The concept of transversal competences
If it is difficult to agree on the general concept of competition, what could we say when we want to define those of a transversal nature? To compensate for this lack, the authors and the different entities that refer to the subject usually present more or less extensive lists of specific competences that contribute, by practical means, to giving us a rough idea of their identity and nature, in order to organize the details. concerning its detection, learning and evaluation.
The following list of thirty transversal competences is provided by the Local Network for Economic Promotion, Employment and Training of the Community of Madrid (Ministry of Public Administrations of the Government of Spain), which classifies them into three categories:
Instrumental skills
- Capacity for analysis and synthesis Organizational and planning capacity Work in an interdisciplinary team Work in an international context Skills in interpersonal relations Recognition of diversity and multiculturalism Critical reasoning Ethical commitment Autonomous learning Adaptation to new situations Creativity Knowledge of environmental cultures and initiative Initiative for quality and initiative to apply theoretical knowledge in practice Use of the Internet as a means of communication and as a source of information Previous experience Ability to communicate with people not experts in the field Ability to understand the language and proposals of other specialists Professional ambition Ability to self-evaluate
The Autonomous University of Barcelona, for its part, maintains a similar division for the desirable competencies in university graduates, although it reduces its number to twenty-two:
a) Instrumental (tools for learning and training):
- Autonomous learning techniques Analysis and synthesis Organization and planning Decision making Basic training skills Oral and written communication Knowledge of foreign languages
b) Interpersonal (abilities that allow maintaining a good social relationship):
- Interdisciplinary teamwork Critical reasoning Ethical commitment Recognition of diversity and multiculturalism Self-motivation
c) Systemic (related to the management of the whole):
- Adaptation to new situations Creativity Leadership Initiative and entrepreneurial spirit Concern for quality Sensitivity to environmental issues Project management
Both lists seem to respond to a conceptualization of transversal competences as elements common to various disciplines -which justifies their alternative name of generic-, as expressed by several authors (Rey, Sánchez, Alarcón et al.), Although they also seem to give part of reason to those who speak of attitudinal or “soft” competences, among which the following are included (Pere Tarrés Foundation, 2007):
- Professional responsibility Interpersonal communication Teamwork and collaboration Initiative Empathy Self-control Self-knowledge Adaptability and acceptance of diversity
As Jürgen Weller, Economic Affairs Officer of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) states, “ high school and university usually do not train young people in so-called soft skills, that is, in those non-technical skills essential for learn and perform successfully on the job beyond technical knowledge. ”
On the other hand, the specific competences are those that are part of the curriculum of each particular discipline and only apply to it, a perspective that, inspired by the academy -professional competences-, also applies to the world of work -work competences-. But this is not the only classification available.
Bunk classifies the competences in technical, methodological, social and participatory, while Echeverría maintains this division but changes the social competence for the personal one. Mertens classifies them into generic, basic and specific, while UNESCO recommends grouping them into cognitive, formative and technical (cited in Sandoval, Miguel and Montaño, Evolution of the concept of labor competence). Such a marsh, added to the already classic scheme that divides the competences into three aspects (knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be) and other perspectives that the length of this article does not allow us to cover, seems to contribute more to clouding the panorama than to clarifying it.
Cross-cutting competencies and “active learning”
However they express themselves, these difficulties did not concern the ancient medieval craftsmen's guilds a thousand years ago. According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, a guild is a corporation formed by teachers, officers and apprentices of the same profession or trade, governed by ordinances or special statutes. When what is learned is contextualized in everyday life, when the number one is a teacher and not a "boss", when the productive world does not depend on the academic to function, then the dichotomy does not exist and the fallacy collapses. Have we involved?
The academic superspecialization that erects its rationality above the real thing, ends up recognizing that it has deviated from what matters to all of us, without professors and researchers managing to solve something so elementary and providing practical solutions to problems that are also practical.. Obviously, solutions cannot be expected from the academy.
The shocks of rationalism continue to hurt us, even in this era of super-technologies and extraordinary discoveries. Paradoxically, some of the most incredible of them have not yet been able to divert our mesmerized attention from the latest generation to those of the oldest lineage: our own underrated phylogeny. And in this sense, I want to show schematically how what we know and how we behave is intimately associated with our most primitive nature and, to the same extent, determines how we should modify these cognitive and behavioral structures.
The theoretical and scientific support of these learning tools is provided by human neurosciences, who have identified the best ways to get the brain to incorporate new skills quickly and lastingly, taking advantage of the functional specificities of its different regions, ancient and modern. Its researchers have carried out studies involving the different sensory systems used to acquire the knowledge and skills and the mnemonic mechanisms associated with them, which will allow their implementation and availability in the medium and long term.
This elementary way of presenting the question has the sole purpose of postulating the need to involve all our neuropsychological resources in search of a better and faster learning of labor competences such as transversal ones. And the hypothesis rescues an old maxim that has withstood the onslaught of time: you learn to do by doing.
