Fola Daniel Adelesi: Interlocking the Skills

It’s really beautiful to see a street finished up in well set interlocking stones. You would love to walk on them or drive on them. The beauty of it as well is in the fact that you have several of those stones coming together to make one beautiful street. One stone could not have done the job. If there are a couple of interlocking stones that do not lock properly, the street will look weird.

It occurred to me that this is how our skills should work Our skills are supposed to be interlocked with the skills of others around us. It is only when we interlock those skills that their beauty will come out. If you refuse to interlock the skills, it will be alone and can be causing some troubles for other people.

Take a look at the tiles, maybe in the house or in the office. You will agree that the reason the tiles look beautiful is because you have several of them well arranged and agreeing to work together to give the owner the desired beauty. Imagine if one tile keeps pulling out all the time. What do you think the owner of the house or office facility manager will do with it? They probably end of throwing it away. And going by what I know some office cleaners in Nigeria do, that tile that keeps coming out will be the one they use to pack dirt every day.

From what you have imagined so far, you should be able to see now that when you try to operate in isolation you will not get the best of yourself and you can also mess up things for other people.

It is easier when you choose to interlock your skills. You will get more out of yourself and you also reduce the pressure you are subjected to. You will be in a situation where there are several people helping out with what you alone are trying to do.

You will, on daily basis, have several opportunities to interlock your skills with that of other people. I should also say that this will only happen if you have decided to open up your mind to those opportunities. If you do not open up to them there is no way you can see them or maximise them.

When you are in the communications field, don’t try to do things alone. There must be someone else in the communications field that has some other skills relevant to yours. Your skills will also be relevant to that other person’s skills and you need to find a common ground to make the skills lock properly and produce results.

It’s just like saying you are in business and you want to try to do that business alone. It’s not possible. Business is a transaction and the only way you will make it in business will be to have some people who need your skills.

A practical example of interlocking your skills for someone who does anything related to event management might be to partner with someone else in event management. Event management is very broad so the person you are partnering with does not have to be someone who does exactly what you can do. You may be in photography while there is someone else who handles food. The person who handles food might be able to put in some word for you when he or she gets events.

Another great example of what can happen if we do not interlock our skills can be seen in the game of football. Each player on the pitch has great skills. That’s why they would have made it to the team in the first place. Now it’s called a team and all those players are expected to bring their skills together and let them interlock in order to have good results at the end of the match.

You know how disastrous it can be when a team tries to play football and they don’t actually play as a team. The entire team gets into trouble when one man tries to shine alone. Even the person who tries to shine alone may not get as much as he or she wants or may not get anything.

Do not deceive yourself. There must be people whose skills can sharpen your skills and whose lives you can also impact with your own skills. It is very important to be a part of a productive group to make the most of life in a number of cases. Begin, if you have not started, to interlock your skills and you will see some different results.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Phartisan

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Fola Daniel Adelesi is a professional public speaker who also trains other speakers, an author, business consultant and highly skilled master of ceremony with excellent poise and diction. He was on the Debaters TV reality show season 1, presented ‘You Can’ on Radio Continental in 2011, did motivational segments on Galaxy TV from Dec 2008 to August 2009 and has authored 3 books including Writing Business Proposals.