Unique Competencies and Skills of Digital Professionals

To truly build digital workforce competency, "development, enhancement, and coaching" imply a better mindset and a unique set of skills to fit for the ever-evolving digital dynamic.

With “VUCA” characteristics -Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, organizations not only need to have competitive necessities to survive today but also should build differentiated competencies to thrive for the future.

People are the most important factor on the journey of business success, but often the weakest link in strategy management. Too often, leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps and they pick the symptoms, not dig through the root causes. Either individually or collectively, it’s important to identify and develop a set of capabilities required to achieve your goals at a technical, behavioral, attitudinal, or cognitive level, and build core competencies to get digital ready.

Cognitive competency (growth mindset, critical thinking, innovative thinking): Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses. Cognitive competency refers to a growth mindset, logic, innovative thinking, or creativity, etc. The "mind" represents our consciousness and awareness. Mindset is everything. In fact, a human's mind is the most invaluable thing to shape every progress, but also the root cause of many of mankind's problems. Cognition involves exploring varieties of meanings or thoughts and abandoning old connections and establishing new relations to spark creativity.

To deal with fast-paced changes and continuous disruptions, growth mindset and cognitive intelligence are in strong demand to ride learning curves and make the progressive movement. To close cognitive gaps and stimulate creativity, the mind needs to be open enough to explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses, embrace other minds’ perceptions, and understand things via different angles. Cognitive gaps disconnect many things that are supposed to be interconnected, and cognitive competency unlocks potential of business professionals and drives positive changes.

Technical/Learning/Leadership competency: Due to the changing nature of digital technologies and the rapid growth of information, IT talent needs to have both technical and business acumen, develop professional attitude, capabilities, skills, flexibility, intelligence, practicality, or pragmatism, etc. IT personnel need to be able to think, learn new technologies, and relate what they have known in the past to the new technologies. There is intense learning and continuous knowledge update for IT professionals, thus, learning agility is even more important than knowledge itself.

From a talent management perspective, professional skill development is something that depends on the individual's wish as per the organization's standards. Great specialized generalists and generalized specialists are both needed to build organizational competency. There are many examples of technicians, who have excelled in their role as a technician, later failing as a manager when promoted. A technical proficient person but having poor interpersonal/ management skills will lead to a loss in productivity. Thus, it’s crucial to identify innate talent, also practice tailored talent development solutions, and invest human capital wisely to develop a strong talent pipeline and amplify collective human potential.

Change competency: Change is never for its own sake, it is always for something new and advancing, it means that removal of something old and building something fresh. Changeability is developed via soft skills such as courage, confidence, and emotional intelligence to overcome the “fear of failure,” and hard disciplines such as knowledge, expertise, and professional capabilities to lead technical changes. Change is an evolutionary journey, it is, therefore, important to stimulate positive emotions for cultivating healthy habits and making cohesive efforts.

Many say that people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability, and their professional quality is also proved via their changeability. Changeability gives you confidence because you know you are able to positively adapt to any given situation, accepting, embracing, and leading changes effectively. Both attitude and aptitude count; good change attitude includes such as openness to new ideas and perspectives; the optimism for things getting better; the passion to discover, and the vision to inspire. Change champion has unique capabilities and a specific skill set in the field of the change additionally, to the specialist knowledge. To expedite change, "putting the right people in the right positions to lead change seamlessly,” needs to become the digital mantra to lead progressive change.

Discernment/Problem-Solving Competency: A more discerning professional who demonstrates sound judgment by using both perception (experience or intuition) and research/analysis is better equipped to make effective decisions. To deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, make discernment and establish insight into approach and style in different situations and have the ability to learn to reflect, have the inter-disciplinary knowledge and emphatic cognizance to capture insight and understand perspectives different from your own to improve decision effectiveness.

There needs to be a better appreciation for real critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Many people do wrong things, because of poor judgment, lack of real critical thinking skills, comprehensive knowledge, empathy, bias, or preconceived notions. Empathy is an ultimate level of human cognition of being non-judgmental, active listening, and balancing between tolerance and respect to achieve that. Having a sound judgment and discerning mind to making the right decisions becomes one of the most critical professional qualities in today's business dynamic with the increasing pace of changes and “VUCA” reality. Discernment speaks more to make the best decision in a consistent manner.

Cultural competency: Culture is a collective mindset, attitude, and behavior, and it’s about how people do things in their organization. Culture is certainly part of the environment in which an organization operates, among other considerations. A digital professional with cultural competency is adaptable and flexible, they are fit for driving progressive change, but be a “misfit” to stimulate creativity, develop and learn more rapidly than anywhere else. Culture stands as a key factor not only in attaining organizational goals but also in the attraction and retention of desirable employees. Effective workforce management focuses on culture-shaping as well as attraction, engagement, and performance alignment.

Different cultures may have different thought patterns as our thinking is indeed shaped by our environment and our experiences, professionals with cultural competency understand that we all have different lenses, perceptions in the way we look at the world, it becomes easier to open your heart and mind. The modern leaders with cultural intelligence can lead their own organization to the global scope and even make a significant impact on human society as a whole.

Modern digital technologies bring unprecedented levels of convenience for people to learn and work, and improve their professional skills continually. To truly build digital workforce competency, "development, enhancement, and coaching" imply a better mindset, capture both the individual's and the organizational development needs, and set the scene for a process to achieve well-defined goals and reach the next level of the growth cycle and business transcendence.

Posted in: Leadership Master,Learning