Today, a city’s capacity to develop talented people underpins its economic and social prosperity. Calgary is no different. Calgary is a city in transformation. Our city's ability to transform is defined by Calgarian’s ability to adapt to change. Being adaptable can be reactive, like how many are learning to live in a new reality during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, being adaptable can also be proactive and intentional; like having a plan. Today, we all need a plan.
Competencies are the combination of ability, knowledge, and skills to complete a job or perform a task and as a city, we need to shift from thinking about jobs to thinking about competencies. The right competencies will allow you to adapt and transform as fast as the world around us. Aligning your enabling competencies (sometimes called soft-skills or transferable-skills) are what allow you to expand into new job-specific competencies. Job-specific competencies are what you need to complete a specific job, whether it be welding, teaching, engineering, or soccer.
The challenge is job-specific competencies are highly contextual and in today’s fast paced world, it possesses an increasingly short lifespan. In the past, a trade learned as a teenager could be developed and refined through a lifetime of experience and maintain its value. Today, job-specific competencies often become dated and demand continual training to maintain their value. Most employers are searching for people who can adapt and pivot in a constantly changing environment.
It is estimated that in the next few years, 50 percent of people globally will need to be reskilled or upskilled. This makes developing your enabling competencies the rocket fuel that will power every Calgarian in the new economy.
If you don’t have these competencies today, this is where we come in…The Competencies for Life are an integrated set of 25 enabling competencies anchored in six clusters.
The six clusters and competencies within each cluster include:
Problem Solving: Analytical Thinking, Creativity, Curiosity, and System Thinking
Self-Reliance: Adaptable, Determination, and Takes Initiative
Collaboration: Emotional Intelligence, Conflict Management, Inspire and Lead Others, Trusted, and Value Relationships.
Communications: Active Listening, Effective Verbal Communications, and Effective Writer
Core Literacies: Reading Literacy, Good with Numbers, Financial Literacy, Civic Literacy, and Technology Literacy
Core Workplace Skills: Define Workplace Goals, Manage People and Money, Professional Identity, Time Management, and Continuous Learning
Through this pilot project, we bring attention to the Talent Marketplace where Talent Developer and Talent Seeker partners work together to help Individual Talent map their professional path. Through research of the Talent Marketplace and evidence from major enabling competency models, our team of post-secondary students, David Finch and partners at Calgary Economic Development have created a robust library of tools and resources to help support our audiences in developing these competencies.
It is our hope that through this model, we can shape the growth of the talent marketplace in the new economy and make Calgary a hub for talent. To learn more about this project and the Competencies for Life model, please visit www.competenciesforlife.ca.
