Melvin R. McKnight

This chapter is written in response to the announcement at the 1989 OBTC Conference that OBTS is embarking on a project to develop a model program for teaching management action skills. I am very much in favor of such a program; however, I am also much concerned. I see a great lack of conceptual clarity in the literature as to what such skills are and how they are developed. In my view, most of what has been labelled as skill development is only marginally related to what skill development actually is and requires. I would include the most popular texts which tout skill development as part of their title in this marginal category. Just recently, I received a book in the mail about supervisory skill development. Since I have been teaching such a course for the past four years and am always on the lookout for new material, I was delighted to receive the book and eagerly began to review it. Much to my dismay, I failed to find more than a few exercises in the entire book that actually had anything to do with developing supervisory skills. I am afraid that unless we get some clarity around this issue before beginning the OBTS project, it too will wind up being misguided. Hopefully, this chapter will begin to bring such clarity.

Two things characterize skill knowledge and distinguish it from conceptual knowledge. First, it is responsive in nature. Second, it is a product of the human subconscious. Most of the confusion in the literature has resulted from the failure to recognize these two characteristics.

Perhaps the best analysis of the nature of skill knowledge is found in Michael Polanyi's little book, THE TACIT DIMENSION (1966). Polanyi refers to the fact that the human mind has a wonderful ability to create programs that automate behavior. He uses the ability to drive a car as an example. If we are driving down the road at 70 miles per hour and a truck suddenly pulls out in front of us, we do not stop to analyze the situation and decide on a course of action. Rather, we respond out of our tacit knowledge of how to drive--without any forethought at all! If our tacit knowledge is adequate and the situation permits, we miss the truck. If not, and we survive, we have an opportunity to continue our acquisition of the skill of driving.

This type of knowledge is also what the behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner (1974), refer to as "conditioning." It is the subconscious knowledge of an appropriate response to a given stimulus, and it is evoked automatically by the stimulus without the intervention of conscious mind. We are all very highly programmed beings in this regard; we have such programs for walking, eating, talking, and many other routines of our daily lives, and we could not function without them.

The point is that "people skills"--the ability to be influential with people--have this same structure. For example, if I am working as a production superintendent and a very upset shop foreman confronts me and starts yelling, I do not remember which leadership style is appropriate in a situation like this and try to use it! If I even try to do it that way I will quite properly be dismissed as a phoney. Rather I respond, out of my tacit knowledge of how to be a leader/manager, without any conscious forethought at all, just as I do when I am driving and a truck pulls out in front of me. And what I do will work, or not, depending on my degree of skill at the time--the quality of the behavioral programs I have developed for dealing with such a situation. Management skills are RESPONSIVE! The biggest confusion in the literature concerning them comes from a failure to recognize this fact.

Secondly, skill knowledge is a property of the subconscious part of the human mind, rather than being, in any sense, conceptual. It takes the form of awareness and can be acquired only from experience, not from conceptual learning. A skill development course therefore has to be a course in awareness!

We can understand what this means by again referring to Polanyi (1966). Polanyi notes that tacit knowing has a structure which always consists of two terms. We attend from something to something. The something we attend from Polanyi calls the "proximal" term. The something we attend to he calls the "distal" term. For example, we attend from the particulars constituting the act of driving (manipulating the gas peddle, gear shift, steering wheel, etc.) to the comprehensive act of driving. The key characteristic of tacit knowing is that the proximal term (which we attend from) is always subconscious. Polanyi says, "we know the first term only by relying on our awareness of it for attending to the second." For example, when we get into our car and put our keys in the ignition, we do not think, "now I must turn the starter, now I must depress the clutch, now I must step on the gas, etc." Rather we hook into our driving program, and it takes over. We do all those things without being focally aware of doing them--we are aware of them only in terms of the comprehensive act of driving itself. In fact, our conscious mind is often occupied elsewhere--talking to a companion, thinking about something, etc.. Because of this, Polanyi says we have a knowledge that we cannot tell. Another example he uses is recognizing a face. We can all do it, but we cannot even begin to say how we do it. Certainly when we meet someone for the first time, we do not try to mentally memorize the shape of the nose, mouth, distance between the eyes, etc. so we can recognize the person again. Rather we recognize them in terms of the comprehensive entity that these particulars jointly constitute--we attend from these particulars (the proximal term) to the face itself (the distal term). It is precisely because we cannot specify the knowledge that is in the subconscious that the police have turned to "face kits" and artists to aid victims or witnesses of a crime in developing likenesses of suspects.

