My unknown skills

What are Metaskills?!

As I mentioned at the story about me, I study the course International Business Innovation Studies. This study does not mean that you have all the innovation skills in your pocket, but you learn how to develop and grow as an innovator. Also does this course learn how you could see things from another perspective and think outside the box.

The metaskills help me to discover how to be a true and professional Business Innovator with discovery and delivert skills. Here under, I will explain how I master or make use of these metaskills to be a better business innovator. The five metaskills that help me discover how to be a Business Innovator are: Define, Design, Execute, Lead and Learn.

Define

How do you discover a problem when you are not used to solving problems?

In my opinion, the first thing you need to do is to be open to whatever is coming your way. If you are open, it will be easier to discover a problem. During our lectures of "What's in my backpack" we sometimes had to read out our essay. It was not everyone that was comfortable reading their essay in front of the class. This was shown because everytime the teacher asked who wanted to read out their essay, people hid their heads and were too shy to read it loud because it was too personal and they were not ready to share it with the class. So discovering a problem is by being open and ready for what might come your way in my opinion. In that way, it will be a bit easier to discover whether there is a problem or not. Being neutral, that's it.

Design

How do you solve a problem?

Well it is not that hard. When, for example, you are working in a group with people who have a different mindset than yours (which happens a lot, how can you as an individual then search for a solution to let everyone or most of the group members agree to a certain issue? Sometimes it seems hard but that is not always the case. When there is an issue in a group, or a culture difference, I first of all try to understand things from the perspective of another person. This helps me to discover why someone is behaving in a certain way. It is not always easy to understand another person but if you have patience, you will certainly get there. Afterwards, you can work together and possibly have the best idea or end result.

I can say this because I have been in situations whereby someone's accent was hard to understand. It didn't stop me from trying to understand the person. Instead, I had patience and was able to communicate with this person. This also helped the person to feel more comfortable in speaking his mind.

Execute

When an assignment is giving to you, are you able to make it realistic?

During a lecture of Thinking and Reasoning, we had a lecture that was about our perceptions. It was the second week of the course and we barely knew one another. Yet, we had to do exercises with one another, using our senses to complete the assignment. All the groups, including mine, were able to execute the assignment. Not only was it fun, but we learned how we were able to bring our message accross with the assignment that was given to us. Teamwork helps when you want to achieve a greater result and this certainly happened.

Lead

To be honest: I have not really learnt how to lead or manage a group of people. Although we have had a lot of group assignments during various lectures, I have not specifically be appointed to be a leader of a group. Yet, I am a vocal trainer of my own gospel singing group and I learn there how to keep the peace in the group. Not everyone is the same and not everyone has the same talent. Yet, we learn how to work with one another and also respect one another. When a problem occurs, I try to solve it on a neutral basis so that everyone will feel satisfied.

Learn

It is always good if you manage to learn something valuable from something you didn't expect to learn something from. In the beginning, I did not really expect that the lecture "What's in my backpack" would benefit me in a huge way but it acutally did. I was able to figure out what I really want to do in the future, how I have to respect people their situations when they are not willing to speak of it, not to judge straight ahead as I do not know what people have been through and also believe in myself that if I want something to happen in my life, I would be able to make it happen. As long as I have a great passion for it and am ready to work for it.

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