Convenience Over Quality
We'll modify this sentiment and say "easy of use at the expense of thinking."
❔ Do you know someone who is so reliant on their GPS that they couldn't return to a destination a day or two later, without it?
❔ Do you know someone who gets their news by scrolling through Facebook, rather than reading a newspaper? (I had a conversation with someone last week who did not know what Brexit was!)
❔ What else have you observed as an example of ease-of-use vs. quality or applied thinking? Please share in comments ⬇️
Truly Learning Requires Multiple Exposures to Content
How many times do you give employees training on the same topic? If you answer "more than once" I'll be shocked. How long did it take you to learn to ride a bike? Drive a car? Log in to your voicemail?
Moving from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence takes many, many exposures, but for some reason, in training, we take the one-and-done approach.
Need to learn to coach your employees? Take this four-hour class! Want to improve your close-rate on sales calls? Here's a 40-minute online tutorial!
Giving folks exposure to information is NOT training. (I don't have to tell you that.) Yet that's how most training is conducted.
In Failure is Growth...
So many people are afraid to fail - will people laugh at me, judge me, pity me? But we learn more from our failures than our successes. And no one is good at everything they do, the first time out. So what, exactly, are you afraid of? Learning?
First-rate intelligence
It's an important skill/attribute that someone in a #leadership position MUST possess. There is so much information coming at us each day (each hour!) that it is truly important to be able to take it all in, "measure" it, reason through it, and make a decision.
3 Free Leadership Development Resources
Note: This article originally appeared on Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/09/26/how-to-develop-your-future-leaders-for-next-to-nothing/#69afc9ec2d11
Are you a business owner or managerwho knows you need to startdeveloping the future leaders of your organization, but you’re paralyzed by theidea of where to begin? No worries. This article will help you get started withno cost and minimal effort.
When people learn that The Training Doctor helps companies to develop their leadership strategy, we often hear, "Yeah, but we have no money.”
There are a LOT of organizations - big and small - in this same situation. And the good news is - leadership development does NOT have to be expensive or time-consuming. Here are three resources (and we have PLENTY more to share, if you are interested).
Reading and Discussion Groups
The best activity your company’s futureleaders can master is to be knowledgeable about business in general and yourindustry in particular. A businessleader needs to know how a business works, not how a job is done. Assist yourup-and-coming leaders by subscribing to industry journals and general-businesspublications such as Forbes, Harvard Business Review, or the Wall StreetJournal.
More importantly, form weekly orbi-weekly discussion groups around an article or two that you think isparticularly enlightening or that would be good for discussion. If you reallywant to go the extra mile, pre-formulate discussion questions that get awayfrom opinion (What do you think of that?) and lean toward critical thinking(Could that happen to us? What would we do, if that happened?). It’s important to have your future leadersthinking about “the big picture,” and your company in the context of yourindustry and business in general.
Job Rotations
Job rotations are traditionallythought of as an activity reserved for “hi-pos” (high potential individuals).Why?
It’s important that your futureleaders understand how your business works, what departments areinterdependent, and especially how you make money. They cannot learn thesethings if they are stuck in the silo of their own department or role.
A job rotation doesn’t have to beextensive or lengthy, but it should give the “visitor” a thorough understandingof another department’s work processes, priorities, and constraints. Imaginehaving a customer service representative work in the sales department for aweek. They could travel on sales calls, learn about your competition,understand better about contracts and pricing and the customer lifecycle, andon and on. Wouldn’t that make them a much more knowledgeable and helpfulcustomer service rep? Now imagine the reverse - a salesperson on the phones inthe customer service department for a week. Wow.
When people have a perspective onthe whole organization they do their own jobs better, have better collaborationskills, better communication skills, more empathy, a better understanding ofthe constraints or opportunities throughout the organization, and are not justfocused on the role that they do at their own desk.
Tuition Reimbursement
Finally, my third free leadershipdevelopment recommendation is to institute a tuition reimbursement program.Now, this isn’t exactly cost-free because it will take a bit of money to hire alawyer and/or accountant to set it up correctly (for instance, the rules aredifferent for C-corps vs. LLC’s) but once that process is done, the payback isextraordinary.
First, you have little to managebut the reimbursement process because participants are engaged more with the institutionwhere they are taking classes. Second, you are able to take advantage of a taxcredit of slightly over $5000 per participant. Third, courses often requireon-the-job projects, which means that your company reaps the rewards of betterproject management or a better HR communications strategy, for example.
And individuals often feel loyaltyto those companies that help them to further their career and their education, soan added benefit is that you’ll see increased retention (which mutes thosecynics who worry “What if I train them and they leave?”).
Bottom line: You CAN afford todevelop the future leaders of your organization with little cost and minimaleffort by starting reading and discussion groups, instituting job rotations,and offering tuition reimbursement, for everyone, not just for those employeesyou think are “high potential.”
For more great suggestions for leadership development follow The Training Doctor on Twitter or LinkedIn.
How are we preparing our future workforce?
Young people don't want jobs... apprenticeships aren't a "thing" anymore... and EDUCATION is not enough to create a skilled workforce. We need to change the system and the handoff from school to work.
3 Ways "We" Have Destroyed Young People's Ability to Think
Here are three ways education has undermined thinking in theyounger generations:
The primary education system has changed quite a bit in thelast 50 years and many of those changes have resulted in young people'sinability to think critically and instead to rely on cues and memorization.
1 - Memorization
For decades we’ve been lulled into believing that memorizingand recalling information is learning. And perhaps, in anindustrialized world, recall was all that was necessary. When theindustrial age was ruled by manufacturing and work was repetitive, perhapsremembering the steps in a process and executing them properly was "theskill." We are now in a knowledge economy (and have been for at least 20years!). We pay people to think. We pay people to make decisions,solve problems, innovate and synthesize. In direct opposition to this, oureducational system (and generally our corporate training system) focuses onteaching learners to memorize information so that, with the proper prompt, itcan be recalled; educating/training does not teach us how to useinformation in a variety of ways and circumstances or (heavens!) use it in away that wasn’t taught at all (extrapolating).
2 - Cramming
Somewhere along the line, we have lured young learners intobelieving that “cramming” is a proper methodology for learning. Duringexam week at colleges, the libraries and dining halls stay open around theclock to accommodate the learners who are staying up around the clock studying– this only reinforces the idea that the last-push to learn is a crucial time.
Typically young people prepare for a test or exam the day beforethe exam – which means that they are simply working from short term memory,which generally is good enough if the measure of one’s learning is being ableto spot the right answer on a multiple-choice test - but not enough if weexpect them to use that knowledge "out in the real world."
Real-world application is built from learning over multipleexposures to a concept or process, not a cursory review of the keypoints.
3 - Testing
Thanks to the introduction of Scantron Bubble Sheets in the50's and 60's - everything became a multiple-choice test. The bubble sheetswere extremely helpful to teachers and administrators as class sizes grew andrecord-keeping became more stringent. Unfortunately, they took morethan they gave. This type of testing fueled the usage of the 2"learning" strategies discussed above AND undermined the value of theteacher's input into student's testing.
Prior to a machine grading tests, teachers had to read eachresponse, giving the answer critical thought. Very often they would addcommentary to the grade, rather than simply marking an answer wrong. They mightremind the student where the correct information was found or help them toremember how the concept they got wrong was similar to what they werethinking. Sometimes they would give partial credit if the student was onthe right track but then veered off before their final summation (this is theonly way I passed geometry, believe me).
Prior to a machine grading tests, even when a student got ananswer wrong - they were learning. They had coaching, correction andrefinement from their teacher based on how the teacher graded thetest. Once the Scantron bubble sheet became de rigueur in public schooleducation, students simply received their grade with little to no explanationor intervention.
