How to maximize professional skills?

Hiring an experienced and insightful professional who is already trained and fully competent is the dream for any employer. In reality, those workplaces that have trained such people (and they do exist!), also value them enough to keep them. You, therefore, need to build your own talent.

If you want to start retaining your own talent, you have probably wondered at some point – how is it that only some people are truly efficient and engaged?

Lack of work engagement

According to the Gallup report State of the Global Workplace, 67% of employees aren't engaged and 18% are actively disengaged at work. Jim Harter writes that the “economic consequences of this global "norm" are approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity.”¹.

Those numbers are truly shocking. Let’s examine this further. Does this mean that 85% of people don’t like their jobs? Unlikely. Maybe those 18 % have that problem, but what is it then in the case of 67% of employees?

When you observe your staff, you may notice – they daydream, think, and discuss topics unrelated to their work. You might notice they feel preoccupied with something else, and quickly distracted by noises in the office, they aren’t engaged, they are physically present but their minds are elsewhere.

Likely, your employees don’t really know how to properly hold their focus. Does it sound familiar? The fact is that most people operate using their autopilot mode – without full awareness of what they are actually doing.

If you generalize you can say – people have just so many more processes going in their minds than those directly related to the task/work at hand. Every one of those internal processes consumes valuable time and energy and distracts people. Therefore leading to disengagement from the real purpose of their work, they feel busy and stressed and yet don’t get things done.

Awareness and intrapersonal skills can be trained

We have learned that people are distracted when their awareness wanders, what then can be done about this?

A big part of disengagement can be explained by the fact that people don’t understand their own internal processes; therefore professional training alone might not be enough.

Until people are provided with the tools to change their mindsets, the existing attitudes and behavioral patterns will not change.

The paradox is that workplaces constantly train professional skills on inter-personal skills (relations between people, sales, etc.) and constantly miss the importance of training intrapersonal skills; skills based on the awareness that enable us to manage our internal domains with ease.

All experts use more awareness than others

Experts are often smarter in their areas of expertise than others. Why?

First, they understand how their input is crucial in the bigger picture. Second, they are also more aware of what they do and what kind of results that work brings. However, their awareness and ability to create flow in their work is often available in narrow areas of activity and not accessible in other tasks and situations. For example, they aren't aware of their own internal processes – the processes that take place in their minds. This often leads to stress and burnout.

Most of the time burnout comes from positive stress, not from negative stress. When things are tough, nervousness may lead to anxiety and untreated stress can cause burnout that may lead to depression. It is a known fact that there is an 86% overlap between burnout and depression².

People actually need to learn basic intrapersonal skills while they are well, to prevent stress and burnout. Training of interpersonal skills ensures that people can stay well, and be fully focused on the task at hand. Working well and being focused leads to higher engagement! Simple!
 

Intrapersonal skills as a way to professional excellence

Self-awareness forms the basis of all intrapersonal skills. If we can lead our internal world – our emotions, and our thoughts to what we need our attention/awareness focused upon, then every job becomes easier. When employees are more focused they are more productive, satisfying both employee and employer.

Employee intrapersonal and professional development are the two sides of the same coin. One doesn't exist without the other. However, until your employees are given the tools to make the changes, it is empty hope to expect any change at all.

Would you expect your turnover to change or expect to find new clients without any effort? It is the same with your staff’s intrapersonal skills – it takes effort to learn those skills. And this effort can only be an individual effort. The best you can do is provide tools for this kind of development.

Wellness in a broad perspective

People who are well can create a workplace culture that is also well. Workplace culture is always a thing that attracts the right candidates and the right customers to your organization. After all, what every person in your team and what every customer wants is the same – great personal relations, the ability to have purposeful cooperation and their input is valued and knowing that all the details are equally noticed within the bigger picture. Awareness and intrapersonal skills are the key skills for achieving it all!

How to train awareness and interpersonal skills?

Now you can provide access to awareness-based intrapersonal skills. Yes, we know that it's a matter of price and accessibility!

Did you know that all Wellness Orbit e-trainings are accessible 24/7 and with prices starting from as little as 20€/month per employee? For achieving results we recommend the 'Getting Things Done' e-training and for staying mentally fit for work we recommend 'Well Fit for Work'. The e-trainings we offer are designed to lead to excellent mental wellness and increase personal initiative and ability to focus.