A 13-week reskilling program for Navy SEALs and Special Forces starts with identity and storytelling before job skills. The first six weeks build emotional intelligence and what speakers call "connection currency." Eighty percent of HR professionals say recent graduates lack emotional intelligence, ranked among the top in-demand skills by the World Economic Forum.
Today we're at the Honor Foundation, my favorite place, because what they do here is teach Navy SEALs and Special Forces to move from deployment to employment. And in order to do that, we have to use our hack number 3: reskilling from the inside out. Can we teach these fellows here at the Honor Foundation what their dot is inside so they can connect that to the rest of the world to make impact? Come with us on our journey and explore. Tell me a little bit about reskilling these guys, because we are going from deployment to employment, and I know the whole 13-week course is about reskilling them to have the skills to make that transition.
Where it starts is where you actually take us, is with the individual with the heart. Their mind is in the area of literal skill sets that they had in the military and what translates. We don't talk about those things for like the first 6 weeks of the program. We talk about stories. Who are you? And it's remarkable for them because they're the most confident people on the planet. The planet. But they lose a sense of confidence when it comes to the next chapter.
I know. And to me, it's all about do you understand who you are? Right. And, you know, bumping into them in the street and having them say, "Boy, that was the hardest thing I ever did was reskilling myself to be able to," you know, actually get in touch with that dot inside to make that connection. We know emotional intelligence is the skill, the soft skill maybe, but the skill that you need to create connection currency so people can understand the impact you will have for them. The World Economic Forum has come out with a study, they've done our research for us, in 2020 about the skills that are needed. You know, emotional intelligence just made the list this year, and it's at number 6, and creativity went up to number 3. We're getting it. We understand diversity makes better decisions. We understand that emotional intelligence and understanding people will win, and connection matters. If you look at all the studies, what they're saying is this: 80% of HR professionals believe that college graduates do not have the requisite emotional intelligence skills to succeed in the workplace. We need to teach them about the dot inside, to connect with themselves, and when they connect with themselves, they can then go and crush it in the workplace. We haven't tapped near into the potential of helping them learn those other skills, which are really the skills that allow us to leverage all those technical skills they have.
And all of these things can be learned skills, and typically It's not taught everywhere, but it comes from role models that we have in life— our parents, our mentors, etc.
Look at what great leaders do to manage well. They teach their people, they grow their people. If we lean in and we guide the right way, we can get it done together.
