Working with (eco)skills
This method helps individuals reflect on their personal and eco-related skills through success stories, encouraging self-awareness, skill development, and connecting their strengths to sustainable careers. The activity is designed for high school and university students, graduates and adults. It targets clients who are involved in or sympathetic to green professions and issues, as well as those who are still finding their relationship to environmental/green issues. It is and example of introducing sustainability to a traditional approach of identification of skills through action verbs.
Inspiration for the tool
- M. Shymon – B-creative cards Strengths (handbook)
- EKS – Navigating the world of work. How to find the right one?
Rationale: Why is this needed?
This method is needed because it fosters self-awareness and recognition of eco-skills that people can develop and use to drive positive change in the world and their careers.
Objectives
By the end of the activity, clients/students will:
- be aware of their eco-skills, how they use them in their lives, which ones they consider the most important and how they can develop them further.
- better understand their skills, but also to identify those that they could support.
- gaining feedback of the group on an individual’s skills and sensitising each group member to their needs (in case of a group activity)
Resources needed
- List of skills expanded to include (eco)skills (Annex 1)
- Skills Development Worksheet (Annex 2)
- paper, post-it, pen, box
Activities
At the beginning of the skills work, it is useful for the career development professional (facilitator) to define the aim of the work and to explain what the skills are and why they are important.
Skills are specific abilities or competences that enable us to perform specific tasks or activities. They can be technical, such as programming or working with tools, or soft, such as communication, problem solving and teamwork. We acquire them through learning, experience or training and can continuously develop and improve them.
Skills enable us to achieve our goals, improve our effectiveness at work and in everyday life, and contribute to our overall adaptability. They enable us to respond to changing circumstances, face challenges and contribute to teams or organisations. Working with skills also supports us in personal growth and self-esteem, which contributes to an overall improvement in our quality of life.
Instruction for individual activity:
Invite the client to recall a situation in his/her life when he/she managed to successfully complete something, which can be a situation from work, student or personal life. There may be more than one situation, and you can discuss them in turn. The important thing is that the client is able to handle the situations well. The following questions may help you to do this:
- What was your role in the situation?
- Who else have you collaborated with?
- How did you proceed?
- What was the result?
- How did you feel?
To connect this reflection to sustainability, you can ask the following questions:
- Did this situation have an impact (even small) on other people, your community, or the environment?
- Looking back, can you see any way this experience helped contribute to something larger than yourself?
- How did this situation relate to your values, the way you see your role in the world, or what matters to you?
- If this situation was repeated many times, what kind of world would it create?
- What did you do in this situation that could support long-term well-being (your own, others’, or the planet’s)?
- How would you handle this situation if your goal was to do the most good for others or for future generations?
Then share the list of (eco)skills (Annex 1) with the client and let him/her choose the skills he/she used in the described situation. You can support him/her in his/her choice with questions:
- What do you think was the success?
- What did you enjoy doing the most?
- What made you feel the best?
- What did you find easy?
After the client selects the skills that he/she perceived in the situation/situations, you can add in the form of a suggestion/question those that you registered but the client did not mention. Once you have a list of skills, you can invite the client/client to select the 6 skills that are most important to him/her and explore them in more detail using the worksheet (Annex 2).
You can also use these questions to connect to the sustainability:
- Which of these skills could help you contribute to a more sustainable, just, or healthy world?
- Are any of these skills important in helping others, protecting nature, or supporting your community?
- Which of these skills give you a sense of purpose beyond personal success?
Worksheet Instructions:
The client can write down all 6 skills he/she has chosen in the ovals one by one. In the rectangle he/she writes down how they are manifested in his/her life. He/she can then score each skill on a scale of 1 – 6 according to how well he/she perceives that he/she has developed the skill: 1 = not at all proficient; 2 = not proficient enough; 3 = only partially proficient; 4 = proficient above average, but still need to develop; 5 = proficient very well; 6 = proficient excellent (I am better at it than the others). In the last step, he/she can write down in a circle what he/she wants to develop in that area. The following questions may be helpful in the process of completing the worksheet:
- How does the skill manifest itself in your life?
- To what extent do you perceive that you have developed the skill?
- How could you make better use of that skill?
- What do you want this skill to serve in your life and in the world?
- Which of these skills could be used in a job or project that contributes to a more sustainable or caring future?
- Are there new ways you could use this skill for something meaningful, beyond what you’ve done so far?
Instruction for group activity:
- In the case of a group activity, we can work with clients in a similar way to an individual activity, except that group participants tell each other in pairs, smaller groups or the whole group (depending on the size of the group) their story(s) of when they have successfully completed something. The other participants listen to them and may ask questions to help them better handle the situation (as in the individual counsellor to client activity). At the same time, they record on paper/post-it the skills that they think contributed to the desired outcome or success. They can then also work with the list of skills (Appendix 1) and add others that were evident in the situation for the speaker. When they have completed the list of skills, they hand it to the storyteller. In this way, all participants can take turns in the group.
- In the next step, each participant chooses the 3 skills that are most important to him/her from all the skills identified by the other participants in the story and passes them on. He/she writes these on separate post-its which he/she folds and puts in a common box.
- Skill trading follows – each participant chooses 3 post-its from the box and if they are not satisfied, they can bargain with participants who have the desired skill. Each participant continues in this way until they are satisfied with what they have (or until a time predetermined by the advisor).
- This is followed by a discussion that focuses on perceptions of this exchange, process and desired skills. Questions may be helpful:
- How did the activity make you feel? How was it for you?
- How did you perceive yourself and others?
- Which skill was the most difficult to acquire? Why?
- Why are some skills more important to you?
- Which skills can’t you imagine your top skills list without?
Other questions related to sustainability from the individual instruction can also be used.
Reflections/Consolidation of learning
At the end of the activity, you and the client/client or group can focus on how the activity was beneficial or direct the conversation towards an action plan i.e. what steps they can take to make the most of their top skills for themselves/others. In the case of career planning, you can also focus on brainstorming occupations in which the skills in question can be used.
Note: The career development professional works with a comprehensive list of skills and can monitor how eco-skills are incorporated into the selection, what they mean to clients, how important they are, and move the conversation towards green topics. Alternatively, she can specify in the assignment that clients bring situations in which they also bring something to the world (e.g., related to green themes).