Unfortunately, I can spot factors that led to the demise of thinking skills (and there may well be more that you are thinking of!) but I am not sure what the remedy should be to reverse the trend. Given class-size and teacher pay, it's not reasonable to take efficiencies away from public school teachers. Instituting "study skills" classes in college is smart - but it's usually an elective and addresses a small population of the students (plus, by the time students are in college, it is remedial - we should be teaching study skills at about age 11 and continue it until the end of high school - see my article on 3 Keys to Ensuring Learning for more on this topic).
I think the rise of AI and machine learning will make theseshortcomings even more apparent in coming years, as all of the "easy tospot" answers will be gobbled up by robots and the critical thinking willbe the domain of humans.
Your thoughts?
Note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-ways-we-have-destroyed-young-peoples-ability-think-miner-ed-d-
Encourage Contrarian Thinking
Very often leaders are emboldened by people who are in agreement with their ideas.
That sounds great! I'll get right on it.
Brilliant idea! No way we can lose this one.
This will really knock the competition on their arse.
The employee you REALLY want on your team is the one that says, "Hold up! I see three ways this can go sideways. Did we think this through? Did we ask for input from customers (nod to New Coke), vendors (hello State of NC), or our employees (here's looking at you, Google).
As a consultant, I believe that part of what you pay me for is my ability to "see the other side;" to bring questions and alternative perspectives to your organization. When I worked as an employee my approach was always to ask, "How can I break this?" much like testing a new software... what if I did this? or this? or this pressure is applied?
Contrarian thinkers - and similarly, devil's advocates - aren't negative for the sake of being negative; they are thinking ahead to the future and to ramifications of your, or your company's, actions.
If you are a leader and a developer of future leaders, here are three ways to encourage contrarian thinkers:
Always have two meetings: Don't make decisions at the first discussion of a new idea. Simply have an open discussion about the idea (new product, new process, new hire) and allow a few days for people to think about it. You might even want to charge your attendees with coming to meeting #2 with at least one "argument" against the idea. This process will prevent ideas from becoming run-away before they've been thoroughly vetted. Yes, it will take more time to make decisions, but they will be good (or at least better) decisions.
When addressing your followers, always ask, "What am I missing?" This is especially important to ask of people on the front-line. They are the ones who are actually doing the work and have a pulse on what customers, vendors, and fellow employees are thinking and feeling.
Praise those who come forward with their opposing views. When you ask the "what am I missing?" question, always thank the person who offers their negative outlook. Your job is not to argue the opposing view, but to give it consideration. You might even ask open-ended questions to gather more information, such as "do you have an example you could share?" or ask of the group, "have others seen this same phenomenon?"
By engaging in a conversation, purposefully asking for opposing views, and thanking the contrarian for offering their insight, you are encouraging others to do so in the future; which means you are building a stronger company and a community of forward-thinking employees which helps your organization to foresee and mitigate potential risk.
NOTE: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-risk-part-3-nanette-miner-ed-d-/
Promoting Within
When you promote someone to a leadership role - they know your history and culture and have a sense of loyalty to the organization that you won't find in an external hire.
You Need a Leadership Development Program that Starts at Day 1 - and here's why
We wait too long to start leadership development. A 2016 meta-analysis of leadership development programs determined that most leadership development begins at age 46 AND leadership development almost always begins after someone is appointed to a leadership role. That makes little sense. Wouldn't you rather have an employee that learns feedback skills or problem-solving or strategy at the start of their career, rather than at the end?
There are a number of other approaches to as-we-do-it-today leadership development that are illogical - here is a sampling, with the rationale for a "better way."
- Leadership development programs are generally short-term (one week, 10 months) and generic - leaving the individual to figure out how their new knowledge and skills apply to the work that they are doing.
- You want a development strategy that integrates work with learning and outputs.
- To be cost-effective, companies generally are selective about whom they will send through leadership development - sacrificing hundreds of capable individuals for the development of a few. Do you really want only a few people in your organization to be fully capable in their roles?
- When leadership skills are integrated with regular activities and duties – starting on day 1 – the costs are minimal and absorbed daily, you don't need a "special event."
