills and systems: martial arts, yoga, tai-chi, etc. Management of internal movement (breathing, energy) can also be attributed to this group of skills.
The body gives us valuable information not only about its physical condition, but also about internal mental processes, and the influence of our immediate environment on us.
All this is reflected in our internal bodily tensions. Therefore, tracking tensions, identifying their “meaning” and creating conditions for relaxation is the most important sensation skills.
The skill of managing emotions
It is a complex skill that includes feelings, sensations, and mental components. Most often, emotion arises as a reaction to real manifestations of the world that are not consistent with our conceptions and beliefs.
The feelings skills will include prompt identification and acceptance of the emotion. The detection and elimination of inadequate beliefs that served as the basis of emotions are already mental skills. Sensation skills are necessary to work with the consequences of emotions that are “stored” in our body in the form of chronic stress.
What happens if not we, but emotions control us? Then our “close friends” become frequent and severe mood swings, stress, fatigue, and emotional burnout. According to Eastern healing systems, it is emotions that “imperceptibly” lead to functional disorders of the organs and systems of the body.
When we follow our subtle sensations and feelings, track destructive beliefs, and manage emotions — then we are moving towards restoring, maintaining, and improving our health.
Health management and self-motivation skills
And all this is expressed in the complex skill of self-regulation — health management, as the ability to maintain balance and restore harmony at all levels of our being.
A healthy state leads to sound intentions and motivations. This is where self-motivation comes into play. It is this skill that is responsible for our “driving forces” and for the ability to find “pressure from within” instead of constantly looking for more and more sophisticated external impulses and stimuli.
The skill of self-motivation lies in the conscious management of one’s values, meanings, and interests. Creating or finding new meanings of activity, we can always find the useful in the “useless” and the interesting in the “uninteresting”. And our true values will set the general direction of movement, not allowing us to go astray.
Subtle skills make it possible to become oneself and a doctor, a psychologist, and a coach. And together — skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation — create the basis and “control center” for oneself, one’s actions, and one’s life.
Soft Skills
Soft skills “serve” almost all types and processes of our activity. These skills are not always recognized because they are not associated with a specific profession and are usually formed randomly.
Some people are lucky with soft skills, others not so much. We are talking about self-organization, self-learning, self-development, and communication skills.
Self-organization or self-management skills
Include all processes of our activity from goal setting to goal achievement. And here, ideally, subtle skills should complement soft skills.
Making decisions and setting goals with the help of rational models and schemes are soft skills. But the “connection” of a non-standard perception of the situation, giving the “right to vote” to one’s feelings and sensations — the scope of subtle skills.
Prioritization, planning, and following a plan are soft skills. Subtle skills will be the ability to feel sudden changes, follow the urgency of the moment, turn on the “flow state”, deviate from the plan, or even completely discard it, moving into the “spontaneity mode”.
The ability to keep attention on the task and not succumb to external and internal distractions — these are soft skills. The ability to motivate yourself, track your condition, and correct it in the process of work — subtle skills.
The soft skills of information processing include the ability to identify the relevance and reliability of the information, “digest”, structure, and organize it into a form convenient for further use. To subtle skills — critical perception, the vision of the essence and context, high speed of information processing, etc.
In general, the presence of at least some kind of self-organization system automatically counts for soft skills. But building a system of self-organization based on natural laws (natural rhythm, ups, and downs, synergy, etc.) and your characteristics (temperament, psycho-type, socio-type, etc.) will require subtle skills.
Thanks to subtle skills, we can improve our self-organization and, therefore, achieve better results in any activity.
Self-learning or self-study skills
They provide the process of converting information and life experience into practical knowledge, skills, and qualities.
The main skill of self-learning is the skill-forming skills. Possession of technologies and methods of mastering knowledge, forming skills, and training them are soft skills. And the subtle ones are maintaining a positive, receptive state, interest, and desire to learn, as well as using the features of one’s perception and thinking for more effective learning.
The skill of building a strategy of self-learning or an educational trajectory of movement — what exactly to study, in what sequence, what is useful to combine, and what not is very important.
Meta-skills are universal and certainly useful, so they are needed in any case. But what professional knowledge to acquire — is a matter of choice — what is relevant right now, and what may be needed in a year…
The soft skills of self-learning also include the skills of personal development. The necessity and expediency of such development are revealed with the help of subtle skills of self-awareness and introspection. It can be both individual personal qualities, and a whole range of qualities and skills, for example, leadership qualities.
The most difficult of the skills of self-learning and self-development — is the skill of holistic development — development not only of the personality but also of the body, energy, and consciousness. Real development can only be holistic. By developing individual “parts” we only bring the whole “system” into a state of imbalance. By the way, subtle skills just “operate” with the body, energy, and consciousness.
Therefore, the criterion for the integral development of a person is the balance of the development of subtle, soft, and professional skills.
Communication skills
Aimed at establishing contact and mutual understanding, building relationships and interactions, as well as managing others.
Contact-making skills, for example, would be active listening skills and directing attention to different channels of perception and aspects of the message. These are soft skills. But seeing a living human in front of you, and not a mannequin, feeling what the other feels, already refers to subtle skills.
Relationship-building skills, for example, include the soft skill of providing support to a partner with your attention and participation. Subtle skills will be maintaining interest in a partner, awareness, and management of energy exchange processes, etc.
The soft skills of establishing interaction include the skill of striving for cooperation and mutual benefit, and not for compromise or personal victory at any cost. A subtle skill here will be a “feeling of the elbow”, merging with a partner into a single whole in the process of the activity.
The soft and subtle communication skills described above underlie emotional intelligence and networking.
And finally, the quintessence of soft communication skills is management skills. And so that it doesn’t work out like in “The Marriage of Figaro” by J.B. Beaumarchais — “Your Excellency, you own everything here, but not yourself”, — the manager simply needs to master all the listed meta-skills.
For example, for several years, Unilever has been conducting mandatory mental health and resilience training for managers. Thanks to these skills, they can help themselves and their team in case of need.
Among the special subtle management skills, one can single out the ability to perceive subordinates as a living “organism” and create conditions for their self-organization. Thus, reaching the pinnacle of managerial art — “management without management”.
Meta and Professional (or hard) skills
As you can see, soft skills solve a very wide range of over-professional or, more precisely, sub-professional tasks. It is impossible to do without these skills in business, so they must be present at one level or another of development.
Subtle skills complement and significantly enhance soft ones. In addition, subtle skills reveal the nuances of any activity and completely change the business situation.
In general, Meta-skills allows you to form, develop and apply professional skills more effectively. They also help to avoid professional deformations and emotional burnout. Moreover, meta-skills can partly compensate for the lack or absence of professional skills.
Meta-skills can be considered in a broader context than a profession or business. This applies to sports, creativity, and all our other activities and hobbies. These skills are universal in their application.
Many meta-skills go beyond the knowledge and skills that we used to need to be healthy, happy, and successful. The world is changing too fast, and therefore it is vital not only to keep pace but also, at times, to be ahead of the curve. In essence, meta-skills are exactly the to evolve to cope with an increasingly complex world and the difficulties it throws at us.
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