Helping Others Helps Build Your Skills

Episode Transcript

Sari: The Skill: Emotional Intelligence and Social Capital are two skills that you should consistently work on strengthening to not only improve your hire-ability, but your quality of life in general!

Sari: Got Skills? Of course, you do! But can you talk about the skills you have and how you use them? Whether it’s with your cousin, your potential new boss, or the mentor who has 20+ years in your dream role, skills talk is hard, but it doesn’t have to be.

Michelle: As a spinoff to the Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby Podcast, each week on Got Skills the Skills Baby team is taking a deep dive into a key takeaway from an episode of the podcast, focused on actionable ways for professionals to Skill Up.

Sari: I’m your host, Sari Weinerman and with me is Michelle Smith. We’re here to help you breeze through the next family reunion, interview, or mentorship opportunity by better understanding the skills you have and how to talk about them!

M: This week, we’re diving into Season 1 Episode 7 of Let’s Talk About Skills Baby. In this episode Kelly speaks with Frank Britt, CEO of Penn Foster Group about the importance of helping others to your own personal journey. He believes we all need people to remind us that we are awesome from time to time, and that we all have the opportunity and a responsibility to provide that vote of confidence to others.

S: First of all, what an important reminder. We should never forget that while positive affirmations set us up for success, that is also true for everyone around us, and we have the ability to be that positivity for those people! Second, I love how Frank puts into perspective that the work we do on ourselves can only be fully maximized when we are also invested in helping other’s do their own work too. 

M: Yes! Frank believes that we are all a work in progress, and need the support of both ourselves and our peers to continue progressing. He also believes that every single one of us has a genius within them, it’s just about figuring out what that genius is and unlocking its potential. He says;

F: Genius comes in many forms, the one that the society tends to reward and amplify is mental genius, which is very important, but arguably not the most important thing. There’s obviously the emotional intelligence, which is a central. There’s a physical intelligence that some great athletes have that they’re just able to do things that none of us could really do. There’s a level of what you might call spiritual intelligence, which is a person who sees the world in a wider lens in themselves.

And then I think finally there’s an intelligence having to do with connecting dots, that they can just see that the relationship between things. And I think my premise is everybody has genius in them, and the work that we do over our lifetime is to figure out what is that unique genius that you and I have that I can do uniquely well compared to other people.

And we probably all have three or four different examples of that in the long run. So I think we’re all in search of trying to figure out what that genius is and how can we have the highest relative impact for the time we’re here.

M: Wow! Thank you, Frank for instilling my confidence in myself just from just those words.

S: Right?! I am personally geeking out a bit over how he describes the intelligence to do with connecting dots. This is something I always highlight in my own Skills Story and have included on many of my past cover letters when applying for jobs. It is the skill that I find I use in all of my passions, each of my jobs, and even in my everyday life. 

M: That’s super cool, and such a fun addition to your skills story! I love how Frank uses words like intelligence and genius, that often feel reserved for a special few and assigns them to literally everyone. It is so true that we all have that potential within us, and its doing the work like listening to this podcast, reading, and committing to learning that help us realize that potential. 

S: Absolutely, but as Frank explains, it’s not enough just to focus on your own potential. We are all also responsible for contributing to the growth of those around us as well.

F: I think you need both self-discipline and self-leadership. And I don’t think those are the same things. Self-discipline is about yourself, and self-leadership is about how you engage the world and help elevate other people’s aspirations. And it’s one of these little secrets that no one talks about that the more people you help, the more it helps you. And we tend to be preoccupied with our own situations and our own kind of mental models, which by the way, has tremendous merit, but in and of itself is not sufficient to really drive the kind of impact that I think honestly, we all crave. 

M: Wow, what a powerful statement, and truly a perfect way to bring Season 1 of Got Skills to a close. While we’ve dedicated the season to helping listeners uncover their own potential, and define the story of their skills, now it’s time to pass it on, and help your neighbors, colleagues and friends do the same. If you’ve enjoyed these amazing nuggets of wisdom and advice as much as I have, share Got Skills with 3 people today who you’d like to help realize their own potential. The more we each level up individually, the better world we will collectively create, and THAT contribution is one I know I personally am looking forwarding to adding to the story of my skills. 

S: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Got Skills. The podcast where we explore how to understand the skills you’ve got, and more importantly, how to talk about them. Got Skills is a Growth Network Podcasts production. “To learn more about the hosts of Got Skills head to skillsbaby.com/gotskills. Find out what we’re up to, the latest news in the skills world, and what events are coming up that you should keep an eye on! Last but not least, make sure to follow Growth Network Podcasts on LinkedIn for more awesome shows to add to your podcast feed. We’ll see you next time on Got Skills.”