- As leadership development is currently administered...ROI is iffy. If your organization has 15 individuals, in 10 different disciplines, who have gone through leadership development this year - how do you associate their output with the learning?
- When the learning process is integrated with every worker's role and responsibilities, you can easily connect output to increased knowledge and skill through various measure of productivity.
100% ROI
Whenever I ask business owners and managers this question they are always a bit dumbfounded at the logic of it: Would you rather increase the capabilities and competencies of 15% of your employees? Or raise 100% of your employee's skills by 15%?
If every employee made better decisions, took responsibility for problem-solving, communicated better with their colleagues and other departments, understood who their stakeholders were... and more "leadership skills"... the efficiency and productivity of your company would be boundless.
But that "training" needs to begin on the first day they walk in the door. Your company should have a 3- or 5- or 10-year plan for the development of every employee. It should include skills building in the role they were hired for as well as broader, more business-acumen topics like risk, finance, and strategy.
And most importantly - it should include exposure to all areas of the business. Too many poor decisions are made because HR doesn't understand Ops, or Marketing doesn't understand Finance. When individuals understand the "big picture" of how your company operates - and they make relationships with people in other functions - companies run more smoothly, efficiently, and profitably. But they need to develop those skills at the start of their career, not the end.
The Importance of Teaching Debate
Arguments can be deadly; debate notsomuch
Remember the Debate Club in high school? It was an excellent tool to help young people to start thinking critically about various issues and honing their communication skills to be able to intelligently articulate issues.
Debate requires someone to construct an argument. That argument can be pro or against, but it must incorporate research, analysis, reasoning, and sometimes synthesis and evaluation in order to establish and substantiate one's position.
Debate also requires the debater to master their content, to practice both listening and speaking skills in order to counter the opposing side, and to not only be able to verbalize but also to speak persuasively about their position. These skills are known on Bloom's Taxonomy as higher order thinking skills. Debate takes one beyond the ability to research and "know" information to the ability to construct something and do something with that information.
One of the reasons that I like to utilize debate in my training designs is because it helps people to understand how to deal with conflict in a constructive and measured way. Countering an opposing argument does not mean name calling, introducing distracting or off-topic issues, or simply blustering louder than one's opponent. That is an argument. Arguments are rarely constructive and lead to hurt feelings and opposing sides. I can't think of any appropriate situation - in the business world - where opposing sides is a good thing - especially if those two sides are within the same company.
Debate can be taught in a "learning experience," such as a classroom. This approach is often fabricated, however; for instance the instructor provides a topic or asks for one from the audience and it often is a topic that is already deemed to be controversial. Another approach would be to teach debate in the regular course of our workplace meetings. Rather than rushing to a conclusion about a topic, stop and ask the group "What are the opposing arguments for this idea / decision?" Encourage attendees to voice their concerns and their arguments in support of those concerns. This will teach your employees that debating is a normal and expected conversational process. Priming your employees to be accustomed to debating ensures they will be more comfortable voicing opposing viewpoints when decisions really matter.
Case Study: Wells Fargo - how long can you ignore ethics?
Here are some "interesting" facts as a result of Wells Fargo's abuse of customers:
- Fake accounts: 2 million +
- Fines: $185 Million
- Fired: 5300 managers
- Resigned: Two CEO's, John Stumpf and his successor Tim Sloan
- Legal fees: $40 – $50 million per quarter (gosh, if you only gave us that money for professional development - oh the places we could go!)
- Branch closings: 400 by 2019
So many questions! If you use this case study in a discussion with your leadership tip you'll contemplate questions such as:
Was it fair that 5000+ low-level managers were fired or should only the senior executives have been held accountable?
Warning signs – such as customers failing to fund the accounts they “recently opened” – were evident but ignored. What kinds of early warning systems are in place in your organization? How are they monitored?
You can access the complete case study - suitable for printing, here.