This is also the reason why people who are skillful at something are unable to say, conceptually, what they do; e.g. it explains why we have found that skillful leaders are unable to tell us what leadership skill consists of.

Polanyi further says that it is in terms of meaning that things enter into their appearance. He uses the example of using a tool: "We are attending to the meaning of its impact on our hand in terms of its effect on the things to which we are applying it." Again, the point is that human skills have this same structure. When my upset shop foreman confronts me, I am attending from my subconscious programming concerning how to be influential with people (particularly upset people) to this particular situation. It is only in terms of the meaning of my acts that I am aware of them--in terms of their impact on the other who is confronting me. As I try something and it is meaningful for me, i.e., it is effective, I become programmed to utilize that sort of act again. As I try something that is not effective, that behavior begins to be "extinguished" (in behaviorist terms). Over time, this process results in the acquisition of increasingly more effective behavioral programs which result in higher levels of skill. The essential thing to realize, however, is that it is learning that is taking place entirely in the subconscious.

Finally, Polanyi notes that one can acquire a skill by a process he calls "indwelling." By carefully watching a skillful instructor and attempting to emulate what he or she does, a student is "indwelling" in the skill the instructor is exhibiting. This can result in at least a partial direct transfer of the subconscious programming the instructor is using to the student.

Against this background, we can begin to see what is misguided in much of the skill development literature. In the interest of time, I am going to limit this analysis to one text: DEVELOPING MANAGEMENT SKILLS, by Whetton and Cameron (1984). I have selected it not only because it is one of the more popular skill development texts available, but also because I believe it to be the best. Nevertheless, relative to an understanding of the nature of skill knowledge as outlined above, it is quite off the mark. The major problem is the confusion of subconscious awareness with conceptual knowledge.

Whetton and Cameron use a modification of the behavior modeling approach to training. About this model they say the following:

"The learning model used most widely for skill training in industry usually consists of four steps: first, the presentation of principles (sometimes called behavioral guidelines or key actions steps) based on data collected from successful practicing managers or derived from general theories of human behavior; second, demonstration of the principles to participants by the instructor, a videotaped incident, or written scripts; third, opportunities to practice the principles in role plays or exercises; and fourth, feedback on personal performance received from the instructor, experts, or peers. (page 3)"

They then make three modifications to this basic model: (1) they emphasize conceptual learning, (2) they have added a pre-assessment activity at the beginning of each chapter, and (3) they have added an application activity at the end of each chapter. About the first of these they say:

"First, we have emphasized conceptual learning, since it is important to understand the whys behind the hows. This enhances one's ability to adapt to changing circumstances and also prepares one for a vital function of management--teaching those skills to others. (page 3)"

They implement this by having a section in each chapter of their book called "Skill Learning" in which they present theories and research findings from the social and management sciences. My point is: THAT IS NOT WHAT SKILL LEARNING IS! And because of that, it is not true that it will "enhance one's ability to adapt to changing circumstances."

To clarify this point, consider the Whetton & Cameron approach to learning the skill of "Improving Employee Performance Through Motivation," (Chapter 6). Under the motivation subheading of the "Skill Learning" part of the chapter (p. 310), they say the following:

"The real challenge of managers is to design incentive systems that encourage high performance and also engender high employee morale.