On-the-job training and services
The idea of on-the-job training, education, training or coaching is not new. Its first applications, as I already mentioned, date back to medieval Europe, while more modern versions began to become popular in 1944, when the Second World War imposed productive pressures that would lead the American arms industry to develop a method called “TWI ”(Training Within Industry), thanks to which it was possible to convert -in surprisingly short times- novice and low-skilled workers into workers capable of reaching the production quotas imposed on them.
This method survived to this day in the various forms that the so-called “OJT” (On-the-job training) took, which was integrated into production systems as sophisticated as the “JIT” or Just-In -Time (Just in time) originally developed by the Japanese company Toyota. In all cases, it is a specific and carefully programmed instruction on specific industrial tasks, consisting almost entirely of technical and manual skills that complete a prior theoretical training -minimum- in the knowledge necessary to carry them out. In other words, this kind of training moderately covers only two of the aspects that make up the modern concept of competence: "knowing" and "knowing how", while the third - "knowing how to be" - was absent,since it would appear later in the doctrinal evolution.
In the area of services, the application of this on-the-job training methodology has been scarcer and to a great extent is carried out by external organizations specialized in this type of education, both private and governmental, that offer these services as to support the work of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector. Therefore, the vast majority of them dedicate themselves to training in standard competencies that, with a certain probability, may be required by most employers, and they do so almost always in simulated situations.. This inevitably results in a supermarket of stereotypical skills, none of which can be conveniently developed to a level of true competition. The resulting insufficiency will make this one more way to squander resources.
In any case, the examples found in the bibliography refer to the reality of developed countries, which invariably focus on the needs of the tasks themselves and not those of the system as such, in addition to keeping the focus on the two components already mentioned - "know" and "know how" or, in my proposal, know and do-. When it comes to multinationals with branches in countries of the southern hemisphere, training programs are usually designed from the headquarters by professionals embedded in their own culture, who are rarely able to foresee and articulate the difficulties that their implementation will face in different areas of planetary diversity.
The Anglo-Saxon mentality, in particular, finds it sufficient that a certain method and the corresponding practical knowledge have been designed by a recognized authority to focus on its immediate implementation, without question. None of the participants would think to ask why - they just do it. And, by extrapolating these guidelines to labor markets with a greater critical spirit, we forget that there are hidden springs within our minds whose activation is essential to obtain motivation and commitment from those involved in the task, if it is desired that it be carried out. done in an acceptable way - or done at all.
When these tasks are part of key processes in service organizations, behavioral skills become a matter of survival, as Héctor Gordillo, from the Technological University of Chile (INACAP), believes:
According to a recent study carried out among Swedish companies, these assign a 70% weight to individual and social skills compared to the others that make up the occupational profile for a job. It should be noted that modern societies generate the highest supply of jobs in the tertiary sector, that is, in the field of services (over 65% of the available positions). Therefore, the assessment of behavioral competencies is of vital importance for these companies and companies.
Conclusions
If formal education does not provide the necessary transversal competences and neither do the training systems that specifically revolve around the world of work, who will?
At a time when the family institution is in frank decline, how will we recover the education lost in virtues, values and attitudes, which would allow us to build true teams? Perhaps it is only a tentative and partial remedy, but the only viable answer to these questions can only come, in my opinion, from those responsible for the organizations and, in particular, those that provide services. And the reasons abound:
- Service companies produce what their people do and ultimately are their people. If they bet on excellence, they must ensure it there first. Nobody cares more about achieving this than the companies themselves, which also have these people for most of their waking time. How many entrepreneurs or managers dedicate some effort to developing mechanisms to systematically educate these people in the organizational values they want to implement? The supposed shortage of time that they usually resort to explain their omission is due, most of the time, to their need to "put out fires" caused by suboptimal processes, designed behind the backs of those involved, by people who never did their work. When training is planned within working hours and as part of the job itself, benefits include, but are not limited to:
- effective synchronization with the real world of tasks true active learning (not simulated) incorporation of transversal competences as a natural part of training economization of “overtime” or controversies related to the same integration within the framework of corporate values opportunity to involve all in improving work.
Obviously, these benefits will only be accessible to leaders who enjoy an open mind, since they must be willing to share power (empower them) with the members of their teams, to participate in the elaboration of decisions that affect them and to submit to the same rules that you want to apply to them. In the absence of this, any on-the-job training plan will continue to be just one more instance of our proverbial style of authoritative leadership and cross-skills training, an unrealizable dream.
I consider this to be part of the challenges that those of us who promote the improvement of organizations face today: to train smart, sensitive and sensible leaders, capable of recognizing that training is not only necessary for the members of their teams, but that they, in turn, they must demonstrate their own commitment to personal growth that leads them, from leaders, to Bioliders.
Footnotes:
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2. Teaching staff / cross-functional skills.
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7. Presentations by Sandoval Franklin.
8. The Pyramid of Learning was adapted from Motorola University: Creating Mindware for the 21st Century, Corporate University Xchange, May / June 1996, Vol 2 No 3, on values originally attributed to psychologist William Glasser.
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