Many people know their job well and still do not progress. They are competent, hard-working and reliable, but they find it hard to cooperate, struggle under pressure, avoid conflict or cannot show what they know. Others know less, yet get through change more easily and build relationships more easily.
The book Codes of Success explains this difference through personal business skills. The author calls them the new codes of success and links them to something rarely talked about in the business world: the family and systemic patterns that each of us brings to work.
This text draws on the book Codes of Success and explains what personal business skills are and how they are developed.
Professional and personal skills
The book Codes of Success distinguishes two kinds of skills. Professional skills, known as hard skills, are professional and practical knowledge, knowledge of information technology and foreign languages. Personal business skills, known as soft skills, are personal qualities and abilities that show themselves at work and in connection with work.
As a theoretical basis the book cites Robert Katz’s theory of leadership, which divides skills into technical, human and conceptual. According to Katz, technical skills are most in demand at lower levels of management, conceptual ones at higher levels, and human skills are important at all levels. In Codes of Success these human skills are treated as personal business skills.
“Today, when the world is changing quickly and technology is advancing, it is not enough just to know your job; it is also very important how we deal with change, how we work with others and how we manage our own emotions and stress.” (from the book Codes of Success)
Which skills these are
For the classification the book uses the framework of the European ModEs project, which laid the foundations for introducing personal skills into higher education. The skills are divided into three groups:
- Methodological: problem solving, decision making, creativity and innovation, results orientation, management, self-initiative and adapting to change.
- Personal: learning, managing stressful situations, self-awareness, cultural adaptability, establishing life balance, professional ethics and commitment.
- Social: leadership, conflict management, negotiation, customer focus, teamwork, communication, building and maintaining networks.
As the basis of all other skills the book singles out self-awareness: the ability to understand yourself as a material, emotional and spiritual being, to understand the world around you and to achieve results accordingly.
The book also links personal skills to different kinds of intelligence. Rational intelligence is needed to carry out tasks and relies on professional skills. Emotional and spiritual intelligence require developed personal skills. Emotional intelligence also includes systemic intelligence, which relies on systemic constellations and helps to understand and manage complex relationships.
Why training alone does not develop them
This is where the book Codes of Success offers its key insight. As it states, no suitable development programmes have so far been offered for personal business skills, because they are conditioned by unconscious content. Without integrating that content into awareness, their development is not even possible.
From the perspective of systemic constellations, the way someone works, cooperates and reacts under pressure is also shaped by unconscious loyalties, conflicts or exclusions in the family system. The book also mentions the transmission of values, beliefs and work ethic through generations, which affects how people value their work, cooperation and new ideas.
Codes of Success also links this to the balance of the masculine and feminine principles: the masculine principle relates to professional business skills, and the feminine to personal ones. Their balance leads to a better expression of potential and greater effectiveness.
The book also highlights the wider social significance of these skills. In conditions of high unemployment, such as in Serbia, developing personal skills can improve employability and help people start their own business. Developed personal skills also provide tools for managing stress and emotional resilience, which affects overall life satisfaction.
How personal skills are developed
The book starts from the idea that our perception of reality depends on previous experiences and conditioning. New insights about ourselves and the integration of unconscious content change perception, and with it reality itself. Anyone can leave behind conscious and unconscious limitations, and there is always a next step in development.
That is why the skills development programme in the book rests on systemic constellations and exercises of systemic self-inquiry. The book also adds an important message for organisations: changing the culture of a company begins with changing the manager, because through their own change a manager can change the whole system.
If you notice that what you lack at work is not knowledge but something else, it may be time to look at what is not written in your CV: how work, money, success and cooperation were viewed in your family.