Learn to Grow Shorts: Always Learning, Never "Educated"

This week I was talking to Kingsley Aikins about the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace and to your value as an employee.

One of the things he mentioned was that Teams often talk electronically but don’t speak to each other interpersonally, and that connection is something that has been starched out of our lives.

Schools teach knowledge and information, but the thing people need now are skills.

It made me think about the importance of learning theses skills earlier and earlier.

Shelley Osborne has written a fantastic book called the Upskilling Imperative (and actually Shelley will be on the show next week, which I am very excited about).

And in the Upskilling Imperative, Shelley mentions that if we are lucky, we that we have 40 50 year careers. Which makes it seem a bit ridiculous to consider ourselves “educated” after high school or college. In fact, education has to be something that happens over the course of a lifetime.

That made me think two things. We have to do a better job extending traditional education out into our work careers and make lifelong learning.

And, we have to start teaching interpersonal skills earlier in the lives of our children – we need to focus more on skills as opposed to knowledge and information in traditional schools so young learners hit the job market equipped with the interpersonal skills to succeed and thrive.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen!