Skill Cards - our approach to personal & professional development

Skill Cards is a tool to guide and give structure to feedback and development conversations. It focuses on celebrating what makes an individual unique and on sparking a discussion about their individual areas of development.

Career development centers on change and improvement. In the traditional sense, it is typically seen as advancement in a direction: from junior to senior, senior to lead. There are, however, different paths available. From lateral advancement (engineering to design, product to engineering) to different types of specialization (not everyone wants to become a manager).

Evolving one’s career, regardless of the type of advancement, relies primarily on two factors: opportunity and qualification. First, the need for the role needs to exist, either within the company or in another. Second, one must be qualified for the role -- must have the needed skills. While influencing the opportunities available may arguably be possible, shaping and improving your skills and the skills of your team is directly in your scope of control.

An individual is not defined by their role. A tool for developing your career should reflect that.

In our first iteration of creating a tool to aid career development conversations, we attempted to describe the skills each role should have. We quickly learned that “one-size-fits-all” simply does not work. We needed a tool that not only reflected, but celebrated the individual and what makes him or her unique. That an engineer may have skills and expertise in design, or a product manager experience in marketing, or any other in myriad combinations.

Each individual has their own, unique set of skills. Not all of those skills are relevant to their current (or future) role. Of those skills that are relevant, not all are important for their development. Skill Cards provide a structured way to focus on developing those areas from which each individual would most benefit.

How it works

Skill Cards is a card game. Inspired by classic trading-card games such as Magic the Gathering, Skill Cards is built upon the fundamental interaction of sorting cards—of going through a large deck of cards and building a unique deck that fits the individual. What the name lacks in creativity, it makes up for in descriptiveness: each card represents a skill. The goal is to build a hand of cards that make up that person’s most relevant personal growth areas.

To do this, both the people leader and team member start with a deck of the same skill cards each. In private, each goes through this deck and sorts these cards into three stacks: not relevant, good enough, and to improve. The sorting is done based on the following:

Not Relevant: Any skill that doesn’t play a role in their current job or the job they want to move into in the future.

Good Enough: Any skill that is relevant for their current or future role, but which improving would not have a large impact.

To Improve: Those skills they feel need to be improved, that would move them closer to their desired next-step, or that would have a big impact on their work.

This sorting of cards forces both to consider each individual skill as it pertains to that person. After sorting, both come together to compare and discuss. By discussing why each card was placed where, with particular focus on those that do not match, a real, structured, and to-the-point conversation occurs. By focusing on reasoning—what led you to place this card here?—both can develop a shared understanding of the other's views.

The main event, however, comes in focusing on those cards in “to improve”. To create focus and drive actual impact, these cards are discussed and prioritized. With a clear priority and a shared understanding of the individual aspects of each, tangible actions are crafted that can be taken to grow one’s career.

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Created together and with support from David Gebhardt. Thanks to bitteschön.tv and Steffen Kamprath for illustrations and card design.