The Skills We Develop Without Realising It
By Sarah Williams, Founder of Leading Culture | Business Growth Strategist
Some of the capabilities we rely on most in our work were never deliberately developed. They were picked up much earlier, through our families, our circumstances, the environments we grew up in, and simply paying attention to what was happening around us. At the time, they didn't feel like skills. They were just part of life.
I was reminded of this recently when I realised how often I use something I learned as a child: I can lip-read.
I grew up with an auntie who was deaf, and my father had grown up in a household where communication didn't always require sound. He could use sign language and lip-read, and somewhere along the way, so did I. It was simply part of how we communicated as a family. Some gatherings were surprisingly quiet, and we didn't need to hear each other to know what was being said. I never thought much about it at the time, and I certainly never imagined it would become useful decades later in my working life.
Today, I find myself using it surprisingly often. Recently, on a Zoom call, the other person could hear me, but I couldn't hear her. Normally that means the familiar back-and-forth of "Can you hear me now?" But because I could see her clearly on screen, I could follow along even though she was speaking silently from my end. We worked out what was happening and carried on.
It's also useful when I'm facilitating larger groups. I don't need to be standing right next to a conversation to have a sense of what's happening in it. If I can see the person speaking, I can often follow what the group is discussing, pick up when things have gone off track or people seem stuck, and judge when it might be time to step in.
Lip reading has accents too, just like speech, and I read some far better than others. But the point isn't really the skill itself. It's where it came from.
We don't always know what we're learning
As children, we're constantly absorbing things: how people communicate, how they respond to difficult situations, how to read a room, notice when something isn't being said, adapt when circumstances change, listen, observe, and make sense of what's happening around us.
Some of those capabilities become obvious strengths later in life. Others stay invisible until we find ourselves in a situation where they suddenly matter. And sometimes, we don't even recognise the connection.
Someone who grew up helping in a family business might develop an instinct for customers, negotiation, or problem-solving. Someone who moved frequently as a child might become highly adaptable. Someone who grew up navigating lots of different personalities might become particularly good at reading group dynamics. Someone who had to find creative solutions to everyday problems might develop a strong sense of resourcefulness.
None of this started as professional development. It was just life.
The experiences we grow up with matter
This is worth thinking about when we talk about capability at work. We tend to focus on what people can list on a CV: qualifications, technical expertise, training, years of experience, and all of those matters. But there's another layer of capability that's harder to see: the experiences we grow up with quietly shaped abilities that become valuable much later.
Those abilities can be especially powerful because they're deeply embedded in how we naturally operate. We don't always think of them as skills. They're simply how we approach the world.
Perhaps that's why some of the most valuable strengths in a team don't show up on a job description.
They come from experiences that teach us to notice what others miss, stay calm under pressure, understand different perspectives, adapt quickly, and recognise when something isn't quite right.
These are capabilities, too. We just don't always call them that. It's part of why we spend as much time on understanding team dynamics as we do on skills matrices when we're working with a business.
What have you learned without realising it?
My ability to lip-read came from something that was simply part of my family life. I didn't learn it because I knew it would one day help me facilitate a group or navigate a Zoom call. I learned it because it was useful to the people around me.
Years later, it turned out to be useful in ways I could never have predicted.
It makes me wonder what other capabilities we carry with us that started somewhere completely unexpected.
What did you learn growing up because of your family, your circumstances, or the environment around you? And where does that experience show up in your life now?
Sometimes the skills that shape us most are the ones we never set out to learn.
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