From Masterity to Metacompetency: A Review of HRD Columns

The Ability to Grow While Working

As the knowledge and skills required in the workplace change, workers need both the ability to perform familiar tasks well and the capacity to acquire new competencies. Metacompetency refers to this ‘competency to acquire competencies’ and includes the ability to respond to uncertainty and prepare for learning and reflection. Masterity explains how this ability develops over a working life through deep mastery, initiative at work, creativity, and shared learning. The central connection between the two concepts is that work itself can become a process of continuous self-renewal and growth.

Creativity Expanding from Deep Mastery

The article published in the December 2015 issue of Public HRD identifies small creative experiences in everyday work as the starting point for developing creative talent. It defines creativity as the ‘ability to produce new, high-quality, and appropriate outputs’. It distinguishes between big creativity (big C), which changes the world, and little creativity (little c), which brings about everyday changes. The research team examined the cases of 16 masters in Korea who have reached the highest level in their fields and serve as role models, with cases spanning traditional handicrafts, Korean Master Hands, the professions, IT development, and culture and the arts. The masters renewed traditions or created new ones. They deepened their existing expertise while expanding their work into adjacent fields.

The case of automotive master Park Byeong-il illustrates how purchasing, dismantling, and testing hybrid cars prepares him for emerging maintenance demands. His signboard reads ‘Fixing cars that cannot be fixed’. In the case of hairdressing master Choi Won-hui, the view that ‘a true barber cares even for those without hair’ leads to work with wigs and comprehensive hair loss care. This creativity rests on deep mastery in one field, learning as the scope of work expands, and passion and immersion. The ‘10-year rule’ and the ‘10,000-hour rule’ describe the duration of intensive training needed to prepare for professional performance. The role for HRD is to provide opportunities to accumulate small creative experiences by solving real problems at work. It also involves creating a work environment in which members can exercise creativity.

The Structure of Corporate Education Fostering Metacompetency

The column in Monthly HRD vol. 366 discusses talent development in response to artificial intelligence and automation through the relationship between digital competency, human competency, and metacompetency. Metacompetency includes adaptability, self-direction, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Masterity gives concrete meaning to metacompetency in the workplace. It refers to a way of working that sustains the will to learn and grow while developing deep mastery and continually renewing oneself as industries and markets change.

‘Education of work’ builds on and integrates elements of existing education organized by rank and job. The design combines education that encourages reflection on the meaning and value of work at each rank and career stage with education that develops masterity within each job and occupational group. Such education focuses on understanding a meaningful working life and cultivating the will and capacity to grow independently. It also emphasizes workplace conditions that support voluntary learning and growth.

Work Literacy and the Recontextualization of Competency

The editorial in THE HRD Review vol. 24, no. 3 divides education of work into job training that increases technical mastery and education that develops ‘work literacy’. Literacy includes the ability to critically understand and act upon the social relations and structures surrounding work. The editorial covers soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, interpersonal relations, leadership, and negotiation alongside basic vocational skills. The ‘Workplace Know-How’ presented by the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) of the US Department of Labor consists of 3 foundational skills and 5 basic competencies. The National Competency Standards (NCS) are also presented as a related policy example.

Competencies bearing the same name are defined and demonstrated differently depending on the job, worker group, and work situation. Metacompetency is the ability to acquire and adapt the necessary competencies in response to these differences. The will to grow, intensive training, liberation and creation at work, expanding and sharing learning, and peak experiences and life on a plateau are presented as components of masterity. Education emphasizes ‘recontextualization’: expanding the scope of work by integrating adjacent fields into an area of deep mastery. Mastery and expansion, presented in the 2015 article as the process through which creativity develops, are linked here as a means of continually developing competencies. This account also encompasses education that encourages reflection on the social meaning of work and ethical attitudes.

Mastery and Initiative Achieving Happiness at Work

The article published in Academia in Yonsei News on August 24, 2021, examines happiness at work in the context of a ‘52-hour’ workweek. It acknowledges the need to reduce working time and balance work with family and friendships, leisure, and self-development. It also considers the enjoyment and fulfillment experienced during working time. The text compares the relationship between work and leisure to a cappuccino combining bitter espresso and sweet cream. It uses a café latte to describe the blending of work, learning, social relations, and family life. Digital technology and the spread of telecommuting due to COVID-19 provide the context for this ‘ubiquity of work’.

Happiness at work includes the pleasure of immersion, the sense of accomplishment from performing well, the fulfillment of contributing to others, and the growth that comes from accumulating knowledge and know-how. A modern master is defined as ‘an exemplary person who can serve as a role model in the workplace’, across fields ranging from cooking and acting to medicine and IT programming. The article emphasizes taking the initiative to work according to one’s own principles and rhythm, grounded in deep mastery and expertise. Masterity is a state in which this attitude has become habitual, encompassing the process of expanding learning and contributing to the community.

Growth and Maturity in an Era of Working with Technology

The column in the May 2024 issue of Monthly HRD considers ‘a human-like working life’ as artificial intelligence and robots replace or supplement work. The poetic phrase “If you only run forward / without knowing how to look back” and the image of a leopard running at 110 km/h prompt reflection on ways of working that prioritize speed. While technology makes it possible to work anytime and anywhere, it can also subordinate work to algorithms. Masterity, presented as a response to this problem, characterizes modern masters who immerse themselves in their work and through it find joy, fulfillment, and meaning in their existence.

Moving from growth to maturity involves self-discipline, independent and creative work grounded in expertise, and sharing learning with the community and the next generation. ‘Life on a plateau’ expresses ongoing self-renewal through the pursuit of a higher level and competition with oneself even after reaching the peak. The value of developing masterity is understood in terms of how much a person grows and matures through work, alongside whether that person has attained high status.

Reading notes

Translating ‘education of work’ into a curriculum involves considering learners’ will to grow alongside opportunities to take on challenging work, exercise initiative in the work process, and build relationships that support shared learning. Professional development in medical education can also be considered in relation to levels of clinical performance, ways of learning when unfamiliar problems arise, the value of work for patients, and the experience of contributing to the next generation’s learning. The explanation that the same competency is demonstrated differently across workplace contexts provides a basis for interpreting learners’ performance in relation to their assigned tasks and collaborative relationships.

References

장원섭. (2015). 장인(匠人)으로부터 배우는 창조인재 육성의 길. Public HRD, 2015년 12월호. 국가공무원인재개발원.

장원섭. (2021). 4차 산업혁명 시대, 메타 역량이 필요하다. 월간HRD, vol. 366, HRD COLUMN.

장원섭. (2021). 시론: 이제는 메타역량이다. THE HRD Review, 24(3). 한국직업능력개발원.

장원섭. (2021). 일의 행복과 장인성(匠人性). 연세소식, 2021년 8월 24일, Academia.

장원섭. (2024). ‘장인성(匠人性)‘으로 되돌아가야 한다. 월간HRD, 2024년 5월호, HRD COLUMN.