What's the State of Your Skills?

You've been in your current role, and with your current employer, for a fair number of years now. Though the work may not always have been challenging the years have been busy, your coworkers enjoyable to be around and the pay has been more than fair. You are both comfortable and happy.

Things seem like they are going well. Until... your company gets bought out, you and your coworkers are let go and you are now looking for work. Although you have done well and been praised for the work you have done over the years, you are finding that new employers are looking for skills beyond those that you have. The industry shifted and moved. You did not.

It can become easy and comfortable to get so caught up in the day-to-day activities of work that we fail to notice the gentle and slow erosion of our skills until, suddenly, we find we are woefully out-of-date and sadly viewed as lacking. Remaining current and competitive takes work and focus, requiring us to ensure that we remain consciously competent in what we are doing, not operating at the unconscious or habitual level.

When we operate through habit we do what we have always done. We rely upon the skills we have. They got us to where we are and may be more than enough to meet the day-to-day needs of the role we have, but they are not going to be sufficient to meet the demands of the future - or of a future employer.

Sometimes working for one employer can be deceptive. If they, as an organization, are not committed to development, we may find ourselves feeling like we are growing, because our title advances, without ever recognising that our skills are not keeping pace. Their policy to hire from within, their comfort with the known, their reliance on the tried and true may mislead you into believing that it's enough, until one day when it isn't.

You owe it to yourself (and perhaps to your mortgage) to ensure that you remain competitive, that your skills will allow you to compete in the job marketplace should you unexpectedly find yourself there. Regardless of whether your current employer requires your skills to be updated, you do and should. The following are some of my top suggestions to help you sand off some of the rust that may be developing on your existing skills and to maybe add in a couple of bright shiny new ones.

• Start by taking a skills inventory. Yes you can begin by listing all of the skills you have, but I urge you to spend some time reviewing the online Job Boards, reading the search requirements for those in your current role. If you found yourself looking for work today, what skills are they are asking for that you have? Which ones are you missing?  These are the gaps you should actively work on filling now. They are skills that will not only help you be competitive in a search, should you find yourself needing to be, but they will enhance the work you are currently engaged in, adding more value to the work you do.
• Network with an eye to gaining insights into how others are approaching challenges within their organizations. What are they doing, how are they doing it, what skills are required to do that? Learn from the approaches of others, about best practices, about skills they are using that you could hone up on, about new systems, ideas, and processes.
• Consider a reverse mentoring opportunity. We often look to mentor young people entering our organization, helping them to learn from our experiences. Consider instead what you can learn from them. Their approaches are often vastly different but may be more indicative of the 'new' ways work will get done. Use them to help you get and stay current. What do you need to know about new technology, social media, online networking and chatting? They have a wealth of information that you need - consider your mentoring a two-way exchange.
• Google search the top challenges you face. Look for the 'newest' ways other companies are now dealing with those challenges. Keep abreast of the newest research and developments in your field. You may not ever want to implement the ideas but you should always know about them. It should always be a conscious choice not an unconscious one due to a lack of knowledge.

There is no down-side to making the polishing and refinement of your skills an ongoing habit. It serves to make you more valuable today and more competitive tomorrow. As for anything the best time to prepare is before you need it. Get started now bumping out the dings, sanding off the rust and maybe even slapping on a few new coats of paint. It's a strategic positioning that may not just serve you well in the long term, but may have a positive impact in your short term as well.

Tip Thursday - Self Awareness

To be as self aware as possible you must consider two key gaps in your potential understanding. First is the gap that exists between what all there is to know about yourself and what you actually know.

Regardless of how old you are, and all that you have done in your life, there are still untapped skills, latent talents and hidden strengths. To narrow this gap you need to continue to challenge yourself with new activities, new experiences, new learnings. You just might uncover an interest and talent residing in you that opens an exciting new chapter in your life.

The second gap is the one that exists between how you see yourself and how others see you. Through their observation of our behaviours others can become privy to information and  insights about us that we don't have. Seek our feedback, remain open to receiving the insight of others, to narrow this gap and come to understand yourself better.

How well we understand ourselves has a profound impact on our ability to interact with others successfully and is the foundation for growing your Emotional Intelligence. If you want to truly be understood by those around you, you must first work to understand yourself.

Embracing Limitations

There is a lot of focus in business on the need to 'improve' our weaknesses, to overcome our limitations.  The
assumption being that we don't want weaknesses of any kind, that our weaknesses will hold us back and limit our opportunities.  What if, however, it is not our limitations that hold us back but the way that we think of them?

