Skills plan

Make a skills plan

Pick a workplace and a skill and get a plan: workdays to try, small real-world practice steps, tools and further learning (free and paid options), and one next move. Start with a suggestion, or choose your own.

A few good places to start

Choose my own workplace and skill

Step 1 · Choose a workplace

Step 2 · Choose a skill

Your plan

Self-advocacy at Harrow Plain Packhouse

Saying what you need, want, don't understand or won't do — and choosing how.

Add this focus to my Spark guide

Not the same as: Only complaining about unfair treatment. Asking for something to do is self-advocacy too.

Workdays to walk through

Workday 01 · The Truck at Eleven
Monday · 5:52 AM
A crate of grade-outs is heading for the export box because the truck can't wait. Nobody asked you to look away. Nobody had to.
Where self-advocacy shows up: Instructions to speed up grading conflict with the specification you were trained to follow.
Enter workday Read the lesson
Workday 02 · Line Speed
Tuesday · 5:40 PM
Two new arrivals barely speak English, the belt doesn't slow down for anyone, and asking a question in front of the whole line feels harder than the work itself.
Enter workday
Workday 03 · Your Initials on the Sheet
Thursday · 9:15 AM
Monday's load went out short and mislabeled, and the paperwork has your initials on it. Denise, Marisol and Walt each remember Monday a little differently.
Enter workday

Practice steps

Choose a step that fits your situation. Mark a step when you have tried it in a setting that fits your life — at work, in a class, while volunteering, caregiving, in your community or in a practice conversation. Nobody is grading this.

The same skill somewhere else

Manufacturing · Production line

Fenmore Line 4

Eleven Minutes

A sticking safety guard puts production pressure and your working conditions in tension.

Enter workday

Retail — home goods

Rise & Co. Homeware

The Return

An unusual return raises the question of when to ask a manager for guidance.

Enter workday