Top 8 (useful) Things I Learned in 2018
About two years ago I started keeping a Word document on mycomputer of Things I Learned. Irealized that I learn so many great things each week – that enrich my worklife, or make it easier – and often I forget them just as quickly as I learnedthem. To ensure that doesn’t happen toofrequently, I started keeping this document, parsed by month because I canoften remember when I learnedsomething, (such as, that webinar onLinkedIn I took back in the spring)even if the actual “what” has escaped me long ago.
One of the things I really love about the list is going back over it and refreshing my memory of great tips, tools and techniques I’ve learned in the last year. I often find myself saying, “Oh yeah! Why did I stop using / doing that?”
Here is my Top 8 list of things (culled from over 12 pages of stuff!)I learned in 2018 – I hope you get value from them as well.
- Google Forms – allows you to create all sorts of things like surveys and registration forms and then lets you put a URL to them in an email as a way to promote or invite. Also allows you to download responses in
an .xls format which is very useful. - Grouping in PowerPoint – I consider myself fairly adept at PowerPoint but just in the last year I learned that you can click on multiple elements (images, text boxes, etc.) by holding down CTRL and clicking each – to enable all the animations to occur at once. Goodbye “start with previous.” Such a time saver!
- Royalty free music from www.audiojungle.net and www.artlist.io – both allow you to search both by genre or mood, which is helpful. (Note: As a result, The Training Doctor has its own theme music now!)
- Free stock photos at https://Burst.shopify.com and https://Unsplash.com (with photo credit) - very edgy and engaging - useful for social media posts.
- Persona Generator – helps you to “nail down” who your buyer is so that you can craft advertising specific to that “individual.”
- The
center for American Progress www.americanprogress.org. Great articles andinsight / research on learning, K-12, post-secondary, etc. - When recording videos, add 2 – 3 seconds between concepts – it seems like an eternity to you but not to the listener and it is super helpful for editing (like adding a slide or image to support the concept).
- Trello.com – a project management tool (free) that works like my brain does (it’s very visual, allows you to make “notes” and move them around, assign to others, etc.).
Goodbye numerous Excel spreadsheets!
Top 7 Phrases Every Leader Should Have in His / Her Vocabulary

One of the problems with being a manager is that no oneteaches you to be a manager. Mostfolks who become managers do so because they are technically competent at whatthey do, and they get promoted. Therefore most managers are learning by trial and error and committingsome atrocities along the way, while learning.
In a (small) effort to stem the carnage, here is a list of 7phrase every manager should use liberally in their everyday conversations withemployees – and why.
Thank you
For a long time when I was a newmanager, my thinking was that I should intervene only if someone neededguidance / correction - otherwise they “knew” that no news was good news.WRONG. Not only is thanking someone for doing their job well, polite, it alsogoes a long way towards employee satisfaction and loyalty. Would you ratherwork for a boss that acknowledges your good work, or ignores it? No brainer.But it took MY brain a long time to figure that one out.
May I give you some feedback?
I learned this from a consultingclient who is still in my Top 3 of favorite clients, although we haven’t workedtogether in a dozen years. I think he is a favorite because of this verytechnique (and he’s funny, whichalways scores points with me). At thestart of our relationship he said “At times I’ll want to give you feedback andI’ll always ask your permission first, OK?” Well sure, who’s going to say no to that? So throughout our 4 or 5 yearsof working together he often asked, “May I give you some feedback?” to which,again, I always said yes. What I thought was remarkable about the technique wasthat after a while, it went both ways. Because he had garnered so much respectfrom me by using this technique, I eventually returned the favor by offeringhim feedback when I felt he could benefit from it. And of course, by asking first“May I give you some feedback?”
Walk me through your thinking...
Part of being a leader / manageris helping your employees to grow in their capabilities. No one becomes morecapable if you simply issue commands at them and expect them to comply. Youneed to give employees some autonomy to make decisions and take the lead intheir work. But of course, making decisions can lead to making mistakes. Ratherthan berating or correcting, asking the employee to “walk me through yourthinking,” helps you to realize why they thought it was a good decision andthen allows you to correct that thinking so that they are better informed inthe future. (WHY did you do that?! issimilar, but more aggressive and less open-ended.)
