Communicating With a Purpose

It is vital to take complex problems and simplify them for all audiences. Utilize your new employment to practice tailoring your communication to each audience you interact with and seeing how they respond to what you say. What was effective? What didn’t work? Some people, for example, want direction, while others prefer to be empowered. For those who want guidance, provide advice in your communication; for those who prefer empowerment, be curious and coach them to come up with resonating answers. Practically every organization must deliver communication to each audience in the manner in which they like to receive it.

Teamwork Does Make the Dream Work

Your opportunity to improve your teamwork skills may depend on the type of employment you find. Can you, for example, study and practice new conflict resolution techniques? Can you improve your ability to bring stakeholders together? Dealing with new people, each with their personality and point of view, will constantly present an opportunity to enhance these interpersonal abilities.

Apply Old Skills to New Experiences

When accepting a position in a field unrelated to your current work, you can leverage your experience to shape how the company operates. For example, I once had a client who lost her sales position and went to work for her father’s small marketing agency while she looked for another career. Her sales expertise exposed her to which marketing methods work and which do not. On the other hand, her father believed he understood what was best for his company, and she had to work quite hard to persuade him to think differently. Following two failed attempts, she sought to see things from her father’s point of view, bringing him along on the road of change at his own pace. There are seven tactics to influence someone when you don’t have authority:

1. Appeal to their self-interest
2. Ask leading questions
3. Tap into their values and ideals
4. Make them feel good
5. Do a deal
6. Seek a favor
7. Highlight the popularity of your proposal

Got A Problem? Well, Here’s How to Solve It!

Every work has problems, some more complex than others. Understanding the problem and its core cause and brainstorming answers and alternatives demonstrate systematic thinking with logic-based reasoning. Seek out issues in your new career and actively attempt to address them inventively and positively. Once you’ve adopted the best solution, assess whether any changes are required to ensure long-term success.

Leading with Potential

The primary function of being a leader is directing and persuading others to utilize their potential to achieve a common objective. You’ve been allowed to be a manager in a field that has never been managed before. In either case, you can increase your listening, coaching, and guiding abilities to align a group of people to go in the same direction by developing or improving your leadership skills in any profession where you want to advance your listening, coaching, and guiding capabilities. You can also use your leadership expertise to help the next generation build their leadership qualities, which will assist them in achieving their career objectives.