Life Skills for a Professional ( Part 1)

Survival of the fittest is the norm as per Charles Darwin. The same can be applied to professional work environment these days. Especially with increasing competition in work place where the smart newcomers are posing a serious question of existence to veterans aboard.  So what constitutes a winning combination of skills to be acquired by senior staff so that they can win (not just survive) Here are few observations from my side. As usual the disclaimer is these are personal opinions and so limited by my knowledge level and experience with Indian IT sector. 

Story Telling:  

A very important skill in today’s business is the art of telling a compelling story. You may be providing progress updates on your project, you may be trying to justify a design choice, you may be trying to pitch for a new project or you may be simply trying to face your manager in performance review – likelihood of your success improves if you are great narrator. Ofcourse the story should be backed by data, otherwise it would not fly.

A compelling narration tailor made to the audience will give you advantage over competition, as the impact it makes over clumsy presentation, technically overloaded content, indecisive audience. The Story that is well articulated, covers all dimensions, pre-empts the questions the audience might ask, objectively evaluates options can easily win in making the intended impact. So if there is one skill that you would like to pick up this year, it tops the list. 

Data Interpretation:

In day-to-day job we come across many numbers that need to look at, understand and make a decision. However, if we cannot interpret the numbers well, the decision can suffer. So the basic data interpretation skill to understand what the data is trying to suggest is of utmost importance. Unfortunately most decision made are based on intuition either for want of good data or due to inability to interpret the data at disposal.

“Lies, damned lies and Statistics” is the wisdom that tries to infer that numbers can be used to conceal the important facts. This is the second problem. We need to be able to ask relevant question and unravel the facts hidden behind the beautiful charts and graphs. This is gaining more importance at strategic levels in the organization. 

Active Listening:

Come on! We do all through our lives, you may say. Please understand I am talking about Active listening. My observation in meetings is people come decided to the meeting and listen to only parts of the conversation they want to hear and discard. Even worse, some people actually were just waiting for the person to finish so that they can recite their premeditated speech. Due to these problems, the important information that other people trying to convey/communicate is being lost without consideration. Active listening involves intent to understand, get other person’s view point and if necessary, to make amends to our line of thought.  It can help improve our knowledge and become better.