Who You Know Is Actually A Skill You Should Develop

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!

Michelle: This week, we’re diving into Season 1 Episode 6 of Let’s Talk About Skills Baby. In this episode Kelly speaks with Gayatri Agnew, Senior director of Walmart Giving at the Walmart Foundation about the immense value of social, emotional, and relational skills.

Sari: Gayatri talks about how emotional intelligence is one of the most important groupings of skills that we can focus on. I love the way she talks about skills because she so honestly acknowledges why skills are hard to talk about and even classify, but is able to recognize all of the intricate components of skills grouping and articulates them so clearly and succinctly.  She says;

Gayatri: I think sometimes skills, the idea of skills get a little bit of a bad rap because we think about a skill being the ability to weld metal together. And it is, but it’s also the emotional intelligence to process past experiences and to use them as fuel, to shape and create your future. That is a skill. Confidently public speaking is a skill. Being able to show up in a room and not feel small because you perceive others to be large is a skill.

 So I’ve loved this journey I’ve been on of discovering the power of skills to unlock human potential because all of those, all of those things are skills.

Michelle: Processing past experiences, and confidence speaking about them (or anything else) and taking up space all add up to some of the most durable skills you can hone … and. the most transferrable. So why do we tend to gloss over them on our CVs or resumes? Well, the answer is, because they are non-job associated skills. We find it so easy to name the skills associated with particular roles, because they are easy to defend, and also easy to measure. With these social emotional skills, its simply not as easy.

Sari: Exactly. But while they can’t be quantified, they CAN be described, and without acknowledging these strengths, you’re missing such crucial information about a person and how they perform.

Michelle: Not only that, but the skills that ARE associated with jobs are also SO subjective. Think about a cashier working in a fast-food restaurant that is undergoing massive construction to implement automated ordering stations. One day you’re an expert at the cash register, and the next you’re having to learn an entire new software program.

Sari: The fact is, at every job, in every industry, the job-associated skills WILL change with time. Every single employee, regardless of how much experience they have, will end up having to learn new skills to keep up with the change. So ultimately, if you focus only on the job associated skills when telling your Skills Story, that story is going to become outdated and irrelevant.

Michelle: Right! But you know what never becomes irrelevant? Your interpersonal skills and the value you bring to your relationships. Let’s hear it in Gayatri’s words;

Gayatri:  I don’t think we as sort of economic and workforce development professionals, talk enough about social capital. Which is literally the opposite side of the tangible hard skills that a person is tagged with. Social capital is just the idea that what you know is important, who you know continues to play a role in how you move through the workforce.

 So social capital is not about knowing fancy people. Social capital is about having relational value in the relationships that you have , take either a racial equity lens or a financial inclusion lens, and you put that over the idea of social capital, it’s not hard to recognize that the child of a CEO has a very different network that he or she has access to, their social capital is so different from the capital that someone who maybe has lived and worked in the same five city block radius of a Baltimore, Detroit. And it’s not better or worse, but it’s very different.

Michelle: Wow, I have never looked at social capital as a skill this broadly before, and now I can’t look back! The best part about it, is that your social capital is never fixed. You can constantly be expanding it by learning more and networking more. In the digital age this has never been easier, and its not nearly as intimidating to network as you might think!

Sari: Yes! It is so encouraging to look at social capital as an asset that you have the daily power to strengthen. We’ve all heard the saying; “it’s who you know” and one of my favorite resources for expanding who you know AND upping your networking game is the book Reach Out by Molly Beck. Molly challenged herself to email one person every day for an entire year to develop her professional network, and it completely changed her life.  She even ended up starting a company because of it! Her book details her strategy so you can easily embark on the same challenge. She also now offers an interactive networking cohort with Carly Valancy called The Reach Out Party, which is a monthlong online community for reaching out. People from this community have gotten new jobs, met their husbands, changed careers, gone viral on Tik Tok, and so much more, all by strengthening their networking skills, one email at a time.

Michelle: I love this so much and cant believe I hadn’t heard of it before! Its not an exaggeration to say I literally cant wait to check this out. One of the hardest parts about skills talk, is getting comfortable doing it with anyone, anytime, anywhere. That’s why it feels like a challenge when someone asks you to clarify your resume, or talk about yourself in a job interview. One of my life mentors who connected me to our work with Skills Baby told me that his key ingredient for success was being able to deliver two perfect pitches – one for 60 seconds, and one for 3 -5 minutes – to anyone.

To get there, I can’t think of a better challenge for anyone, than to share your skills story once a day. We’re here to remind you that you only get better with it the more you practice, and the more comfortable you feel recognizing your own skills, the more readily you can crush, nail, and absolutely overdeliver that perfect pitch.

Sari: 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.”