Have you ever wondered what skills could make you a more successful person? It’s common for professionals to feel a little adrift in the careers and yet the core skills are simple. You can work with a coach to address the areas you feel a little understrength in and move your career to the next level. Here are some of the key factors for success in the workplace.
Communication
Communicating, clearly and confidently, enables you to reach your audience (both peers and superiors) in a way that makes it much harder to ignore your contribution. It doesn’t matter whether you’re introverted or extroverted, you have to be able to get your message across.
Relationship Building
“No man is an island.” It’s a cliché but an essential one. No-one can make progress without the support and cooperation of their colleagues. If you alienate the people around you, no matter how good you are, you can’t be effective.
Leadership
This could easily fall into the first two categories. Inspiring and empowering people is key to both. It’s also vital that you know when to lead and when to follow. Just because you have the highest rank in the room, it doesn’t mean there aren’t times when you shouldn’t step back and let someone else lead.
Personal Advocacy
Sometimes you need to blow your own trumpet. Do you know how to portray your agenda in a way that enables others to support you. Can you communicate not just your achievements but your roadmap in meaningful way to your higher management? You’ll be very lucky if during your career you can find one other person to clear the way for you – you certainly can’t rely on it.
Making Decisions
Do you dilly-dally and procrastinate every time a hard (or even an easy) call need making? It can be difficult for many people to even now how they can make a decision that delivers what they want. Ideally your decision making should also enable learning and progress your career by opening up avenues of opportunity too.
Defining Boundaries
Do you find it difficult to divide, work from home? Is it a struggle to meet both social and professional obligations? In that case you’re probably finding it difficult to define and protect the boundaries of your work life. It’s important to recognize what is important to you, particularly what you need and what you want from each are of your life. After that you need to structure your work life around boundaries that you create to protect these needs and wants.
It’s these six most basic of skills that many of us find so difficult to develop in full. Yet, they offer powerful keys to our own development and in turn that development offers great opportunities to employers that harness individuals with these skills. It’s not selfish to want to be better, it’s smart. All of these skills can be developed, and all of us need different levels of help to succeed with each of them. This is an area where coaching can be really beneficial because it allows for a fully tailored approach to personal development – something that most training courses can’t do.
