By Tania Almeida*

Metaskills: Five Talents for the Future of Work
Marty Neumeier

 

In this year when the MEDIARE turns 25, I will share with readers of Leia Comigo *non-academic reviews of books and articles that have passed through my hands and eyes, without a close connection with the act of facilitating dialogues, as in previous publications. In 2022, the works discussed here will focus on human skills and competences understood as useful in decision-making situations.

The initial dedication to the topic decision-making aimed at improving my knowledge in the field of consensus building and mutually beneficial solutions that characterize Mediation. The exploration of this subject broadened my spectrum of interest when I began to read about skills and competences required by the contemporary scenario, in coexistence - the era of accelerated speed of change, the shortening of the average life of ideas, diversity and survival sustained by partnerships and for collaboration… the age of algorithms, which have helped us with mechanical and repetitive activities.

As a natural consequence, I arrived at corporate (or institutional) leaders, actors dedicated daily to negotiations and decision-making. solo or in collegiate. So I approached what I've been calling soft skills, expression inherited from electronic computing, as demonstrated by the first publications on the subject, which import the term to refer to behavioral skills.

Also named as Human Skills by Simon Sinek, an ethnographer dedicated to thinking about corporate leadership, some of these skills are identified by Marty Neumeier as metacognitive skills and are brought together in the work Metaskills – five talents for the future of work, object of this review.

Marty alerts us to mandates of the contemporary era, such as innovation, not only technological, but also personal talent. An era that envisions a future of vertical take-off and no longer diagonally, as the industrial age was used to seeing. With the mission of bringing the principles and processes of design protocols for business, the mind of the author, who is also a designer, points us to five of these talents: feeling, seeing, dreaming, making, learning.

Let's go to the summary:

Feeling – consider the positive differential that emotion gives to interactive/behavioral skills.

Marty ponders that emotion, previously despised by the industrial age because it got in the way of judgment and efficiency, gained a vital and honorable place the closer we got to the robotics age. Permanent presence in any of our actions, ideas or thoughts, emotion, as corroborated by Neuroscience, interferes with our perceptions and decision making, in turn filtered by our beliefs and mental models.

In other words, our view is always biased by our social construction. However, it is emotion, our differential in relation to algorithmic solutions, that unleashes creativity (freedom to think outside the box), in addition to being the center of learning and intuition (updated expression of our experiences), as well as empathy (consideration of the particularities of the other with whom we interact).

Marty considers that aesthetic skills, those permeated by emotion, distance themselves from Cartesian visions of Right and wrong and start using the categories better and worse, always considering the particularities of the intervention object – the impact/experience that will be caused in the other, to whom the interventions are addressed/destined.

Seeing – see the world systemically. Your view will be broader and will cover more comprehensively the complex issues.

If we adopt the systemic view instead of the Cartesian one (which works with the linear cause/effect equation and the right/wrong categories), our way of seeing the world and of thinking and, consequently, of acting will include a multiplicity of causalities and of factors that interact and strengthen each other, making our analysis of situations and decision-making broader and more complex.

Systems thinking is integrative, not exclusive. It works with a mosaic of pieces, simultaneously one interfering and affecting the others (systemic interdependence). In this scenario, there is no choice between opposites, since this mode of decision-making does not work for complex issues. In complex questions, the permanence of paradoxes forces the mind to search for new answers and incites creativity. Subjection to the tyranny of the “OR” (either/or) Cartesian gives way to the inclusive comfort of the systemic “E” and the harmonization of differences, instead of competition between them.

Dreaming – believe me, creativity is not born from fidelity to the known.

to Marty, dreaming results from the combination of knowledge with the power of imagination. The originality in decision making comes from this conversation, from the construction of hypotheses, from the expansion of alternatives, from the questioning of the mindset in force. For the author, dreams do not visit us, we create them unconsciously, especially when we distance ourselves from logical narratives and Cartesian thinking. To innovate in solutions and attitudes, it is necessary to move from the known to the unknown, from the right/wrong binomial. Thinking outside the box, an expression often mentioned but not always practiced.

Making - draw and test (use to make, that has to do with creating, before to do, that has to do with doing), and correct as you do.

To translate the idea of making, Marty uses Da Vince's methodology: thinking about the detail, including and excluding before finishing the painting; and also to the thought of Donald Schön, who in his book Educating the Reflective Professional gives us the concept of reflection in action – while something is being executed, the need for adequacy and corrections is permanently evaluated. As if we were a helmsman who corrects the rudder all the time he steers the vessel, considering the unpredictable (or unforeseeable) changes in the scenario – winds, tide, etc…

Marty tells us that the act of doing is not executive but reflexive. He considers that simplicity and complexity are not in opposition, they are not contrary concepts and proposes the combo: simplexity. That is, to assess the complexity, but describe it in a few simple words, to make it simple even considering the complexity. The author launches another word, unclude, which other than including (includes) or delete (exclude), goes in the line of removing excesses.

Learning - master knowledge that others do not have, be self-taught, unlearn and relearn.

Marty says you can build new skills moved by passion or special interest in something. This sharpens our creativity and encourages us to know more widely about what we already know, because by mastering a knowledge we can offer something that others do not. It is a positive and complementary overlap that can articulate what the scenario/context needs with what can be made available with a differentiated value in relation to the others.

For Marty Neumeier, the goal of bringing to the business principles and processes of design, his profession of origin, brought together a set of five talents that the author considers likely to make a difference in the future of the work scenario:

  • include emotion as a positive differential in the interaction with the other (socio-emotional skill);
  • think and act systemically, always considering a mosaic of complementary and simultaneous factors;
  • believing that repeating what we already know distances us from creativity and innovation;
  • test before implementing, correcting and adapting the actions to what is presented; and
  • to build a differentiated knowledge for what is already known and done.

These talents interact with each other and expand the range of technical skills required by the industrial age and that make up the curricula that the corporate world has been giving prestige and primacy to.

No wonder Marty calls these skills human skills, reminding us that they are already part of us, but were being left in the background by mechanistic thinking. Unlearning to perceive and act based on the prestigious model by Descartes and also innovate in the field of skills, as well as in the field of technology, are here as the author's provocations.

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Metaskills: Five Talents for the Future of Work
Marty Neumeier
312 pages

 

* Tania Almeida – Master in Conflict Mediation and Dialogue Facilitator between individuals and/or legal entities. For 41 years she has been designing and coordinating dialogue processes aimed at mapping, crisis prevention, change management and conflict resolution. She is the creator and founder of the MEDIARE System, a set of three entities dedicated to dialogue – research, service provision, teaching and social projects.