VCoL in action: skill mapping

6 min readSep 15, 2020

Micro-VCoLing, the learning process my colleagues and I teach in ViP, involves practicing tiny skills in real time. We call these skills micro-skills.

Micro-VCoLing is a four-step real-time learning process that has many benefits. You can find several examples of micro-VCoLs here on Medium and on Lectica’s website.

Take a look at the image below. It portrays five active listening skills that have been broken down into smaller and smaller skills. The five larger skills are called macro-skills. The next layer includes smaller skills, which we refer to as mini-skills. The children of mini-skills are called micro-skills.

We think of each ring of smaller skills as “components” of the skills immediately above them in the skill hierarchy. The smaller the skill, the more likely it is to be a skill that can be practiced in real time without disrupting your daily activities.

In fact, we define micro-skills as “skills that can be practiced in real time.” Defining micro-skills with respect to the person practicing them means that one person’s mini-skill can be someone else’s micro-skill. In the maps we build for general purposes, the micro-skills are generally the tiniest component skills we can identify. Once you have become proficient in micro-VCoLing, the micro-skills in maps you build for yourself could be mini- or even macro-skills in one of our general maps. If you can practice a skill in real time, it’s a micro-skill for you.

What is a skill?

We define a skill as “something that develops through direct practice.” When creating skill maps, we are constantly asking ourselves, “Is this think we want t ocall a ‘skill‘ really something that can be practiced directly?”

Once folks have spent a few weeks practicing the basic micro-VCoLing skills embedded in our micro-VCoL Makers, and understand what a micro-skill is, they can begin to identify skills they need to navigate daily life by learning to create their own skill-maps.

Skill mapping can be used to identify and select micro-skills from any larger set of skills. Here’s how we do it:

Choosing a skill

Consider your current needs. Ask yourself:

What skills would I like to learn?
What skills do I need to learn?
What kind of feedback have I had from mentors, teachers, friends, or colleagues regarding my skills?

Make a list of the skills you’ve identified, then order the skills from most urgent to least urgent, or alternatively, from most interesting to least interesting, depending on your preference.

Identifying practices

Get started by seeing if the skills in your list are easily unpacked. Ask your favorite AI, “What are some practices I could use to develop […] skills.” Make a list of the categories and practices provided by the AI. Then, ask the AI, “Are there any other practices that would help me build these skills?” Add any new practices that seem relevant to your list of categories and practices. (AI’s often begin adding less relevant material the second time you ask, so you may need to be selective.)
After this step, you’re likely to have a pretty solid hierarchical list of categories and practices. Take a few minutes to organize this list and remove redundant items.

Cleaning up your list

The AI is likely to treat practices as activities that build build skills. If it does not, you may need to do a bit of reframing. In general, everything in a skill map should be a skill (as we define it) or a practice that develops a skill.
This next step is super-important. The category structure (hierarchy) provided by the AI is likely to look a lot like the skill structure I’ve described for Active Listening above, but it’s a good idea to check each category to determine if it actually represents a skill (or group of skills). Recall that our definition of a skill is, “anything that develops with practice.” If it can’t be practiced, it isn’t a skill.
If you find anything in your list that is not a skill, try to think of skills that relate to it. For example, charisma is not a skill, but speaking well in public, which is one of the skills people with charisma often have, involves a set of skills that can be broken down into many micro-skills. For more on skills, read What is a skill?
Make a final hierarchically organized list of all of the skills you’ve identified.
Label each level in your skills hierarchy as (5) meta, (4) mega, (3) macro, (2) mini, or (1) micro. The tiniest skills at the bottom of the skills hierarchy should always be micro-skills or practices. If your map has more than 4 levels, it is likely to be a very big map. We recommend stating out by making a map with 3 or 4 levels.

Making your map

Now it’s time to make your map. (If you prefer to use mapping software, feel free to adapt the following instructions.)

Begin by writing down the name of each skill in your hierarchy on a tiny post-it note.)
Place the note containing the top level skill—usually a mega or macro skill—at the center of a white-board, a large piece of paper, or your fridge, whatever works for you.
Place the post-its containing skills that relate directly to a higher-level skill right below the higher-level skill. (Initial placement should be tentative. You are likely to decide to move things around as you progress.)
Place micro-skills below their mini-skills.
Here’s where things usually get a bit complicated. You may notice that some micro-skills want to belong to multiple mini-skills. We have a special name for micro-skills that behave in this way. We call them foundational skills. This is because they form a foundation for the robust development of many skills. For example, all of the basic micro-VCoLing skills are foundational skills of the meta-skill learning. (Our micro-VCoLing Skills map (below) exclusively contains foundational learning skills.)
If any of the micro-skills in your map seem to belong to multiple mini-skills, see if you can find them on the micro-VCoLing skills map. If they are on the micro-VCoLing skills map, write “micro-vcoling skill” on their post-it notes.
When you are satisfied with the connections you’ve made, reorganize the map to make it more readable.
After you have “finished” your map, explain it to one or more friends or colleagues, then ask for their comments and suggestions.
At this point, you may want to rework your map in response to feedback. Here at Lectica, it can take us weeks to “perfect” a skill-map.

Working with skill maps

There are many ways to use skill maps. At Lectica, we use skill maps to create micro-VCoLs, develop curricula like ViP and LAP-1, and write MindLog™ prompts.