What is the relationship between skills, learning new skills, and capacities?
All my life I have been puzzled why perfectly normal people fail at even understanding concepts from certain things, like distinctions, from communication, negotiation, empathy, caring, team work, leadership, responsibility… I could fill this page with examples.
I have had my own issues. One of them is understanding instructions if there is even just one word in the instructions I am not exactly clear what it means, or what the writer means, I can’t follow the instructions.
This is probably why, last week, I could not make the first computer I bought work: its one-page instructions sheet was written in a language I did not comprehend, and I didn’t trust myself to spend a year or so to learn those concepts so I can have the computer work.
I had to suspect that people I so confidently talk to, have a similar deficiency: they can’t make what I say work for them, because there are holes in the fabric of knowledge.
Then last year I tried to be helpful to a woman in Ireland (I even published our conversation to zero echo from readers!) by teaching her negotiation skills, empathy, looking at things from the other person’s point of view: methods that are obvious and easy for me. I was sure that other readers will love the article… I was wrong.
Continue reading “Can you learn the skill of negotiation? The art?”