Work, Capability and Role

Work Capability

You use language to make sense of reality so as to be responsible for changing it. This determines your work capability, which is probably genetically determined.

Work capability is a specific personal ability which is not the same as measured IQ, skills, emotional intelligence, decision-style, leadership ability, or anything else. Unlike other performance factors, it is not teachable. Coaching or mentoring have no effect other than to create self-awareness.

Comparison to IQ & Intelligence

Intelligence measured via IQ is about numerical reasoning, verbal ability, visuo-spatial reasoning, and memory. There is no assessment of handling oneself and others, making judgements on limited information, adapting as situations change, maintaining a position despite intellectual and social pressures &c. Some of these items (but not all) might be covered by emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

It is recognised that the supposedly intelligent are often "not very smart". They may be good at writing books and debating, but not at doing things or handling people. Intellectual qualities often (but not necessarily) move a person out of the tangible achievement-QH2 arena into the academic-QH3 arena or perhaps the arena of institutions-QH4. They seem less relevant to the higher domains where terms like «perceptive» or «sensitive» replace «intelligent» as an adjective of praise and admiration.

The 28 Levels in using language (described earlier) do not correspond to any social structure or any particular role. However, they do reflect increasing complexity and sophistication in handling reality.

Anyone can use any of these levels briefly to meet a personal need or to understand what is being said. However, that does not equate to the ability to carry responsibility on a full-time basis for structuring and altering reality in a particular way.

Simple observation reveals that:

• the capability to do useful and effective work of any particular degree (level) of complexity varies markedly from person to person.

• work capability develops and increases through a person's working life, with moves up to a new level representing a major life-career transition.

• people may move between society's arenas: usually early in their career as they discover themselves, or late in life as they gratify themselves.

You need to get a sense of your own work capability (independently of your choice of arena of responsibility), and track how it is developing. It can be difficult but you can definitely do it yourself. Don't be too persuaded by what others say: they tend to judge you by externals. The topics in this Satellite are designed to help you come to grips with this aspect of your inner nature (personal identity).

Factors in Role Performance

• Levels: Holding a position in an organization depends on having the appropriate work capability. Posts or roles therefore need to be unequivocally defined in terms of level of work and matched to a person whose capability is at that level.

• Kinds: However, factors relating to the kind of work also determine whether you can responsibly perform a particular role, including:

• Expertise which improves with time and opportunity, and may be associated with developing a social network relevant to effective performance.
• Knowledge which can be acquired formally or informally via books, seminars, courses, coaching, mentoring &c.
• Skills which depend on training, continuing practice and refinement.
• Temperament and various personality traits, which may be largely inborn.

• Paradigms: Some roles require use of a paradigm that may powerfully affect performance. Examples include paradigms that correspond to THEE mentalities, which are independent of either level or kind of work. For example: 

• Interacting-for-benefit mentality: see more here.
• Decision mentality: see more here.
• Ethical choice mentality: see more here.
• Leadership mentality: as revealed in the Change domain—not yet posted.

Reject the Fashion: These mentalities are often analysed and each component then proposed as a skill that can be learned or turned into a habit. This certainly does not apply to mentalities which are about personal identity. These exist as a system that, if not natural for you, is simple to know about but hard to internalize and operate effectively.

Arena Choice

Different associating arenas generate different kinds of work and roles. The focus here will be confined to work capability and levels of responsibility within the PH'5Q-arena. The analysis of work-levels is about reality-handling, and therefore applies to all kinds of work found in the PH'5Q-arena.

Work options within different PH'5Q-arenas may either attract or repel you. I do not know exactly what inner flexibility a person has. But we are certainly unwilling and even unable to perform in just any PH'5Q-arena. The nature of commerce, politics, science, or art may seem too arcane or too difficult or too uninteresting. For better or worse, we leave that world to others and take for granted any benefits or harms that result.

Most of the generalizations about work and capability were determined by extensive research and consultancy in large conventional organizations that produce tangible goods and services: i.e. the PH'5-Q2 arena.

Exactly how, and indeed whether, the findings identified in Q2 apply in the other 6 arenas of societal responsibility is a matter for investigation. The Q2 arena will be initially presented in detail. Each of the other domains will then be systematically explored and conjectures will be offered. At the end, findings can be reviewed and conclusions drawn.

As the inquiry proceeds, conjectures about all arenas will be maintained in Frameworks in Development, and summary findings will be updated there.

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• Because we live in a physical reality and consume resources within a particular society, there is always «ordinary work» that has to be done, however lofty our mission. Explore this notion further.

Originally posted: 25-Oct-2013