Meta-skills are the skills that you can use to learn new skills or work with new people in a new environment.
They are skills that you can apply to any job or situation. So you don’t need to worry about having to learn the latest version for a specific task.
You’re already using them:
- Initiative – You researched the topic without being prompted.
- Communication – You discussed a project amongst your team.
- Creativity – You made an engaging presentation.
Course structure:
- There’s no test for meta-skills.
- It exists along side your other units.
- Record how you use and improve the skills while working on other units.
How do I improve them?
One of the ways you can develop your meta-skills is by thinking back to situations you have been in and how you acted in them. Reflective practice is the habit of thinking about things that have happened in the past, and analysing them. This can help you think about how to act (differently or not) if something similar happens in the future.
When reflecting on things that have happened, it can be useful to break it down by asking yourself the following questions:
What?
Describe what happened
So what?
Consider why people – including you – acted in the way they did, and what you can learn from this
Now what?
Identify what you could do in the future in a similar situation
Why is Reflective Practice important?
- It can help you think calmly about a situation that’s happened.
- It can feel good to think about how you can be more in control of how you react to things.
- It can help you to identify the skills that could help you act differently in future situations.
Starting out
Download and complete the profiling tool.
- Using 1 or 2 sentences describe what each skill means to you in your own words.
- Reflect and ask your self how often you use each of the skills and click the appropriate radio button.
- On page 2, give an example of when you have used this skill in school or home life. If you can’t think of anything, give an example of when you might use this skill
Download and complete the self-assessment tool.
- Describe each of the meta-skills in your own words
- Choose how aware of the skill you are and how confident you are that you could demonstrate this skill in school or a workplace.
- On page 2, explain why you picked that value for each skill
- Choose 4 strong skills and 4 to develop.
This is your starting point. As you grow as a person throughout this course you will level up these skills. During both years we will revisit this self-assessment form and see how you’ve improved and which is the next skill that you would like to try and develop.
Evaluate
- Describe what happened.
- How did you feel about it?
- Identify meta-skills that you used, or should have used.
- Identify what part these skills played in the situation.
Examples:
- “We had a team meeting today to come up with new ideas for the event. I was asked if I had any ideas and I couldn’t think of anything so just shook my head.”
- “I think I should have used communicating, collaborating and creativity in the meeting.”
Reflect
- Think on the points you made.
Improve
- Choose some skills to improve.
- What are you going to do to improve them?
Examples:
- Communication – “I’m going to speak up more during meetings so that I’m not so nervous when put on the spot.”
- Collaborating – “I will spend more time working in a team so that I am comfortable around people.”
Repeat this cycle to keep improving
