Functional skills

Functional skills are your professional or technical skills, such as:

• Marketing
• Finance
• IT
• Human Resources
• Operations
• Sales
• R&D

• Also: Being a lawyer, doctor, geologist, engineer or lab technician.
• These skills are more specialized and less transferable across industries.
• Your marketability depends on the strength and demand for your skills.
• Increasing complexity forces us to specialize even more.
• But the rate of change increases the risk of obsolescence.
• Diversification takes time and dilutes your focus but decreases this risk.
• How is your balance between diversification and specialization?
• Developing new functional skills is one way of broadening yourself.
• As is acquiring new generic work skills
• Which functional skills should you develop to align with your personal vision?
• How is relying on your functional skills holding back your development?
• How can you move out of your comfort zone where you need to succeed without relying on these skills?
• How can your other strengths and strategic assets help you in this regard?
• Note your key functional skills in your Coaching2Grow Personal Growth Workbook.