THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TECHNICAL SKILLS AND CRITICAL SKILLS

Delivering a baby, being a disc jockey and selling pharmaceuticals require very different technical skills. Technical skills are the competencies necessary to do a given job. You either have to have the technical skills or the desire to develop the technical skills if you want to get a job or keep a job.

However, technical skills are just the bare minimum that is required. (And in my opinion having a certificate never guarantees that anyone truly has the necessary technical skills for a given job. Only their performance guarantees it, but that's a discussion for another day.)

I'm defining critical skills as the skills necessary to increase the velocity of your career. These skills are not confined to any industry or any job. As you strengthen any of them, you increase your capacity for accelerating your career.

The Eight Critical Career Skills

ACCELERATION
The three most important keys to accelerating better results in your highest priority outcomes are clarity, simplicity and consistency. Clarify what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it, simplify your activities to the fewest possible that will have the greatest positive impact and remain consistently focused.

COMMUNICATION
The ability to listen for understanding, explain things in a way that other people understand and collaborate to develop even better ideas.

LEADERSHIP
The ability to influence the way other people think that leads to behaviors that generate better results.

MANAGEMENT
The ability to convert resources (human, financial, physical, etc.) into better results.

TEAMWORK
The ability to create a common sense of purpose and values where members of the group pull together to deliver a specific outcome.

RAIN MAKING
This is more than just making sales. This is about attracting a continuous flood of opportunities to add more value to other people.

BRAND BUILDING
The ability to stand out in a crowd and be known for a particular value-added. Specialize in a generalized way or risk the danger of being pigeon holed as a limited performer.

INNOVATION
The process of identifying, combining, evaluating and implementing ways to add more value to other people.

Look to develop any of these critical skills on a regular basis. The more you develop these skills, the more you increase your ability to accelerate your career in any direction you choose. Technical skills get you in a door, but critical skills open up a lot more doors.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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