What’s Your Mastery Level?

What’s Your Mastery Level?
By Bob Moore, CMC, MCC, The Effectiveness Coach®

Word Count: 381 Words
Reading Time: Less then 3 minutes

Playing consistently at the top or your game requires mastery of the essential skills. What exactly are the essential skills? Playing championship golf, for example, requires mastering the essential skills of driving, chipping and putting.

How about your job? What skills do you need to master to consistently play at the top of your game? Most jobs generally require three types of skills:

Technical: What do you bring to the job which you acquired by experience and education.
Functional: What must be learned on the job since it deals with how things are done on this job. Functional skills are frequently picked up through on-the-job training, mentoring or on a need-to-know basis.
Personal: This skill area is often referred to as “soft” skills—actually they are the essential skills required to get long-term results. Personal skills include three categories: Behavior, Motivators and Soft Skill Attributes or Capacities.

Overlooking the personal skills area accounts for most hiring mistakes and are a requirement for mastery and to achieve the accountabilities of the job. Ideally, the importance to the particular job has been defined by a benchmarking process. Then, a gap report can be produced to illustrate the degree of fit between the individual’s personal talent and the job requirements.

Even without a job benchmark or gap report, a personal talent report can help determine where to begin. One type of report illustrates the level of mastery among a group of job related personal skills which are ranked Mastered, Some Mastery and Not Yet Mastered. The following skills typically always appear in the upper level of importance (requiring mastery): Self Management, Interpersonal Skills and Personal Effectiveness.

Based on the skills that need to be mastered, a focused personal development plan can be created to address them. A coach-based management approach is a highly effective way to provide real-time, on-the-job development by the person who can most influence performance—the manager of the talent being developed. Thus, the talent/gap report provides a valuable tool for the coach-based manager. This approach places the focus of attention on the skill gap rather than performance deficiencies. After all, it is about mastering the essential skills—a process which begins with awareness, leading to a discovery, resulting in an action plan.

To schedule a complimentary, 30-minute phone discussion about mastering your essential skills contact Bob at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 888-669-3923.

Enthusiastically,

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®, President
Effectiveness, Inc/The Effectiveness Coach®
Aligning Human Capital with Strategic Objectives

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