‘Knowledge, Skills and Abilities’ A Reflection from Knowledge to Well-being

Article by Diego Ingrassia – “”Knowledge, Skills and Abilities” A Reflection from Knowledge to Well-Being” – FEBRUARY 2017_ LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

“It has been clear for many years now that at the end of their schooling too many children write poorly in Italian, read little and struggle to express themselves orally. University teachers have long denounced the linguistic deficiencies of their students (grammar, syntax, vocabulary), with barely tolerable errors in third grade. In an attempt to remedy this, some universities have even activated remedial courses in Italian language’. .

With these words begins the appeal that six hundred academics sent to the Minister of Education a few days ago. This letter, taken up by all the major newspapers, has opened a debate that has also seen responses of a different kind from some linguists who are heirs to the work of Tullio de Mauro. A debate that in any case focuses on the state of health of education in our country and its ability to train people and knowledge in line with the needs of a society undergoing profound changes.

In 1934 Thomas Eliot wrote an illuminating sentence in one of his works: “where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in information”.

Many years ahead of the birth of public television and many years before the advent of the Internet, Eliot asks, with extraordinary foresight, about the great theme of knowledge in the information age, let us try to be guided by this insight.

The level of preparation of Italian graduates, contrary to what is raised by the above appeal, is highly appreciated, even abroad. The theoretical knowledge acquired during their years of study enables them to reach high standards, levels of excellence often confirmed by serious evaluations at the best international research laboratories. From this point of view, the phenomenon of the ‘brain drain’ is to be attributed, by the explicit admission of our fleeing talents, mainly to the absence of meritocracy in our country’s system.

Instead, our educational system is attributed with a lower capacity with regard to the application aspect of the theoretical knowledge acquired during training, in spite of some foreign colleagues who have attended an educational system where there is a greater balance between these two spheres.

The misalignment between these two aspects of knowledge has become increasingly evident since the concept of competence became established in the world of work. Studies in this regard date back to the early 1970s, it was the psychologist David McClelland who first theorised this concept and stated in his famous 1973 article that school knowledge and qualifications are not sufficient to guarantee professional success.

In McClelland’s definition, knowledge and skills, which are placed in a more external and visible sphere, are linked to deeper traits of the individual: self-image, values and motivations. In Italy, Gian Piero Quaglino (1990) defines competence as the “professional quality of an individual in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities, professional and personal endowments”. We are faced with a model, more akin to the Anglo-Saxon culture, defined: “Knowledge, Skills and Abilities” and often translated as: “knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be”..

Within this model, ‘knowledge’ is identified as a first level that allows one to train the mind in the representation of a hypothetical situation or context, and to imagine how to perform a task, make a decision or assume a certain behaviour, trying to evaluate in the abstract the effectiveness of the actions implemented and the possible consequences.

Knowledge’ in this new digital age has changed its essence and information is now available, in an immediately usable form, when it is needed.

All this, of course, is made possible by the fact that almost all culture has now been transferred onto the Internet. No previous generation has ever had the entire human knowledge available in this way, with all the advantages and problems this entails.

On the one hand, access to culture is practically total and free, on the other, we are the first generation to be faced with the problem of choosing what information to allow our minds access to and how to manage, organise and interpret it. The situation has reversed from the past: it is no longer a question of allowing man to access culture but of deciding how to allow culture to access man’s mind. The risk we are running is that we are moving away from the intrinsic value of ‘knowledge’, which ennobles man and satisfies one of his primordial needs, curiosity, to access a superficial and quantitative ‘knowledge’, which has lost its value precisely because it is immediately available and free.

Think, for example, of the study of a foreign language. Today, one can find free online audio courses, one can write a letter that is immediately translated by increasingly ‘intelligent’ and accurate software, one can read a sentence to an application that will simultaneously translate it to our interlocutor in any other language. The support of increasingly refined technology is fundamental for an evolving society, yet the time-saving benefits it provides us with risk not fuelling our motivation to learn and lazy us mentally. Indeed, knowing how to speak the foreign language and being able to interact autonomously without support of any kind, developing independence, is a different story.

