Everyone has several gaps in their make-up – in skills, disciplines, intellect, physique. You can’t fill all the gaps. Some are inherent weaknesses, inbred or learnt while still a small child. As you grow up you master a few but perpetuate others. Knowing which are your gaps is the first step to handling them. Knowing which are worth time and effort to solve is the second. Here are the main gaps that haunt people building their lives and their careers. There’s a question after each one that you may find worth answering for yourself.
Awareness is the skill of being conscious. It involves absorbing and understanding what is put before you, guessing the needs and feelings of other people and analysing what is driving the dynamics of any situation. Without awareness all other skills can only be half-used.
Q: How aware / conscious am I of everything I come into contact with?
Communication is learnt for better and worse from the moment we come into the world. We imitate those who care for us in the hope of winning their admiration and love. Those aims stay with us all our lives. Good communication is seldom well taught, particularly to the young when it is most needed. Poor communication accounts for more disasters in the world than any other deprivation. Excellent communication makes people appear intelligent, demonstrates contentment – itself a major form of influence – and enables them to lead.
Q: Am I checking that the other person understands what I am saying?
Sensitivity will command more attention with the increasing use and capability of AI. Humans have a skill to sense situations for which there are few or no objective facts. This is not yet technically understood. It is often regarded as a gift but it also seems to be developed by repeated attempts at forecasting. An ability to sense is incredibly valuable.
Q: Do I try to cultivate my sensitivity about people and situations?
Creativity is high on my list of potential gaps. People think there is something mystical or magic about it. Not true. It can be learnt by anyone who is of average intelligence and who has a reasonably sharp eye. Creativity gets you promotion and success. It also helps you escape when you are trapped in dangerous situations.
Q: Do I see relationships of things, people and events that others can’t see?
Perseverance is achieved by discipline. Robert the Bruce said “Whether doing, suffering or forbearing you may do miracles by persevering”. It won him a battle in 1314. Discipline still wins battles of time management and personal stature. It is not for the obsessed nit-picker, it is for those who want to see someone strong and powerful when they look in the mirror.
Q: Do I stick to the rules I set myself in the search of achievement?
Leadership demands discipline, too. It requires a truthful picture of yourself. Not as a blustering, bombastic bully. Not as a wimpy, self-deprecating recluse but as a human with skills, virtues, faults and hopes. The appearance of a good leader is of calm, order and confidence. The fact of good leadership is diligence, uncertainty and an understanding of risk.
Q: How would I assess myself as a leader if I worked for me?
Flexibility sometimes seems a contrast to perseverance. Perseverance is for objectives – strategy – flexibility for methods, tactics. The world currently fails to distinguish between the two. It is costing pain and cash, and threatening the survival of humanity as we know it. Life is not a Roman road to nirvana. It is a desired destination reached by a meandering river.
Q: Am I prepared to take risks to get things moving?
Conflict resolution requires an understanding of mediation and all the skills listed above. Its increasing importance is due to the complexity and expense law has become. Most of life is a compromise – society wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t. Mediation is reason Vs. technicality. It is an attempt to bring back justice when cleverness appears to threaten it.
Q: Can I control my bias tendencies enough to advance justice?
There are skills other than those I’ve listed. These eight seem to be the most important as we enter humankind’s critical century. In the melee of things we have to do, attending to a gap we have would bring us more reward than any other activity.
Good luck in closing the GAP.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Do you have a view about critical skills? We’d love to hear it at [email protected].
21 March 2025
