Want to excel professionally?
The skills you develop in the course of your career can set the stage for success. But don't expect to learn those skills inside a classroom; rather, they're the type you're likely to grow on the job. We're talking about soft skills, and according to a recent survey by outsourcing company Airtasker, 66% of employees feel that their soft skills have helped them more in their career than their formal degrees.
What are these soft skills?
1. Time management
Strong time managers know how to make the most of their days. They recognize the importance of setting priorities and often utilize tools and technology to accomplish the tasks they set out to tackle. To boost your time management skills, dig around and find some apps that'll help you track your priorities and better manage deadlines. Once you improve, your boss is apt to take notice.
2. Attention to detail
Paying attention to smaller details is a good way to score the more coveted or high-profile projects your manager has to dish out. If you're detail-oriented, you'll likely be regarded as more capable and trustworthy. Part of being good with details, however, is building enough time into your day to be more thorough. To this end, schedule time to edit reports before sending them out, or carve out room in your day to read instructions when you're assigned tasks so you're more likely to deliver in a manner that pleases your manager.
3. Problem-solving
Part of being a strong problem-solver is having the right attitude. If you approach challenges with the mindset that you are, in fact, capable of tackling them, you're more likely to succeed. At the same time, don't be afraid to use all of the resources available to you when handling problems, whether it's the internet, your colleagues, or professionals you know outside of your organization.
4. Communication
Being a solid communicator involves a number of things. It means choosing the right words, using the right medium, and timing your messages so that they're most effective. It also means knowing what not to say in certain situations, or when to go the extra mile to explain things that may not be obvious to others.
Source: Want to excel professionally? Work on these key skills
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5. Be where you're supposed to be...
6. ... doing what you're supposed to be doing...
7. ... when you're supposed to be doing it.
The greatest portion of being successful involves merely showing up. Of course, you still have to do the work, but for most jobs, simply showing up (or logging in if you telecommute) counts a lot toward personal success.
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Even though i've shown to my employer I can do the work efficiently and have been able to communicate effectively within a team of around 4 people, I still struggle with the skills needed to further my confidence in moving forward with my career even though it's a dead end job. I can pretend all I want in terms of reading people and understanding every word they say but there will be a point where they will catch on and will view me in a negative light and eventually turn it into a toxic environment, which ultimately wouldn't set a good precedent for potential new recruits moving into my department.
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I'd add - one of the most useful skills I've found for people working technical jobs for nontechnical managers is the ability to convert everything into the two things management cares about - MONEY and TIME. Keep the tech detail for co-workers and documentation, but talk to managers about dollars and hours (or days/quarters). Those, more than anything, are the targets they have to hit and the lens they view everything through.
Everything is money and time. People? Salaries, costs, and hours. Equipment? Costs (and maybe days if it's something being rented). Access? Money. Training? Money and possibly hours lost.
Advanced mode: Unless you're in a very specific kind of job, finding a way to make more money will always be better-received than finding a way to save money. Even if it's the same amount of money. Only talk about saving money if the boss brings it up first, or it's actually your job (accountant, consultant, cost reducer), or if you know the boss personally has a thing for cost reductions. Otherwise, in most cases you'll run into diminishing returns and lackluster support (some bosses even hate the idea because it might mean their own budget gets cut). Note where you can save money, but keep it under your hat until the opportune moment.
Stuff I learned from the Navy: I don't micro-manage, although I do request daily verbal reports and weekly written on progress. Our weekly staff meeting are kept short (I took the chairs out of the meeting room), and focus on status, needs, beefs and gripes. Praise openly, but reprimand privately.
Smooth sailing!
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Attention to detail
''Paying attention to smaller details is a good way to score the more coveted or high-profile projects your manager has to dish out. If you're detail-oriented, you'll likely be regarded as more capable and trustworthy. Part of being good with details, however, is building enough time into your day to be more thorough. To this end, schedule time to edit reports before sending them out, or carve out room in your day to read instructions when you're assigned tasks so you're more likely to deliver in a manner that pleases your manager.''
Editing is something that needs to be thought of as managing ones own time, amidst good knowledge, and resources.
If you can manage a group on your own, you possess great leadership skills, but if you fall behind on a tight management schedule, you'll either be swotting up on your short hand or be doomed to fail.
If you pay attention to detail better when on your own and can retain information, rather than focused on group agenda you can get a lot more done.
If your boss, interferes with your I.Q critique, its worth pointing out when the deadline is, rather than cutting corners on tasks, however worthless they may first appear. Unless of course, you know some good short cuts that your boss or line manager knows nothing about, and you're not trying to instruct them or teach them but instead, can offer solid words of wisdom or advice for your efforts, at least your time in the boardroom will be paid off!
Nothing is spent in vain if you know how to go about your ideas and can advise your superiors and close colleagues based on your own good credentials, and surrounded by fact, knowledge and the art of using your time wisely.
You have to be both intellectual and super genius to manage both your time and attention to detail, or master the art of the incredibly mundane with a knack of tidying up everyone's loose ends. This way you can either ambitiously supplement yourself or tie everyone else up in knots or get the job half done, but either way, people with good time management skills, usually have good team morale they are able to build a solid co -dependable base from, and the passion and the drive to succeed in any form of morale boosting environment.