We thus express our desire to know how, i.e. to exercise and refine our ability to think and imagine, to learn, to use knowledge and to act in order to effectively put into practice the knowledge acquired on a theoretical level and to be able to adapt it to the infinite variables that the impact with reality presents us with.

For the passage from the “knowing” phase to the “knowing how to do” phase, it is necessary to get out of one’s comfort zone, i.e. the situation in which one limits oneself to acting in a habitual way, avoiding going towards new situations that cause discomfort, with the aim of pursuing personal independence. In this regard, the fundamental and useful elements to facilitate this transition are awareness and responsibility.

Awareness because it allows us to better understand our goals and areas for improvement, giving us the necessary motivation to perform new actions and adopt new behaviours.

Albert Einstein himself said that ‘madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results’.

Responsibility is equally important to make us take responsibility for the implications of our thoughts and actions, without ‘blaming others’. Only in this way will we trigger a mechanism that allows us to grow both as people and as professionals.

We all have dreams. But to realise them requires determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort in formidable quantities, said Jesse Owens.

As a result of this reflection, Malcolm Gladwell coined the 10,000-hour rule: based on studies of people who have distinguished themselves for their competence and talent, what emerges is that in order to achieve excellence in a job, it is necessary to accumulate a minimum number of hours of practice, ten thousand hours in fact. Almost 7 years in which one applies oneself for 4 hours, 365 days a year.

A further stage to reach a higher level of maturity concerns ‘knowing how to be’. This phase describes the set of skills matured by an individual who has internalised the previously described abilities and then managed to find a level of balance and harmony with the values and motivations that characterise him or her.

We, too, have been working on these issues for many years now, and in this regard I find it extremely useful to offer you an effective example in line with the concepts expressed so far. We have used it to improve a competence of great importance in the world of organisations: Leadership.

In order to best express one’s Leadership it is necessary to develop a balanced emotional-behavioural competence that will allow us to better understand the emotions we feel and identify them in the communication of our interlocutor by adopting the most appropriate relational strategies.

Leadership in fact implies interaction with other people, therefore relational effectiveness becomes particularly important and can be achieved through good self-awareness and self-knowledge.

It is only in ‘knowing how to be’ that one can develop a high level of personal awareness. One should not deny one’s emotions, nor be ashamed of them or manifest them inappropriately by justifying that ‘that is how one is’. Emotions provide useful information about one’s self, one’s priorities and goals, expectations and relationships.

Carl Gustav Jung himself said: “He who looks outside, dreams. He who looks inside, wakes up’..

Much evidence confirms that certain aspects of emotional intelligence are predictive of job performance. It is well known from the literature that workers with high emotional intelligence are more likely to have high levels of job satisfaction due to the fact that they are more adept at assessing and regulating their own emotions than their colleagues’ characteristics, always taking into account their verbal and non-verbal communication.

When our interlocutors find consistency in what we do, in our behaviour, with respect to the values we hold, we have achieved ‘knowing how to be’ and are ready to embark on the last step of our journey that will lead us to be recognised as leaders: ‘knowing how to be well’.

At this stage, people recognise that our behaviour does not only benefit ourselves but becomes contagious and benefits everyone around us.

Our interlocutors will thus be inspired and motivated, the desire to act and experience what is shown will be born in them.

Knowing how to be well means ‘knowing how to be right’ because what we stand for is not only the result of who we are but is meant to bring these benefits to the whole community. The Leader is the one who empowers others to become their own Leader.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS

• Cooper, R.K. and A. Sawaf (1997), ‘Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leaders

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• Whitmore, John, 2016. Coaching. How to awaken human potential in work, sport and everyday life. Alessio Riberti Editore Srl, Urgnano (BG), Italy

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• Gladwell, Malcolm, 2009. Outliers. Natural history of success. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.P.A., Milan, Italy.

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