Natural Skills and Talents
It is often the case in our working lives that we don't consider the skills that we have developed by living our lives in the way that we do: those things that we have developed and now come naturally to us.
This article looks at how we might connect more effectively with
our skills: those we have acquired along the way, those we desire and those that develop from our different experiences as disabled people and
our talents: the things we do naturally well
Skills from the Disabled Experience
So what are the skills we have developed because of our experience of disability?
Developing a connection with how resourceful we are as disabled people is especially relevant to our leadership potential.
More often than not, disabled people see these skills as relevant to life but not necessarily to the world of work.
Sync member Nick J Field talks about:
...our natural skills of overcoming obstacles, to challenging paradigms, to being determined, and having a good understanding of the human condition.
Tony Heaton, Chief Executive at Shape Arts reckons:
...when you start to analyse these skills, they become natural management tools for you to use as a leader.
Click here and listen to more of what Tony has to say as well as Sync's role in challenging the status quo.
Does Leadership Culture leave us out?
If we are unable, for whatever reason, to develop our leadership skills in a 12 day intensive leadership course, is there an assumption out that we are not up to leadership? Of course there is!
In her Sync entry, Rachel Bagshaw talks about leadership culture supporting the idea that a leader must work long days. Is it possible to be a leader and work part-time? As Rachel says
...the leading is no less good, it’s just a shorter day!’
Sync coach Hannah Reynolds talks lucidly about this on the website
As my physical mobility decreases with each year, I become more conscious of roads not taken and of the reasons why. I know now that following your own paths and being your own leader does not come with age. It’s a continuous process of un learning old myths told by others about what is possible and what is not.
Sync is designed to challenge and develop new opportunities for disabled people to get skills on their terms and do leadership in different ways and a key part of that is harnessing what we are already doing, both positive and negative and challenging assumptions about what people think a leader should be about.
Changing Skill and Acknowledging Talent
Many of us are in a state of flux and change by virtue of our impairments and are bombarded by other people's views of not being 'acceptable' or 'good enough', made even more difficult when this means that we have to do things differently.
SYNC member Bobby Baker in her Bonkers Fest article in the Sunday Times Magazine in July 13th 2008 questions why it is that:
...people who are 'unusual' and different used to be more celebrated and accommodated, but now there's a tremendous amount of fear. I feel people like me have a sensitivity and creativity that is very valuable.
If and when things change for us, how can we find ways to focus, not on the loss of skills, but on the transferable side of those skills.
Over to you...
So what of talents or 'gifts' - the things we do naturally: do they develop in response to the sheer will to 'prove people wrong' or are they in our nature?
When people are doing their 'talent', you will see a natural glow and a certain energy in the room - a bit like a ready brek glow. A good coach is always on the look out for these signals and these can be around positive talents as well as those talents that don't always serve us well?
Let's face it, we can be particularly talented in saying sorry or feeling sorry for ourselves, or colluding with each other over the bad stuff, rather than shaking it off.
We can use each other to point out when we are exercising these not so helpful talents and behaviours.
Sarah Pickthall, Sync Coaching