To accomplish this objective, managers should use two general approaches to employee motivation. First, they should examine the overall system of rewards in their organization from their subordinates' point of view to ascertain its potential for motivation. This is best done using diagnostic questions derived from expectancy theory....

The second approach focuses on shaping employee behaviors so they are consistent with the expectations of management. It is referred to as operant conditioning or reinforcement theory."

Skill learning is then presented as in-depth discussions of these two motivational approaches, including an 8 point plan for shaping behavior using behavior modification. Following this, the "Skill Analysis" section provides two cases to be analyzed using expectancy theory and operant conditioning, and the "Skill Practice" section uses a case as an opportunity to practice using behavior modification for the analysis of, and development of a plan to change, behavior using the 8 point process. Now, I have no objection to such an educational exercise, as I believe it does have value. But we need to recognize that the skill it teaches is only that of applying these particular theories to diagnose situations and develop plans for remedying them; and only if we are willing to assume that motivational skill is entirely conceptual and consists of nothing but this ability can we say that we are actually teaching motivational skills.

Again, my point is that this assumption reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what skill learning is! I have found in my work that there is indeed a motivational skill--the ability to relate to employees in a way that inspires them to want to do their best--and I have even found "operant conditioning" from behaviorism to be one of the best theoretical systems for helping me to understand it. However, motivational skill is far more organic than the form of behaviorism used by Whetton & Cameron would permit. One must realize that everything is a stimulus--physical gestures, facial expressions, smiles, vocal inflections, etc. To apply operant conditioning to this skill in a conceptual fashion, one would have to have a reinforcement schedule that included and permitted control over all of these very subtle, and for the most part sub-conscious and therefore involuntary, phenomena. It is precisely because such control is impossible that we need to recognize the type of skill learning Polanyi describes; only a skill development approach that can include these very important subconscious phenomena can offer a path for truly becoming skillful. Indeed, if there really were no more to motivational skill than the ability to apply expectancy theory and operant condition (in the form of reinforcement schedules) how can we possibly account for the thousands of supervisors in industry who are, in fact, skillful at motivating their people, yet who have never heard of either theory?

In using their model, Whetton and Cameron also confuse skill development with what I would call "pre-skill training." As noted earlier, a key feature of skill knowledge is that even people who are skillful cannot tell you conceptually what they do. It is therefore not possible to come up with a set of "action steps" for any skill. The part of the learning process to which Whetton and Cameron's first step (presentation of principles) applies is actually therefore pre-skill training, which establishes the foundation for skill learning, but is not skill learning itself. For example, we can describe to a student the actions that one must perform to drive a car, and this knowledge is obviously necessary as a foundation for the skill of driving. But we would hardly say that anyone who can perform these elementary acts is a skillful driver; no matter the level of conceptual understanding, every new driver of a vehicle employing a clutch experiences jerky starts at first. Only practice and the programming of the subconscious which results from experience will bring the skill.

Finally, Whetton and Cameron fail to recognize that the learning loop involved in skill development is a very tight one--it consists of many iterations each of which may be only seconds in duration. Thus, to structure a text such that each chapter consists of one iteration of the loop--with a section dedicated to each phase of the learning process (presentation of principles, demonstration, practice, and feedback)--is again to seriously misunderstand the nature of the skill learning process. This criticism also applies to most of the experiential learning movement in Organizational Behavior. The most widely used learning model in that literature has been some form of that presented by Kolb, Rubin, and McIntyre (1971) in which learning occurs on a continuous process of concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. This is, in fact, accurate as a model of the process of experiential learning by which skills are acquired if it is properly understood--as a process in which each iteration lasts only a short time and learning comes about as a result of much repetition. But to structure a text so that exercises consist of one iteration (usually conceptually focused) is again to seriously misunderstand the nature of true skill learning.

