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Thursday, February 17, 2011
#2 Horizontal Skill that Can Massively Impact Your Career


In my previous post, I talked about the importance if developing communication skills and I have talked about how to improve communication and that is through adding emotion to words. Today, I would like to talk about #2 horizontal skill that will make a lot of difference in your and my career and that is INITIATIVE.

Conrad Hilton, founder of Hilton hotels, said it beautifully when he said, "Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit." Because when it comes to becoming a success, takingINITIATIVE is key. People who has the initiative takes action and keeps himself and the organization he or she is in in motion. These are the people who does not go with the flow but differentiates themselves from the flock by taking positive actions that the majority does not make or just dream of doing. Yes, you will be surprised how many dreamers are there in this world. There are so many people who are filled with good intentions but only very few makes their good intentions happen. One quote that I never forget about taking action is this, "No one ever got married by just staring at each other."

You might think that this is very basic and that is true because what I am sharing are fundamentals to success. These are basic and easy to derived but you will be surprise that very few are doing this. I surmised that only 3% of every organization recognizes the fundamentals thus setting them apart from the 97%. Master motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, once gave this challenge, "Walk away from the 97%".

In the past, I desired to be always in the background, never leading just camouflage in the middle thinking that if you are in the middle you will not make a lot of mistakes thus saving you from a lot of embarrassment but soon I found some people in the organization that I am in, is getting the promotions and success that I so eagerly desire. So I asked myself, what are they doing that I am not doing? I realized that these people are taking actions that the majority are not doing thus making them "visible" and more attractive to success. Yes you attract success and not pursue it and one of the ways to attract success is to be valuable to the marketplace. To be valuable is to take initiative.

How do you take initiative?
1. Pay attention. You would be surprised that there are so many problems in the organization that no one is paying attention to. Ordinary people do not go into details and pay attention so when you notice these problems and try to find another way to solve them, you will find yourself on the flow and in the mind-set of a problem solver.

2. Be a problem solver. A lot of people complain; the average person whine and whine and are always victim to something. But the winners are problem solvers. When you take the mantle of being a problem solver, you are differentiating yourself from the mundane. Even if you solve a little problem, the little things you solve in the organization will soon accumulate to something favorable to you. Jim Rohn said it nicely when he said, "Life accumulates. And I'm either accumulating debt that I'll be sorry for or I am accumulating value that I'll be happy about."

3. Just do it. It is said that there are just two brand of shoes that you need to wear: Nike and Addidas; because when you want to do something, you need to Just Do Itand if you think it is impossible or you are against an insurmountable odds then you just have to tell yourself that Impossible is Nothing. So just do it. Just take action and keep moving. If at first, things are not going your way, just wait and be patient just continue to take action and learn from your mistakes. Sometimes you make it and sometimes you don't make it but that's just part of growing up. So Just do it.

So whatever industry you are in, you could be a student, a businessman, an employee, a manager, or a middle-manager, you can be sure that taking INITIATIVEwill bring you closer to your goal.

Next post, I will expound on the next horizontal skill - SYNTHESIS.
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Monday, February 07, 2011
Three Most POWERFUL HORIZONTAL SKILLS That Can Massively Impact Your Career




In life and in career, skills development is key. In fact, I found that those people who has mastery over a certain set of skills often get ahead in their career. There has been much literary work talking about the importance of skills development but what I would like to do today is to focus your attention on THREE KEY HORIZONTAL skills. The keyword from what I just said is HORIZONTAL. Allow me to explain the concept of HORIZONTAL SKILLS by talking about its counterpart, the VERTICAL SKILLS. Vertical skills are skills that focuses on depth and not on breadth. Think of it as a line running from north to south and as you go south you get very specific on that particular skill and you will learn things that are not available or relevant on any discipline. Going vertical is simply a process of specialization of skills. So when you are a doctor or an engineer or a nurse or a plumber or a programmer, you are actually specializing on one particular area and this is very important in your career.


Horizontal skills on another hand are skills that can be applied in almost all areas of specialization. This is a skill that runs from east to west crossing boundaries of specialization. What is good about these skills is that once you develop this skills it will augment your specialized skills. So what are these three Most POWERFUL HORIZONTAL SKILLS ?

For this post allow me to share one of the three key skills and I will share other two on following post.
1. Ability to Communicate.
Communication is a key skill because without it, it is impossible to prosper in your career and specialize on a particular subject. Having an excellent communication skill will enable to you become a better doctor, nurse, accountant, engineer, programmer, and manager. So develop your communication skills and you can do that by:
1. reading a book,
2. joining Toastmasters organization,
3. listening and studying how speakers deliver there point,
4. and paying attention to how actors, politician, and teachers bring their point across.

Communication is not just about talking. Communication can be non-verbal and non-verbal form of communication can strengthen or weaken your point. Imagine saying YES while your body is saying NO. Will it not affect your effectiveness as a speaker? Of course it will because it will confuse your audience.

You probably had an experience where you went into a concert where the performer just sings without so much body language; she just stands there singing doing nothing else. How do you feel? Do you feel fine with it? Even though she has a beautiful voice you would probably feel that she can make it more beautiful by adding a little head movement or eye and hand motion.

Why do you feel this way? Because the body communicates and it says more than what the words say. So in every area in life, communication is really an important skill to develop.

How do you become a better communicator?

I know I have given few tips above but allow me to drop a little tip in improving the way you communicate. OK, so words are powerful so think of words as push pins.So when you try to push that to the body of a person you will realize that it will affect him or her physically. Yes because it would probably hurt her. But what will make it more effective is when you put emotions together with it. Think of emotion as a pole and when you try to combine the push pin and the pole, it will become aSPEAR and with it, you can easily push that push pin through the heart of a person. So WORDS loaded with EMOTION will really impact the life of the people listening to you.



So become a better communicator, study how to communicate and use WORDSloaded with EMOTION. Once you do that you will be sure that your words will become more powerful and it will definitely impact your career.


Next post I will talk about the Ability to Initiate.
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