Why separate the three?
Work conversations often mix different things together. Someone can be highly capable but not want a particular responsibility. Someone can strongly want responsibility but still be developing the capability needed for it. Two people can have similar capability and motivation but execute the work very differently.
Separating CAN, WILL and HOW makes those differences easier to talk about without turning them into a single score.
CAN: what you bring
CAN covers capabilities, knowledge, experience and the capacity to learn and solve problems. It includes obvious professional information such as skills and experience, but it also includes the ability to build new capability when the work changes.
This layer is closest to what companies already try to understand through CVs, portfolios, references and work samples. O*NET similarly separates skills, knowledge, abilities, education and experience as distinct parts of occupational information.
WILL: what matters to you at work
WILL is about direction and intention. It includes ownership, priorities, learning orientation, willingness to change and the kinds of responsibility or progress a person wants to move towards.
WILL is not the same as asking for someone's deepest psychological motivation. In a work context, the useful question is more practical: What kinds of responsibility does this person want? What are they willing to invest in learning? What matters enough for them to take initiative? What direction are they trying to move in?
HOW: how you work
HOW covers the patterns that become visible when work is actually being done: decisions, execution, self-management, communication, collaboration, feedback, conflict, leadership and influence.
For example, two people may both be capable of making a strategic decision and both want the responsibility. One may move once there is enough information to act. The other may prefer to validate more assumptions first. The difference is not primarily CAN or WILL. It is HOW.
The boundaries matter
The model becomes less useful if everything is placed everywhere. A willingness to adapt belongs mainly in WILL. How someone actually behaves when priorities change belongs mainly in HOW. Communication capability can be CAN, the desire to communicate openly can have a WILL component, and a person's actual communication pattern belongs in HOW.
The point is not perfect taxonomy. The point is to avoid collapsing capability, intention and behaviour into one vague label.
Context still sits above the person
CAN, WILL and HOW describe the person. They do not by themselves tell you whether the person is a good fit for every role or team. Fit is relational: it depends on the work, the team, the company and the situation.
That is why HumaMap treats fit, friction and complementarity as questions that emerge when a Personal HumaMap is considered in context rather than as a fourth fixed dimension of the person.