The error of assuming that skill knowledge is conscious and conceptual rather than being subconscious and responsive can be understood more clearly by considering what happens if we apply the traditional approach that Whetton and Cameron embrace to the task of learning the skill of skiing. In order to do so we would first need to acquire the knowledge we will teach. We would do so by sending a scientist operating within the passive, observational model of the traditional sciences to the ski slope. The scientist would need to find a good slope and very carefully, and very accurately, observe everything the skiers do as they come down the slope until he or she had sufficient observations for his or her statistics to be valid (this would require about 400+ observations). The scientist would then write a book about how to ski which sets forth, faithfully and well, everything he or she has observed. This would be a very interesting book would it not--a book about how to ski written by a spectator!

Now we, as college professors, have students who are non-skiers who wish to learn to ski. We require that they buy that book, study it diligently, and then take an exam over its contents. If they get a 100% score, we congratulate them and send them forth as skiers! But are they now skilled skiers? In fact, have they actually learned anything at all about how to ski? Of course they have not!. Our teaching was nothing but an illusion! The matter is hardly a trivial one--this is exactly how we traditionally attempt to teach the skills of motivation and leadership!

Our skiing example demonstrates several things. First, it shows clearly why we do, in fact, need to be actually teaching skills in our O.B. courses. We need to recognize what is a skill and teach it as such, not confuse skill knowledge with conceptual knowledge and create the illusion of education when, in fact, none has taken place. Second, this example shows clearly that our traditional approach embraces two basic fallacies. The first is that observational knowledge is sufficient to the task of learning a skill. The second is that memorizing something, even a book written by a professional skier, will in itself be enough to result in acquiring a skill. Both are untrue.

Observational knowledge is not incorrect. It is right as an accurate observation of (for example) what it looks like to watch someone ski. However, it is the wrong knowledge. The knowledge of what skiing or leadership looks like is not at all the knowledge of how to do it. That knowledge is what Polanyi says it is--the subconscious awareness of the meaning of one's acts on one's environment! It is the "operant conditioning" of the behaviorists! And it can be learned only from experience--by experimenting with one's behavior in situations like those for which one is developing the skill--and learning subconsciously the meaning of one's acts until those acts become skillful. This is not at all to say that observational knowledge, and particularly the knowledge given by an expert, cannot be helpful. Indeed, it can be very useful within the proper context, i.e. if one is practicing skiing at the same point in time that one is reading about skiing. But it cannot be a substitute for true skill learning.

Polanyi's understanding of the skill development process offers a new perspective on the "managers are born and not made" controversy, for it suggests that management skills certainly can be acquired, not by memorizing a book, but over time as a natural outcome of the experiential learning process. After all, we have all learned to drive, to walk, to talk, to eat, to ski, to play tennis, and to acquire many other such skills, and it has not taken us terribly long to do so. It also makes it clear how the mind can empower us to handle a very great deal of diversity in our day to day lives, and in so doing exposes what is perhaps the greatest short-coming in the cognitive approach. It is simply not possible to memorize enough theories to know how to consciously deal with every situation that might possibly arise. We would go crazy even trying. Rather, one acquires skill by using the conscious mind in a very different way--to learn from experiences in the world in order to generate effective conditioned response mechanisms.

This makes it very clear that skill learning absolutely must be student centered and experientially oriented. There is a role for cognition here, but it must be in service to experience, not the other way around as is often done in so-called "experiential learning exercises" where an experience is rigged to teach the meaning of a theory (as in the Cameron & Whetton motivation exercises described earlier). Rather, one experiments with behavior, becomes aware of the meaning of one's behavior, and then uses cognition to develop hypotheses about how one might change it to be more effective. For example, after a fall while making a turn, a skier might decide more weight should be put on the downhill ski next time. Similarly, one might decide to try to be more patient with an employee following an encounter that did not work out like one had hoped. These are indeed hypotheses, but they are experiential--they refer to the possible outcomes of one's acts. When we interject a traditional conceptual theory into this process (as Whetton and Cameron do repeatedly), we run the risk that the theory will make the student forget his or her experiential referent, particularly if we test them on the content of the theory. In other words, a traditional, "external" theory might be useful if it helps the student develop a better behavioral hypothesis to try for the next iteration in the learning process, but if it becomes a substitute for that process, as it is virtually set up to be in the Whetton and Cameron book, the result is certain to be confusion and a short-circuiting of skill learning.

