For years, I’ve coached, mentored and interviewed many people and I’m always interested in how people articulate their passions, skills and opportunities to improve.

One of the purposes of being a people leader and a coach is to help my team reach their career goals including preparing them for interviews. We usually have weekly or fortnightly Individual Development Plan (IDP) sessions where we explore what they want to achieve and how the work they are doing can provide examples and opportunities.

So naturally, the first thing to do when meeting a new mentee or welcoming a new employee is to explore their strengths and gaps because then we can associate the reasons behind what they do in their jobs.

Defining your skills

Traditional methods of filling your skills gaps will tell you to do more training however education is only one part of growing your skills and filling your gaps.

Before we start, draw or download a quadrant diagram or halve your page vertically and horizontally.

What you’re passionate about.

In the top left, write a list of all the skills you love to use. The ones you can’t wait to show people or share. These skills are used in the activities that make you want to go to work or get up in the morning.

What you’re good at.

In the bottom left, write a list of your strong skills. These are skills you're comfortable putting on your resume, they make up the core of your skillset.

What you’re good at but prefer not to do.

In the top right, write a list of the skills you know you have but prefer not to do. For example, you can run a large stakeholder meeting but are afraid of public speaking. So in this area, I’d write Public Speaking but would put Communication in Skills (bottom left).

What you avoid at all costs.

In the bottom right, list the items you outright won’t do. This list may be things you’re good at individually but putting them together, you might avoid the activity. Let’s say it's Mentoring someone, it’s about sharing your skills and experiences however you still avoid taking someone else through your process. The fear may come back to confidence or impostor syndrome.

Download a pre-made template here.

Planning your next steps

You might not get the items in your diagram right the first time. After a week of work or thinking, you might add more or move some to other categories. When you’re happy with it, for now as it will change, then it’s time to plan how you’re going to look at each section of the diagram.

The left-hand side of the diagram articulates your strong skills. These are the skills you’d confidently put in your resume and seek to align with your next job opportunity or for an existing job, your next performance review.

The interesting part of the skills on the left-hand side of the diagram is that most people may tell you to focus less on these because you’re already good at them and focus more on your gaps. I don’t agree with that because as you become better at something, you will do it quicker or know it better.

So don’t stop working on the things you love and your strong skills, just acknowledge they take less time to do and when they take less time, you now have more time to work on the right-hand side.

Keep growing your left-hand side, they are your assets.

The right-hand side of the diagram is usually where people get stuck and spend many hours in self-help, seeking advice, and buying tracking apps. But it really comes down to understanding why you avoid these activities.

First, we need to understand your priorities. Which of these items on the right are more meaningful for you or which will cause the most impactful, positive change if you were to overcome them. If you put “afraid of spiders” in the bottom right, that’s OK, let’s leave it there and focus on public speaking.

To help you prioritise, let’s break them down into 3 categories.

Fix, Avoid, Accomplish.

With each item on the right of your diagram, write beside them if by overcoming these obstacles, you would fix something, avoid something from happening or accomplish something.

For example, Public speaking could be something you want to achieve. But if your job requires you to talk in front of crowds, then it may be to avoid bad situations. Maybe you’ve been in a job for a long time doing lots of public speaking but you’re not getting the reaction from the crowd you're used to, so you need to fix your style of public speaking.

Now we can measure the impact of each item on the right-hand side. The measurement is the severity of not fixing something, what would happen if you didn’t avoid that situation or if you never accomplished what you needed to.

Now that you’ve prioritised your right-hand list, let’s look at how to progress them.

Education, exposure or experience.

Starting from the top of your right-hand side list, what will help you overcome your reason for avoiding that skill? The reasons always boil down into 3 categories.

Education

Do you avoid something you want to do or do better at because you don’t know how. This is a lack of education. Gaining an education can come in many ways, not always through a University or college. There are short courses, sometimes internal courses in your organisation or even start off through course websites like Skill Share.

Before you invest funds or time into a course through, see what’s on Youtube. Search the topic you want to gain an education on and see if there are some free courses there. At the least, search for reviews on.

Also consider asking your mentor, coach or colleagues about any training they recommend. Maybe even your Hero might have hinted towards training. Check out The Difference Between Hero, Mentor and Coach if you haven't already.

Exposure

If you feel you have the education/knowledge of the skill or task and know how to technically do it but have not seen anyone else do it then you may just need exposure. For example, let’s say you’ve finished a public speaking course and have seen people talk on stage but have not seen someone go through the process or writing their speech, then you may just need exposure to their processes.

In the corporate space, this is like sitting in on a meeting to observe. It’s about watching the process. YouTubers say “just start making videos” and people like Rene Richy tell you stories about how he learned his process along the way. But watching someone else run through their process can help add context for you. It is also great for your confidence.

Experience

Sometimes you just need to get your hands dirty and do it. If you have the education and have seen people do the task/job, then it’s now your turn. To fill this gap on the right-hand side, you just need to jump in. Follow what you learned and what you saw to do the task.

You won’t nail it at the start or first try, well, you might but you will also grow from there too.

The last team I managed knows this very well, I believe in learning what works, then figuring out how to repeat it. And do it over and over again. As long as you’re repeating it, you're evolving it and learning more. The more you do it, the more it will move to the left.

I get a lot of questions about how to find the next career path and how to prepare for interviews. So my next article will be about using items from this article to help you in job interviews. Mostly how to prepare for the questions but also to re-think how you perceive yourself and your skills and that changes how you interview.

Make sure to follow me and please throw me a few claps if this article helped you. That way I know the type of content you find valuable.

Thanks again and looking forward to writing for you again soon.