Respecting Skills

I am always interested to meet people and find out about what they do, particularly their career choices. I really enjoy finding out how they go about it and what made them make their respective career choice. I also do this because I respect the skills and gifting that other people have and hope to get the same in return.

Now, as my beautiful wife will attest to, I struggle to find out deeper emotional issues, and desperately need to work on this. This is not going to be a time that I explore this issue, this instead is more about helping to identify what we should be doing on a professional basis, when we meet others.

Most often career choice comes with a rank, what do I mean by this? Well, when for example, a professor arrives into a conversation they will often receive a more attentive ear than another “lesser” qualified person from the rest of the participants. Astoundingly they may even receive a better audience than the true expert in the field, who is in the conversation. This is an issue that we all need to be acutely aware.

We need to be aware that with the changing career landscape that we are going to meet new experts, people who have skills that are not necessarily “learned” skills. They are never-the-less skills and they are likely to be more qualified than you or I in the conversation. Education is a vital part of anyone’s development, but be careful to assign expertise by title only. A professor of chemistry for example is not a musician or artist and while they may be able to pass comment on something, they are not the expert.

Let us work on understanding others, respecting their disciplines, learning from one another and ultimately becoming better people as a result of this.