Because of this, I think the only model really appropriate for skill teaching is that of coach. A coach watches closely while a student practices a skill. The coach interrupts the performance when he or she sees a lesson to be taught, helps the student become aware of the meaning of the actions the student has just performed in the context of their effectiveness in achieving a desired result, and the student tries again. As the process is repeated, the performance gradually becomes more skillful. The coach also might demonstrate how to do the performance skillfully, so the student can learn by "indwelling" in his performance (as noted earlier).

As this process takes place, there is also a growing awareness on the part of the student of the implications (meanings) of various behaviors he or she might engage in when confronted with a particular situation. Thus, a higher sort of learning takes place also--one which results in the student's behavioral programs increasingly becoming conscious and therefore choiceful. This phenomena was pointed out to me in a recent letter from John Bigelow (1990) in which he describes it as follows:

"In my own work on skills, I think it is true that much of skill competence involves the acquisition of skill programs such as you describe. I see this as a necessary step in a person developing complex behavior systems which can be executed in real time. However, I would also include a higher level of skill competence in which these programs are selected and arrayed in an unfolding interaction. For example, in a listening situation a person may need to choose between reflecting back what a person says or providing some helpful advice or information. I would suggest that here the person is working on a more conscious and less programmed level. If we observe such a person, we may observe hesitation, eye shifts, etc. indicative of cognition as the person makes a conscious, perhaps difficult, decision."

I have observed exactly the same phenomena in my work, and my students have even talked about that choice process. While the process clearly does involve cognition, it does not appear to involve the sort of analysis that we normally think of when we use that term. Rather, it is an almost instantaneous (and I think intuitive) weighing of a situation, selection of a particular behavioral program, and then surrender to that program. The awareness that makes this possible seems to be a natural outgrowth of the skill development process.

Finally, there is also such a thing as conceptual skill in a more traditional sense (and it is this that the Whetton & Cameron book is actually teaching). Conceptual skill determines what one can do with the conceptual knowledge one possesses. For example, a student could possess a quite complete knowledge of accounting, yet lack the skill necessary to utilize that knowledge to design an effective accounting system. In many management activities, conceptual skill is parallel to the responsive type of skill Polanyi describes. For example, a leadership performance often involves both the conceptual skill of articulating a sense of direction or vision, and the responsive skill of communicating it such a way that others are committed to it and motivated to give it their best.

However, even conceptual abilities, in themselves, consist of both knowledge and skill components. As Polanyi (1966) suggests, when we begin to learn a subject such as accounting (this is my example--he again uses learning to drive a car), the knowledge of accounting is initially external to us--we attend to it. At some point, however, a transformation takes place such that we begin to attend from that knowledge to the design (for example) of an accounting system. It is at this point that skill learning becomes possible, and for this reason it is also at this point that knowledge begins to be empowerment, i.e. that management education is truly effective. My work in using the model of skill development outlined in this chapter suggests that in teaching conceptual skills this transformation must be required or it does not take place. i.e. students must be required to use what they learn to attend to external problems. When only objective tests are used in a course, knowledge is tested just before this critical transformation takes place, and unless some other assignment requires the transformation, the skill necessary to do anything with the knowledge is never acquired. The virtue of the case method is that it does develop this skill component of managerial knowledge.