As long as we perceive our limitations as weaknesses, our limitations as a negative, we put our effort into masking or hiding them, into trying to turn them around or to at least become 'competent' enough in the area that others might not notice.  It becomes a cyclical game in which we put our energy into become stronger in an area that will never be a strength.

What if we put our energy instead, into finding other avenues to getting things done, while working WITH our limitations rather than around them?  We tend to think of creativity being synonymous with the need to think outside of the box.  However, kickstart your creativity by thinking a little closer to home.  Try thinking within the box.  Enhance and spark your creativity by learning to embrace your limitations.

Don't hide your limitations away, pull them out.  Examine them.  Define what the limitation means to you.  Often this definition is accompanied by a 'can't'.  There is something you feel that you can't do as a result of this limitation.  The key question then becomes...  how else might I do it?  Consider...

• If you are an athlete who loses their legs in a car crash, do you stop engaging in your sport?
• If you want to become doctor but don't get accepted into medical school, do you give up on your dream of being a health practitioner?
• If you draw detailed, realistic pictures but develop severe hand tremors, do you stop making art?
• If you stutter, do you avoid speaking in public?

You can't do things as you once did or would want to... what can you do instead?  Don't dwell on what you can't do... focus on what you can.  What is another option or possibility?  If you only view the limitation one way you will only get one answer.  View the limitation from as many different angles as you can to unlock different answers and possibilities, many of which would have been hidden from you had you not shifted your perspective.  

Sometimes we must first become limited to then become limitless

Instead of viewing your limitations as a roadblock to your success, view them as a source of creativity.  Your dream is not gone because of the limitation, you are just required to shift your vision of it or to walk a different path to get there.  Embracing your limitations liberates you from their confines, opening new avenues, new possibilities.  It is from thinking inside the box of our limitations that we end up opening the box fully.

What's your Advantage?

Your Competitive Advantage that is...

In the Industrial Age, having access to certain tools, whether knowledge, training or physical tools of some kind, provided you with a very distinct competitive advantage over others.    In today's marketplace though everyone has easy and ready access to information.  Experts are more accessible than ever, as is even education through the internet.  The accessibility of and to 'tools' therefore is no longer a defining feature or benefit in the marketplace.  Likely most people that you are competing against will have a similar educational background, a similar set of physical skills and abilities and comparable experiences.

How then do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace of today?

More than ever before, people are having to learn to position and sell themselves.  The 'personal' them, not just simply their skills and abilities.  In today's business place the job market is extremely competitive.  There are a lot of highly skilled and technically competent candidates competing for the 'good' available roles.  Employers then are able to be selective when hiring.  The key differentiator between those that receive offers, and those that don't, tends to be based more on the personal qualities and characteristics of the candidates than on their technical merits.

• how likeable is the candidate?
• do they appear to be someone that will fit in well with our existing team?
• how self-focused versus others-directed do they appear?
• what is their work attitude?
• how trustworthy did they seem to be?
• are they competitive, cooperative, innovative, conventional, group oriented, self directed...?

These are all questions that your interviewer is asking themselves - whether consciously or unconsciously - and likely basing their decision upon.  We know from research that the likeability of political candidates is one of the top three reasons for us voting the way we vote.  We know that apparent trustworthiness is one of the top two components to creating a strong first impression.   If you are not concerning yourself with 'how' you deliver your answers to your interview questions, with 'how' you come across to others in your first impression, you are likely not as competitive in the marketplace as you should be - certainly not as much as you would want.

Still the best, and easiest, way to assess this is to film yourself in a mock interview.  Pay attention not to the content of your responses, but to the delivery of them.  How did you look, sound, move?  What feelings did your responses stir and generate?  When you said you were delighted to be there did you look and sound delighted?  If you were meeting you for the first time through your videotape - what would you think of you?  Would you like you?  

All of the above is a great starting point for beginning to understand how others see you, allowing you to begin the work of strengthening the delivery of your secondary messages.  Having the 'right' answer is one thing.  Delivering it in a way that makes it - and you - memorable is an entirely different component but one that is proving to be the deciding element.  You spend time and effort in crafting and learning your interview stories.  Now... practice the delivery of them. 

Each should have underlying messages to the audience, telling them how they should think, feel, or respond to what you are saying - all communicated through how you deliver it.  These secondary messages may be indirect but they are powerful.  They can be the difference between your message being believed, or not, and are what is needed today to give you the true competitive advantage over your competition.