What else?
This phrase is a good one to usein tandem with the one above. When conversing with employees, they may believethey are taking up your valuable time or abbreviating what they aretransmitting to you because they think, of course you know the preamble, theywill just get you to the “point.” Asking “what else” shows that you have thetime to hear them out and – more importantly – gets them to delve deeper in totheir thinking and rationale. In mymind, asking “what else” is a lot like a psychologist asking “and how did thatmake you feel?” – it makes the employee pause and go deeper in their thinking.
In my experience...
Sometimes managers areknow-it-alls – do it my way because I’ve been on this job for 15 years and knowwhat’s best. But of course, that doesn’t help your employees to understand the“why” behind the directive and also doesn’t endear them to you. A simple change in phrasing gets to the sameend-point but in a more collaborative and supportive way. Rather than issuing acommand, simply deliver the same information with the preamble, “In my experience…”
For example, rather than telling anew salesperson “Never interrupt the customer,” you’ll say, “In my experience,when the customer is interrupted, they either don’t care to share the rest oftheir story or they start the whole story all over again – neither of whichhelps us to move the sale along.”
How can I help?
As mentioned a few times now, as amanager it is your job to grow the capabilities of your employees. When yougive them autonomy and enable them to make decisions they oftentimes will fearthat asking for help means you were wrong about them – that they really aren’tready for the responsibilities you’ve given them. It’s important to proactivelyask “how can I help?” which opens the door for them to share where (or why)they are stalled. This is a much smarter behavior (on your part) than waitingfor the individual to fail and then asking “What went wrong?”
What’s working?
Much like phrase #1 – saying Thank You – asking “what’s working?” focuseson the positive and helps you to understand what your employee appreciates orenjoys about their job. Again, because employees are often afraid of violatingyour valuable time, they will only come to you in “dire” circumstances – whenthey need help or there is a problem; but you want to hear about the wholeperson and everything that is going well in their job. This helps you toidentify their strengths and interests which allows you to develop them inareas where they will be successful.
These7 tips will make your job as a manager somuch easier, by opening up the lines of communication and adding positivity tothe workplace. You will reap long-termrewards by being a manager who shows respect and is respected by theiremployees.
Activities to Boost Creative Thinking
Creative thinking is something we usually squash down in corporate America – you get more done if you keep your head down and follow the established path.
But creative thinking is how we come up with new and better ways of doing our work. Here are 3 exercises to enable you to think in more creative ways. You can use them alone or with your team.
✔ 21 What Ifs
Writing is something I do on a daily basis, so writer’s block comes with the territory. When you find yourself blocked or at an impasse in your work, let go of “rules” or “outcomes” and brainstorm 21 What Ifs? It will get your creative juices flowing again and often you’ll find the “answer” you were looking for.
✔ 21 What Ifs?
For example: I am trying to find a descriptive and compelling title for my podcast…
What if it were for children?
What if it were for aliens?
What if it was something grown / farmed?
What if it were a color?
What if people said it to invite someone else to marry them?
What if it were something you could buy at a store?
What if it had a taste?
✔ Explore Analogous Fields
On your way home from work tonight, look at the businesses along your drive / route and just pick one randomly – fast food, nursery, car repair, gym, florist – then go home and write a list of 10 ways this company is just like yours. Then do the reverse - 10 ways it is entirely different from yours. (In a thinking curriculum [with a group], we’d do this in a different way, but this is a great solo activity that gets largely the same results.) We tend to think we are so special, so specialized, that we miss out on great opportunities by NOT looking beyond the end of our nose.
Alternatives of the exercise include:
10 ways your skills could improve the (observed) company
10 ways your skills could put the (observed) company out of business
10 one-to-one comparisons of your skills and the (observed) business, such as: my skill in making cold calls is like a growing plant in that…
✔ Stop Being so Literal
There are many objects in our daily life which we know the function of and that saves us a lot of time and has a lot of utility. We don’t pick up a pen each day and ask “What the heck is this? What does it do?” BUT that focus on the literal can also be a hindrance to our seeing possibilities.