There is one other major issue that is critically important to a successful skill-development program. This concerns the psychological context in which skill development takes place. There is a second type of knowledge in the human subconscious--a yet deeper knowledge that determines one's state of being at any given point of time. I call it "being knowledge" after Abraham Maslow (1963) who first identified it (at least implicitly), and also to make it clear that it truly is a form of knowledge. One's state of being is therefore changeable over time (if one understands the programming process and recognizes that the task is one of re-programming the mind).

This dimension is critically important because management is a holistic phenomenon--one manages as a whole person. We always communicate what we are and where we are in very subtle, often non-verbal ways, and there is no possible way to avoid doing so. This aspect of a manager's behavior creates the climate, and thus forms the context, through which he or she must utilize skill and perform the more cognitive parts of the job. Further, one's state of being affects behavior on a subconscious level where it is not consciously controlled by the manager. I usually introduce the notion of this type of knowledge by asking if anyone has ever worked for a boss with an ego problem, an insecure boss, or a boss who was always in a negative place. Then we discuss what these bosses do--that is how does a boss with an ego problem, or an insecure boss, or a negative boss, manage subordinates, and what happens to the work climate and quality of work as a result. The discussion always makes it very clear that such bosses are destructive for subordinates, for the quality of working life, for the quality and often quantity of work performed, and ultimately for themselves.

This dimension also interacts with skill; such managers are destructive precisely to the extent that they are skillful at dealing with people! The more skillful they are, the more destructive they are! The danger is therefore that a skill development program which does not explicitly include education on the being dimension may actually wind up being destructive!

At first glance, the "being" dimension might seem difficult to teach, but actually it is not. Whereas skill knowledge corresponds to the "operant conditioning" of the behaviorists, being knowledge corresponds to "classical conditioning." The difference is that operant conditioning is the subconscious knowledge of the reaction of our human environment to our acts, whereas classical conditioning is the subconscious knowledge of the universal environmental contingencies which confront all managers. Thus, being knowledge is a knowledge of universal values rather than of universal facts; it is an awareness of the true value of things for effectiveness as a leader/manager and is universal in the sense that every leader/manager faces these same contingencies. For example, an ego problem is destructive for managerial effectiveness for all leader/managers in the same way (because it operates on consciousness to make one try to manage employees for the sake of one's ego rather than for group objectives). The awareness that an ego problem is destructive is an example of "being knowledge."

This type of knowledge is concerned with the implications of the various values one might embrace, and one teaches it simply by making students aware of these implications or contingencies. For example, a student who is made aware of the destructive potential of an ego problem is much less likely to develop one in the course of his or her career than one who does not have that awareness. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to do more than provide this brief outline of the nature of a course aimed at teaching this type of knowledge, however, such a course is no more than a transformation of a traditional O.B. course (with a great increase in the relevancy of the course to the students). I have been teaching O.B. this way since 1978, and have demonstrated through empirical research that the course is effective in helping students become more psychologically healthy (McKnight, 1979).

We are now in our fifth year at Northern Arizona University with a skill program organized according to the understanding of skill development outlined in this chapter. I will briefly outline how that program is set up, then close by summarizing some lessons I have learned thus far from this attempt and, in general, from my work in trying to understand the human subconscious.

Our program is constructed on the coaching model, and consists of a sequence of three courses the first two of which are required for all management majors. The first course is a traditional O.B. course. When I teach this it is the "being foundation" course, although not all of the professors teaching the course teach it in this way. The second course is entitled, "Line Management" and is the basic management skills course. It is a course in leading/managing people effectively for organizational objectives. The third course is entitled "Senior Practicum in Management," and has a prerequisite of completion of the other two courses. Students in this class meet with student teams in the other classes and serve in the role of coaches. The program is set up this way primarily because of a constraint that it require no more resources than the more traditional program it replaced. It was also very clear to us that we could not hope to be effective with it unless we could get more individual attention to the students than one instructor for each 40 students. The obvious solution was to train students as coaches. In our design there is one coach for each team of 6 to 8 students.

