Success Skills
Has it ever struck you how much the world has changed over the past twenty years?
We’ve probably seen more change than any generation before us.
The way the world has changed means we too must change when we look at our professional skills. Once upon time the role of a manager was pretty much defined. Control. Predictability. Authority.
But that’s all changed. And it makes for real difficulty in organizations of all sizes. Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and even for mom and pop businesses struggle to find success in shifting times.
The traditional skillset for managers and leaders was pretty much rooted in the concept of control. It was about how to control staff. How to control costs. How to control the market. And so on.
Success is Different Today
Here at Jonathan Halls & Associates we think those skills are no longer important.
Thinking you can run an organization because you’re in control is a bit like thinking you can write an email with a typewriter.
In fact while you still need a lot of the old skills they are now based on new assumptions which are pretty much the opposite of yesterday.
They include the fact more often than not we can’t control things. Now we influence them.
More often than not we can’t predict things – like the economy. Now we must respond to them.
And the notion of authority doesn’t work anymore because many people have given up on it. Leadership is now about responsibility.
You Need 3 Skills
To cope in the new era, we believe that three skills will be critical at all levels of business and government. At CEO, department head, manager, supervisor, and at the professional level. And if you don’t have them, don’t plan on changing the world.
The three skills are:
- Communication
- Innovation & Creativity
- Performance Improvement
Add these to your professional skillset and you’ll be in a great place to create the future.
You Need to be a Phenomenal Communicator
Gone are the days when managers sat in their offices, made decisions and dispatched secretaries to tell staff their jobs were on the line.
To be leader in the future you need to be a phenomenal leader who walks around and ensures everyone has your vision. You need to be sure everyone understands it. And hopefully shares it.
Your success will come from having the skills to persuade customers, staff and directors that your vision will take them successfully into the future. You need skills to reassure staff when times get tough that they are secure and you need them. Which is like most weeks.
And you need the skills to listen to your staff and learn their wisdom so that the great ideas bubbling along the shop floor are not lost in the C-Suite where you really need them.
Poor communicators don’t last.
Innovation Inspirer
Many companies were built around the innovations of a leader. The leader had a bright idea or invention and built the company around that idea. That worked in the past but may not be so successful in the future.
Tomorrow’s companies must be built around innovators. The leader must inspire creative thinking at every level of the organization. And in every part of operation from developing new products to new workflow efficiencies.
Innovation and creativity are a mindset that can be learned. The art of innovation and creativity is also a mindset that has been forgotten and misunderstood by many of today’s organizations.
Performance Improver
Tomorrow’s leader needs to be someone who constantly improves performance. Better still, someone who inspires others to constantly reflect critically on their performance and look for ways to improve.
They don’t just do things the way everyone has done them for decades. They look at a production process or a system in their factory and they ask, is this still the best way to do this?
Do we have a new computer that can improve the process? A new software to make it more productive? Better still, can we build one or write one? And can we then sell that innovation on?
Performance improvement is both an attitude and an action. And it’s at the heart of what true leaders do.
The good news is that performance improvement is not a wishy washy skill. There are techniques and behaviors based on research that everyone can learn to become “constant improvers”.
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Professional Success Skills Workshops
These three skills form the basis of what we call the professional success skills of the future. They are what you need to survive uncertainty and create the future.
We don’t see these skills from the old mindset. We see communication in an era of global complexity where you almost have to expect your first attempt at being understood will fail. We see innovation in terms of the need to create future success. And we see performance in an era where someone else is waiting to perform better than you.
We run a series of Success Skills workshops.
- Communication Confidence: 5 Principles that guarantee success
- Interpersonal Security – how to build relationships in the new era
- Presentation Skills – creating meaningful understanding in the new era
- Innovation Revolution – becoming an ideas powerhouse
- Leading Innovation – how to turn your organization into an innovation factory
- Performance Improvement – how to constantly improve what you do
Talk to us today if you’re interested in these workshops at your company. You can call us on 703 879 1856. Or send us a note using the form below.