Getting Tooled Up!

No – I’m not advocating violence! I just want to explore some of the resources available to help you develop your skills and performance, as you take control of your working life as a hirer or worker.

Self development is a really important part of the Skills Hive ethos. That’s why we are so focused on dynamic profiles involving video, so that you can continuously update potential hirers on how you are developing as a person.

We are continuing to improve the new Skills Hive site and one area I want to really build on are the resources pages.

On the old resources page we provided links to some sites we have found useful ourselves. But I want to build on that with input from you guys, eventually looking to integrate the most popular elements deeper into the Skills Hive experience.

In the Hive Blog we have already talked about the importance of self knowledge, without this awareness of your strengths and weaknesses and how they change with experience, it becomes almost impossible to make active improvements. We have also talked about instinct and the ability to identify and understand opportunity and risk and I still plan to develop an online tool that helps improve success in that area.

For now, let’s look at a few resources that are already accessible online, stuff that we are planning to include in the resources pages of the Skills Hive.

Self-Awareness
There are plenty of questionnaires to help you learn more about your personality and behavioural traits, which is a useful way to reflect on who you are from one perspective at least.

The Johari Window is a great way to look in at your personality through the eyes of others and compare it with how you view yourself. It is a really simple system where you ask friends and colleagues to select traits that best describe you from an extensive list. Over time you can monitor how you have responded to different experiences and actively managed traits to take more control, aligning the external view with your internal one.

And if you want to delve into some of the more complex theory Business Balls (yes really!) make a broad range of academic theory really accessible and practical. Beware though, there is a lot of it and it is easy to become mesmerised! I would suggest focusing on one or two that seem to resonate with you and look at those in more detail, before moving on to something else if need be.

Becoming More Productive
But what about getting things done? We also want to highlight tools and services that help you do more. We are looking into setting up a Skills Hive branded file transfer tool working with wetransfer – do you use that sort of system already?

And for all you ‘Tweet Types’ you could save a lot of time with tools like Formulists, Tweetdeck and Social Oomph which help you be more productive as you grow your social audience and communications. In the scintillating world of accounting we have come across Xero, a really simple and powerful system with a cracking ‘try before you buy’ deal.

Getting Motivated
For inspiration, sometimes all I need to see is a quote that reflects some positive universal knowledge We were given a number of them by Steve Jobs and reminded of them as he exited his role as ‘future maker’ at Apple. Other times it takes a moving speech or presentation to really get me motivated.

There are a huge amount of fantastic presentations on the TED website. You might have seen some of the amazing talks we have shared already via our facebook page, on topics such as why work doesn’t happen at work and the power of video to reinvent education. They have now introduced a new tool to help people share ideas, similar to those built into LinkedIn and other platforms but perhaps attracting a different kind of audience to collaborate with.

Loads of other less well known companies and websites host inspirational video that can be really powerful, sites like I2I (impossible to inevitable), which is a favourite of mine because I was lucky enough to attend a truly life changing course run by its founder Michael Finnegan.

Developing Skills
Other types of resource include articles and blog posts from eminent figures and skilled thought leaders. I already reference many of these where some actionable advice is given. Sometimes these appear on our facebook wall, sometimes I tweet a link or mention it in the Hive Buzz newsletter. The best of them take you on a journey by including hotlinks to source material, alternative approaches, related themes and further reading.

This one from the Harvard Business Review Blog could be considered a bit ‘highbrow’ or ‘corporate’ but the points raised are useful and valid for business and personal relationships. It looks at the art of asking questions and focuses on the benefits of ‘illuminating unconscious assumptions’ that are often wrong.

Another article with a very different tone shows that there is a real depth and range of useful content out there. I recently shared these views on what not to say during business negotiations which, while quite light hearted, contain some really useful advice.

Bee Active in the Hive!
Would it help for us to include a list of all of these links in the resources pages or would it be better to take the actionable ideas and combine them into an interactive tool of our own?

We will be adding to the resources all the time so let us know what you want to see in there.

What sort of online tools and resources do you use that others might also find useful?

What areas would you like to improve in but haven’t found the help you need as yet?

Talk to us, and each other – leave a comment, head to the facebook page, email, just tell us what resources you want to see in the Skills Hive.