(Meta) Skilling for Sustainability

In writing our new white paper with Enginuity, we took a closer look at meta-skills.

Late last year, The Green Edge was honoured to be invited by Enginuity to co-author a white paper on the importance of human capabilities for sustainability. We’re delighted to announce that the paper is now published and available for download.

The premise of the paper is simple: we can write and talk about technical skills for the green economy until the cows come home, but without the application of the cognitive, emotional and social qualities of which humans are fully capable, then corners will be cut, rules will be bent and even fractured, and, bluntly, we’ll never get there – ‘there’ in this case being Net Zero, a so-called ‘just’ transition, and ultimately the true end-game, the restoration of a sustainable world.

It’s a hearts and minds thing, really. Cedefop recognises this and, alongside frontline jobs like Repair specialists and Circular product designers, makes a strong callout for green jobs in the future of work having a class of green hearts and minds specialists like Consumer behaviour specialists, Sustainability trainers and Waste management trainers.

So, what types of human capabilities are we looking for here? This is what we discuss in the white paper and, given Enginuity’s mission of finding new ways to close skills gaps in UK engineering and manufacturing, we give special focus to the capabilities of professionals in these sectors. Capabilities related to systems thinking, technology stewardship, environmental advocacy and creative collaboration come through strong – but, to avoid spoilers, we invite you to download the paper.

One human capabilities ‘framework’ we looked closely at in putting together the paper was meta-skills. For some time, we’ve been following the development of Skills Development Scotland’s (SDS) meta-skills toolkit which, for us, seemed a good place to start in defining the types of human capabilities – both for sustainability and for life in general – people need in the modern world. To quote our co-authors in the white paper:

In the context of the workplace, meta-skills are overarching skills that underpin and enhance the application of the more ‘traditional’ skills. They're more about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’. For example, while traditional skills might teach someone the mechanics of writing a report or coding a program, meta-skills guide how one approaches the task, solves problems when they arise, or collaborates with others in the process.

Source: Human capabilities for sustainability (Enginuity/The Green Edge, Jan-24)

Meta-skills wheel. Image: TGE adapted from SDS

It’s all very well to see skills frameworks presented in nice graphics like this, of course: the real task is implementing them through education, training and practice. In the process of researching for the paper, we found this useful post from TestGorilla that provides what we think is a good interpretation of the meta-skills framework. Along the way, it provides some useful pointers of how these capabilities can – and should – be incorporated into a person’s life and work:

• By maintaining a strong sense of personal purpose to help make hard decisions, attract opportunities, positively influence the impact of colleagues’ contributions, and drive change and innovation;

• By connecting the dots to determine the forest from the trees and see how smaller, seemingly unrelated pieces of information contribute to the bigger picture;

• By identifying pain points and understanding underlying problems to see where actions can make the biggest impact;

• By giving, receiving, and soliciting constructive feedback to promote learning and growth, gain actionable advice, and discover opportunities to realign goals, objectives, and measurable actions;

• By continuously ‘interviewing’ others to understand different viewpoints and work effectively with clients, colleagues and other stakeholders;

• By storytelling to capture and hold people’s attention, connect with people from different backgrounds, empathise and understand why they take the actions they do, and shape opinions;

• By establishing authenticity through being true to yourself, your values, and your goals regardless of external pressures, and in so doing establishing trust and respect from the people around you;

• By taking different perspectives to understand what drives customers and colleagues, to assess situations more carefully and resolve conflicts;

• By prioritising effectively to see the full scope of what needs to be achieved but arranging actions and tasks that enable the long-term goals to be achieved in the most efficient way;

• By adapting to new conditions, remaining creative, resilient and productive during periods of change or upheaval, and handling unexpected situations with minimal guidance.

And here’s a thing. As we thought more about it, we realised we need to use our meta-skills (such as they are) a lot on The Green Edge. The so-called ‘green economy’ takes a lot of dot-joining to identify its pain points and priorities. We interview many people with different perspectives and try to present what we find through interesting and adaptive storytelling. Hopefully, we shall continue to do so with a strong sense of personal purpose.

In the meantime, we hope you find our white paper interesting and useful.