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Do You Realize How Much Skill Development Is Going On?

We have been all forced to up our game…to our Advantage!

Did you notice how much more focused you have become due to the restrictions imposed because of the pandemic? Now you know yourself. Bring it!

Most articles talk about what the restrictions did to limit us. I disagree. I see growth, true mental growth in our ability to adjust quickly and use existing systems more competently. True learning is being in a state of unknowing and boy, or girl, were we in that place. Instead of spuing the usual poor us mentality, let’s take a look at some interesting walk-aways.

1. Were you using multiple platforms or just one, before?
2. Did you get creative with background alternatives based on what group you were speaking with?
3. Haven’t you learned that your computer, tablet, smart phone table top has multiple sound systems and camera options that work better with different browsers and operating systems?
4. Wasn’t that you who brought online a client, vendor from overseas who was experiencing issues with connecting?
5. I know I heard you calm an irate client down when their side of the system was not connecting and you saved a sale, a relationship, a mental breakdown.
6. That college research paper on the Hathorne experiments’ in commercial lighting, it does make a significant difference with the right kind of lighting in the room, doesn’t it? Just like it does in the bathroom in the winter months!
7. On the road, at a public space, your equipment must be maintained or that battery just wont last the whole presentation…ops!

You get the picture. Stop complaining and draw from each and every challenge a strength that you did not have, were not aware of or simply have not exercised that part of your brain. Get excited!

Now, the BIG QUESTION…have you added these skills, competencies and specific IT knowledge base to your CV – your course of life. That little bit of tail text should have lit your but up and instead of writing the boring grocery list of mundane functional job description stuff everyone else has, you will lite up your CV/Resume with flare. Samples of you and others working on various systems, give it a name. Add recommendations because you solved an issue IT could not…I know your out there! Add a Certificate or two because you took the time to go from basic to advance level knowledge in two or three systems, apps and various software. If nothing else did you have fun learning or are you still stuck in highschool mode of having to be told to do, learn and regurgitate information?

As Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997), American adult educator, famous for the adoption of the theory of andragogy expressed, “It is tragic that we have not learned how to learn without being taught…The simple truth is that we are entering into a strange new world in which rapid change will be the only stable characteristic…”

For those that wish to do some mind building read on…
In Order to Learn: How the sequence of topics influences learning

Frank E. Ritter, Josef Nerb, Erno Lehtinen, and Timothy O’Shea