Rethink Skills

written by: Trevor Ragan

A few months before my son Benny was born, my wife and I got to work on his room. We wanted it to feel calm and relaxing—which meant choosing the right paint color. Easy, I thought. The room will be green. Done. But when we got to the store, I was blown away. Turns out, you don’t just choose green. You choose between 237 shades of it. An endless spectrum.

We tend to think about skills the way I thought about colors—too basic. Communication. Leadership. Public speaking. Of course these are skills, just like red, blue, and green are colors. But like paint, skills have a spectrum and there’s more out there than we think. Communication breaks down into listening, storytelling, humor, timing, asking good questions. Leadership breaks down into giving feedback, running meetings, delegating, difficult conversations. Once you see the spectrum, you realize there’s a lot more to work with—a lot more ways to get better.

But it’s not just that broad skills break into smaller ones. It’s that there are things we don’t typically think of as skills at all—but absolutely are.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if someone can get better at the thing, it’s a skill. Which means you can get better at it too.

That means friendliness is a skill. Receiving feedback, skill. Negotiation, small talk, staying calm under pressure, keeping your house clean, apologizing well—all skills. Unfortunately for me, height is not a skill. But most everything else is.

When you realize there are an infinite number of skills available, you’re more likely to identify something interesting, useful, or fun you’d like to learn.

But there’s a bigger shift that happens too. You start seeing problems differently. When something isn’t working—a project stalling, a relationship stuck—you can ask: What do I need to learn here? What skill would help me in this situation?

Struggling to get your point across in meetings? That’s a skill issue. Having trouble staying organized? Skill issue. Keep avoiding a difficult conversation? Skill issue. The moment you see it that way, you have somewhere to go. You’re not stuck. You just have something to learn.

It works for goals too. “I want to get promoted” is a goal–which is fine. But then you can ask: “what skills would help me get promoted?” Now you have something concrete: managing up, presenting your ideas, making your work visible, leading a meeting, giving feedback. The goal stays the same, but suddenly there’s a path.

When we rethink skills—when we realize how many things out there are actually learnable—problems, setbacks, and even our goals become more actionable.

Zoom out. Zoom in.

Zoom out to see how many skills are available to you. Zoom in to make it actionable.
“I want to get better at communication” is too vague to act on. But “I want to get better at asking questions in meetings”—that’s something you can actually start working on.

Go wide first—”I want to be a better cook”—then get specific—”I’m going to learn to make chicken piccata.” Go wide—”I want to be better with money”—then zoom in—”I’m going to learn how to have a money conversation with my partner without it turning into a fight.”

Broad gives you a direction, but it can feel overwhelming. Specific gives you a place to start.

That’s why this tool matters. Most of us walk around not realizing how much is learnable. We think skills and practice are for students, athletes, and musicians. But once you see it differently, once you realize that almost everything can be improved with practice, you start noticing opportunities to get into Learner Mode everywhere.