WorkLore

I worked with a project manager once who was a wiz at Excel. She could get that program to run almost like a basic software and her formulas were incredibly detailed and complex. 

You could enter 2 or 3 pieces of data and the spreadsheet would do the rest, spitting out usable insights that kept projects running smoothly. 

So she has Excel skills. 

But in becoming an Excel expert, she developed so many more skills. 

She was an inveterate problem solver (especially if one of us on the team accidentally messed up one of her formulas!) 

She attended to detail. 

She had persistence in getting the tool to work like she wanted it

She had good listening skills when we would ask her to change what the spreadsheet did

Often when we talk about skills, we talk about them as if every skill stands all on its own. But the way that we develop a proficiency with one task develops more than one skill at a time. 

The problem? We might just say my colleague is good at using Excel and ignore the other skills that she developed along the way that provided extra value to her role as a project manager. 

What other skill clusters can you think of?