Come into the Third Space
By Hannah Kim ‘15
What is the Third Space?
It’s not something you can slap onto your resume. It has no place next to your GPA and your Adobe Photoshop fluency.
That’s because it’s a paradigm of thought.
In our current world of rapid technological growth, hard skills are king. Whether you want to work at Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Snapchat - the best jobs go to software engineers. Finance is still one of the most lucrative fields available.
But those of who us who lack coding skills and/or business sense need not fear. New research shows the importance of possessing “third space” skills in order to successfully lead a company.
USC Annenberg has created an initiative to isolate these professional competencies that exist outside of MBA and Engineering programs. “The Third Space” lecture series will be geared toward understanding what these skills are, and how to translate them into the classroom.
I attended the kickoff event with Dean Wilson that featured Dana Landis from Korn Ferry (the world’s largest executive recruiting firm). Korn Ferry’s research study looked at CEOs and executives from a broad range of fields to see what made them successful.
The results were shockingly uniform– whether the CEO was from a tech company or an entertainment company. Here are the top 6 traits:
- Ambiguity Tolerance
- Adaptability
- Empathy
- Sociability
- Novelty Seeking
- Tenacity
What does this mean? You can deal with uncertainty and navigate it without fear (you might not like it, but you can do it). You are internally flexible and able to change. Emotional IQ . You have interest in finding yourself outside of your comfort zone, using the past to learn but not as a limiting precedent. You’re results focused, and deliver- even when the going gets hard, and in less-than-optimal situations.
Leaders who possess these skills are:
- 5X more likely to be highly engaged
- 2X more likely to be promoted
- 3X more likely to be the highest paid
You will never possess all of the skills that you need in a position. Your job and your field your change under your feet. Positions that we created and people we hired will morph before our very eyes. What then shall we do? Develop and cultivate attitudes and mindsets, not just hard skills. Imagine being a 50-year old CEO and one day realizing that your methods are completely outdated- and worse, that you don’t have the flexibility to adapt.
Join Annenberg for the rest of this series:
Look for “Deans’ Forum: Third Space series” [link]
Third Space website [link]
Photo Credit: Benjamin Dunn
