6 skills that will boost your career
Photo by Ahsan Avi on Unsplash
Recently, I have started working with graduates starting their career. They are young, bright, eager to learn and to fit in. They like to ask questions or seek advice to put their careers on the right path. Early in my career I never had anyone that spent the time to advise or coach me. So, it is rewarding to spend time sharing knowledge and answering their questions.
I recently read/listen to Rookie Smarts by Liz Wiseman (link). One of the messages that resonated with me is on the cover. 'Why learning beats knowledge in the new game of work'. Knowledge has a relevance decay rate of about 15%, and a fast rate of 30% in I.T. Things I learnt early in my career are somewhat irrelevant now. This means that my career tenure doesn't reflect the reality of a smaller skills gap when compared to those early in their career. It is not a simple tenure game, and there are shortcuts. To make that tenure gap seem smaller quicker, I wanted to share six tips to speed up a grads career. Or any stagnant career for what it is worth.
One. Set short term goals. Setting quick goals is critical to maximising your time. Setting a 12-month goal increases the chance you are not progressing to your goal for 9 months. Then you try and rush to achieve your goal with a high probability of failure. Setting goals needs to be short and tangible. Setting 12-week goals gives you more of a focus and ensures you achieve more things in a year. An accumulation of small gains is always better than one large gain that could be missed. Set goals that stretch you and make them uncomfortable. Write a plan to achieve this goal and make sure you factor in realistic timeframes. When you reach your goal, you are forming positive habits that will help to complete your next objective. Setting optimistic goals and missing them builds unproductive habits which is something you want to avoid. A great read on this is The 12 week year.
Two. Optimise your time. Any goal you set needs time to be executed. Take some time and review your week and month. We all feel like we don't have time. That doesn't change as you progress in your career. Learning to optimise your time will make the difference between achieving one thing or many. There are several tips online and in books that you can read. But if I was to summarise them all in a few sentences for you. It would be to take a step back, review your time and label different things as high value or low value. Is the time being spent contributing to your goals or detracting from them?
A typical example of this is spending time with good friends is a high-value. Spending time with people that pull you down is low-value time. Spending a short amount of time on social media can be high-value. Spending hours scrolling similar content per day is low-value.
Another low-value time is working on something far longer than it needs to be. This behaviour is driven by fear of failure or striving for perfection. Either way, you will be spending 20% longer on items than needed. Check in with your manager earlier in the task to sense check if you are close to completion. Their standard will be different from yours, and it might save you doing something you don't need to do.
Once you identify time blocks of low-value. These are the items that are not contributing to your health, career and social goals. Take action and cut them out of your week. You will be happier for it.
Do Less, Simplify and Enjoy more.
For some simple tips on stretching, time check out my article (link).
Three. Increase your EQ. In particular, learn to read people better to optimise your communication. This takes a long time and is something you should always be improving on. It works in your career as well as in your social life. First, increase your awareness of the signals that the person is communicating subconsciously. The main ones are body language, the tone of voice and specific words used.
Body language has extensive information online. Start with the basics and look for them in your next conversation. Is the person you are talking to interested in what you are saying? Are they struggling to understand but don't want to ask you to slow down? Are they unsure of themselves but feel they need to look like the smart one in the conversation?
The tone of voice is hard to control and gives away to someone's feelings. Uncertainty, curiosity, concern, seriousness, frustration, excitement emotions will change their tone. Listen out for it in your conversations and take note to see what else you could be saying to help the discussion.
Most of the times we are speaking; we are not measuring every word. I was recently talking to talented Steve, and I was using words toward myself that was more negative than I intended. Steve didn't hesitate to call me out by replaying it back to me. We all do it and listening for it in a room or in a one to one conversation will give you additional information to their thoughts. Be aware of different cultures and language differences. And as clarification question, if certain words stand out to dig deeper. You won't always get it right, but when you do, it will assist in your goals of better communication.
Four. Seek to understand. It is easy to hold back questions as you don't want to reveal your lack of understanding. This is a short-term strategy that will hinder your career growth. You need to trust that you are working in a safe environment and ensure you ask the questions on your mind. The curiosity of asking 'why' will help you understand the levers that are behind tasks. The knowledge of which levers there are and what impact they have is precious. The more you know the levers, the better you can navigate a situation with minimal effort and maximum output.
Five. What is your genius? Regularly, you should self-reflect with a neutral mindset. Taking the time to identify where your more natural talents are and leaning into them will help move your career forward. Some people take decades before changing jobs that suit their skills. It is easy to fall into a FOMO (fear of missing out) mindset and try and learn everything at once. This will spread you thin, and the average of your skills will still be average. Leaning into your natural talents for your depth of knowledge and keeping a shallow breadth of knowledge will help grow your career. Remember to simplify and focus to get results faster.
Six. Just in time (JIT) learning. This is not the same as cramming. You also don't need to know everything and be able to recite it on command. The key is to be aware of things around you and stay one step ahead of what you need. With planning it is easier to see which action you need to learn next. Even in a dynamic environment where many will claim you can't plan. I would disagree, even in chaos theory, there is order. Spend enough time preparing for what you can plan for. Be adaptable for things that you can't. The more you leave to the last-minute means and adapting on the fly lowers your success rate in a situation.
In all chaos, there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. Carl Jung
There are many more tips to share which I will leave for a future article. I hope you find this useful and help accelerate your career in any role.
Final Tip. Invest 5-10% of your salary from now, and your future self will thank you for it. *Disclaimer I am not a financial advisor I am speaking out of regret.
Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.