Frequently Used Terms

Formation: from the French formation: action de former ; le fait de se former. — Académie française

The action of forming. The fact of being formed.

and, from Larousse: Action de former, manière dont quelque chose se forme ; processus entraînant l'apparition de quelque chose qui n'existait pas auparavant.

— The process that brings into existence something that did not exist before.

Action de former quelqu'un intellectuellement ou moralement ; éducation. La formation du goût.

— The intellectual and moral shaping of a person. The formation of taste.

In geology, the rock formation process refers to the process by which specific conditions — pressure, temperature, time — determine the permanent properties of the material produced.

Geologic formation processes are dynamic and interconnected. Change the conditions and you get different rock.

The same logic applies to people. The specific environment in which a person develops determine what they become.

That is formation, and that is why it is foundational.‍ ‍

Skill-based confidence: Confidence grounded in the internal evidence base rather than in external validation or market valuation.

Otherwise stated, the confidence that comes from knowing that even if you don’t know something, you can figure it out and learn it.

Skill-based confidence is one of the most important intangible outputs of human capital formation, and one of the hardest to measure or replace. It does not show up on a résumé. It does not transfer through a credential. It is built through repeated cycles of not knowing, trying, failing, and figuring it out; under real pressure, with real stakes. Once you got it, you carry it with you. It helps you dig deep when things get tough.

It’s what’s at risk when the formation environments where it’s created are disrupted.