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.

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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