All of the instructors teaching the skills course meet with the student coaches once a week and essentially do with them what the coaches will be doing with their student teams later in the week. For the most part this involves modified role plays, where the modification is that no one is ever allowed to play any role other than themselves in the situation with which they are working. The reason for this is that learning skill knowledge on the subconscious programming level can only take place when one is doing one's best to handle a given situation, as oneself, and learning from the experience.

Coaches and student teams are given the challenge of developing their team members so that they become the most skillful team in the class. Twice each semester, teams meet in "skill meets" to determine which teams have been most successful. These are modified role-plays carried out before the entire class and evaluated for skill by peers, coaches and instructors.

In closing, let me summarize what I have learned from my work with skill development:

1. The understanding of the skill development process outlined in this chapter is clearly valid. A skill program organized according to it is clearly effective at increasing the interpersonal skills of students as leaders and managers. In fact, I have found that skills are a great deal more teachable than I believed before we started the program; I have watched a number of students become far more skillful in one semester than I would have thought possible.

2. The key to making it work is coaching. This is still the weakest link in our program; however things are continuing to improve over time. There is a long-term learning phenomena in a program like this--the better a class of coaches are, the better the students they are teaching will be when they become coaches. Ideally, I think one would interface undergraduate and MBA programs (or PhD and MBA programs) such that the coaches were drawn from the higher program. Unfortunately, we do not have a large enough graduate program at NAU to be able to do this.

3. The keys to making coaching work well are selection and training. Not every student should be a coach; it requires a certain degree of self-development to be effective at it. I therefore think there should be some control over the selection of coaches if possible. In any case, the training function needs to be developed to whatever extent resources permit. The better the coaches are the better the program will be. I do think that one coach for each 6 to 8 students is an effective ratio.

4. Skill development requires practice on the part of the students. It only happens when one engages in acts that have the structure of tacit knowing described by Polanyi, i.e., one must attend from their knowledge to a problem or situation for skill development to take place. Because this is the key moment in skill learning, a skill development course must be structured so that each student has an opportunity for adequate "air time."

5. The role of the instructor in such a class is also that of coach. This involves demonstrations of effective ways to handle situations, fish-bowl role-plays in which the instructor takes various roles--subordinate, supervisor, etc. and plays the role so as to teach. For example, I sometimes deliberately make mistakes so students can see what happens when I do. When playing the role of subordinate, I usually take advantage of any mistakes the students make and exaggerate the consequences so they can clearly see what can happen.

6. There is always a transferable component in skill development. For example, one can learn thinking skills in accounting and later transfer much of that ability to another field. Similarly, one can learn conflict resolution skills, and they will empower one to be more effective at delegating, communicating, etc.. In fact, teaching skill development tends to obscure our traditional subject-matter divisions. The skill of motivation, for example, is operative in every supervisory act--delegation, discipline, communication, etc., and so is the skill of leadership.

7. Although I have not had the opportunity to do so, I think there would be a significant advantage in combining the teaching of the being and skill dimensions in a single course. Instead of the two separate courses I now have, I would like to experiment with a basic and advanced course each of which combines the two dimensions. I think there would be a "synergistic" effect that would make the courses more powerful.

8. While one cannot say conceptually what is in the subconscious, it does appear to be possible to access at least some of this information through projective techniques. This is particularly true for the "being knowledge" component of subconscious knowledge. For example, I have found that people can say what effective leadership is (and universally so--everyone gives similar answers) if projective questions are used. I think one of the most exciting frontiers in this work is the development of better projective techniques for accessing subconscious information. I have hopes that eventually we can use such techniques to obtain accurate assessments of skill knowledge.

9. Skill development together with development on the Being dimension becomes what I call "personal power"--the power of an individual to be effective in influencing his or her environment. That, ultimately, is the deciding difference between highly successful people and the "also-rans." Our work suggests that personal power can be acquired quite rapidly if one understands the process involved and engages in it consciously.