Discovering and Applying Your Critical Skills
Today’s article topic suggestion comes from David Curtis, although he may regret having his name tied to anything in this article. I recently hired a member of David’s team to come work for me instead. David is a consummate professional and only cursed my name and lineage once throughout the whole process. He did request that I write an article on the best ways to recognize critical skills and how to connect those skills with the roles outside of our teams. Put another way, how can we tie what we’re good at with what would make us successful in another part of our organization. I of course agreed since 1) You don’t mess with HR, and 2) I need topic ideas like a dieter needs a cupcake.
Let’s start off by asking a relatively simple question — What are you good at? Aim for work appropriate responses — while it’s very cool that you can fast forward through commercials with inhuman accuracy, that may not get you the next job you’ve had your eye on. All finished? No? Raise your hand if you said “well I’m good at a lot of things” and then started listing off software programs or role specific tools. It’s easy to confuse what we work on/do with the skills that make us good at performing those tasks.
Try asking yourself that question again, but this time add the word “because” to your answers. As in, “I’m good at Excel because I have an aptitude for comprehending data and paying attention to detail”. Boom — you just identified two critical skills that would be applicable even if your next role didn’t use Excel (which would be totally crazy because Excel is the hottest 36 year old in town. That’s right, Excel is a Millennial.) Keep going through your list and pay special attention to those skills which appear more than once. Those might just be your strengths.
Feeling stuck? Here are several idea starters to break you out of a rut. Are you good at connecting with people? Being trustworthy (delivering on commitments)? Diagnosing problems? Acting on incomplete information? Breaking up a task into pieces and getting people to complete those pieces? Convincing people to show up to work on Mondays? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that last one if you have something besides “You won’t get paid blah blah blah”.
Congratulations on building your initial list of critical skills (I say initial since you’re never really done learning, right?). Now for the fun part — a comprehensive analysis of the types of skills that other teams and roles need! What skills do you think a successful person in Finance would have? How about IT, the Retail team, Sales, or Order to Cash? How would you know if your list was close? I’ll give you a hint — the answer rhymes with “Pick up the phone and ask someone who works on that team”. Better yet, make friends with someone already on the team you’re interested in and invite them to an immature virtual lunch.
Now you’ve got a list of your skills + the list of the skills for a role, it’s time to start making connections. What roles are your skills mostly suited for now? Which roles do you want to explore but you know you’re missing at least one or two crucial skills? Your manager can help you decide on the best learning paths or folks to shadow to brush up on those skills. Don’t get discouraged if the list of missing skills seems large. If you really want to go after that job, at least you know where to focus your attention and start down the learning path. And as I heard every Saturday morning growing up — Now you know, and Knowing is half the battle.
Here’s my challenge to all of you who didn’t stop reading halfway through the article: Find those skills on your list that you aren’t using in your job today and think through how you’re going to start applying them. I guarantee that each and every one of you has an untapped talent or ability that could make your job more fulfilling. Maybe your manager’s presentations could use someone with your talent for coordinating color schemes. Maybe your team needs an unofficial morale booster. And maybe, just maybe, your team needs someone to write an article full of nonsense once a week to remind them that things can always get better.
-Philip