A pen can also be a lever, an easel, a plug for a hole, used as a utensil, and so much more.
As a way to get creative juices going, alone or with your team, randomly choose an object from your desk or surroundings and imagine other uses for it. If you’re working on a new project, stop and ask, “Why are we going down this path? Is there another, alternative, path? Are there dual paths? Once we get to the end, is there more than one way to monetize or utilize that end?”
Examples:
Post it notes were invented as a byproduct of trying to develop a stronger industrial glue.
Slinkys (the toy) were invented as a byproduct of developing industrial springs.
So stop being so literal and look for the possibilities.
= = = =
Originally published on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/activities-boost-creative-thinking-nanette-miner-ed-d-/?published=t
Missing Leadership Skill: Conflict Management

One of the things we DON'T teach our future leaders:
✔ Conflict Management
Conflict management is a skill that all up-and-coming leaders should learn. Some research suggests that 25% of a manager’s day is spent managing conflict.
Most people are intimidated by conflict, expecting that it always involves anger and a win-lose outcome. But conflict is an amazingly helpful and enlightening
There are 5 basic conflict management practices, but the
Conflict management skills involved many soft skills including questioning, listening, empathy, assertiveness, problem-solving, creativity, negotiation, and more.
The most succinct piece of conflict management advice is this: Don’t say no. Instead, say: Tell me more, or What can you share to help us understand that?
Remember: “we all want the best outcome.”
Is it Worthwhile to Learn a Useless Skill?

A few months ago I was facilitating a conversation with a group of CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) and two got in to an almost-heated discussion about the "worthiness" of learning to drive a stick-shift vehicle. The conversation started around the premise of the demise of thinking skills and one attendee postulated that society's ability to think for itself has been comprised by things that make life easier and allow us to be on "auto-pilot." The example he gave was of his son who was just learning to drive and refused to learn to drive a stick shift. The son's argument was that it was a useless skill. In fact, he argued that learning to drive at all might be a useless skill given the numerous alternatives (right now limited to on-demand car services, but soon to be enhanced by self-driving and autonomous vehicles).
When my children were in elementary school we lost power one day. My daughter looked at the microwave and stove and finally asked "what time is it?" I slowly and incredulously pointed to the clock on the wall, over my head, and she said "I don't know how to tell time on that." Did she think it was hanging there as decor, I wonder? There is one "level" of utility in knowing it is 2:10, but an entirely different level of utility in knowing where 2:10 occurs in the "space" of a 12-hour time-frame. (And also, how is it possible I didn't teach her to read a clock?!)
One of my own favorite articles is one I wrote a few years ago about the over-reliance (in my opinion) on GPS devises and how they not only can get you in to trouble (go ahead and Google "GPS Fail") but also how they are a great example of how people are developing an inability to think. Personally, I have a certain level of self-confidence because I can read a map but... do they make maps anymore? And if yes, why? Maps have gone the way of the Encyclopedia Britannica, have they not? By the time they are published they are obsolete, and they don't provide the "added value" of alerting you to a traffic-jam up ahead. So perhaps the key word here is obsolete.
"Useless" might be a matter of personal need but obsolete changes the need to learn. Recently I was talking with another consultant about this idea and he suggested that a skill is not useless if the learning is transferable. He offered up the example of learning Latin - even though no one speaks it - as helpful in understanding grammar and other languages. So perhaps learning to drive a stick-shift is important in understanding how an engine works, and reading a map is useful in understanding space and time and distance. But parallel parking will become obsolete soon (some vehicle manufacturers are already making cars that can do the job for you) as will thousands of other skills replaced by technology or artificial intelligence.
So I'm putting it out there for discussion: Is it worthwhile to learn a skill that is useless at face-value but may hold the key to deeper understanding in other areas?