What Would Happen if Office Workers Trained in Presentations, Emails and Meetings Just Like Doctors Do?
With the expanding capabilities of open-source AI, soft skills are fast becoming the most important human-contribution to the workplace. But, we office workers don’t train often train in things like emails and meetings. Nurses, doctors, engineers and lots more workers are required to train, test and pass that test before doing any real-world, hands-on work.
This is not the same for us office workers. We might have trained a day or two here and there, but what would happen if we all put the same time and energy into training in presentations, or email writing, that nurses and doctors have to?
If office workers all trained in presentations, emails and meetings; you’d see a lot less emails, a lot more results from meetings and a lot more engagement in presentations.
Here’s Darren’s Take:
Read the Published Article on The Grocer.
I was recently chatting with our new good friend ChatGPT. Yes, I think enough has been written about AI, Skynet, and soft skills. So, I asked, ‘What are the top 7 soft skills used by office workers, by percentage?’, and he/she/it/bot/bloke answered:
- Writing emails 20%
- Screen meetings 20%
- Reading emails 15%
- Face-to-face meetings 15%
- Presenting 10%
- Instant messaging 10%
- Face-to-face chats 10%
Possibly, what I had expected, and yet I never knew this clearly that Emails, and Meetings are 70% of what we knowledge workers do. Though, it does seem all that I do. Type or sit in meetings.
A nurse has to study and practice for 4,600 hours before becoming qualified and allowed to work with patients. As office workers, we possibly did a couple of one day training courses about 5 years into the job, but we largely learnt from others. Is our work any less important? Yes, less important than saving lives, but that doesn’t mean that we want to be any less than great at what we do. Yet, our great was never written down, we never studied, and we certainly didn’t need to pass an exam in how to write an email. Let’s imagine a Black Mirror alternative…
You arrive on your first day at your new corporate job. There are 3 core skills to what you do; emails, meetings, and presenting, because they account for 80% of your job. You learn what absolutely great looks like. Not in a day but over time, practice, practicing, and practicing some more. Demonstrating that you can actually do it. This isn’t done because it sounds lovely but because if you can write an email that gets what you want done, chair meetings that solve problems, have on-screen influence where people want to join, and present with such a reputation that people ask you how…wouldn’t that escalate your career and make the company more money?
Yet, here we are with typing speeds of 50 wpm, whereas great typists are twice that. Writing emails that are a wall of text with no clear ask. Meetings that most people would avoid like the plague, if they could. Plus, presentations where it seems the norm to ‘sit through it’ and then inflict the same pain on them a week later!
I once read a story about if you put a baby shark in a small tank it will only grow to that size, rather than its 15 feet. Corporate workers, yes you, me, all of us…aren’t we stunted sharks?
