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Whether you are an employee, independent consultant, or entrepreneur, technical competencies are necessary, but not sufficient, for personal success and fulfillment. Non-technical or “soft side” competencies enable you to work more effectively with supervisors, supervisees, colleagues, clients, customers, the public, other stakeholders, and members of your community, neighborhood, and family. Augmenting technical competencies with “soft-side” knowledge, skills, and attitudes is the key to earning career security which is a much more viable life strategy than chasing job security.
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I don't care how much you know,
until I know how much you care.
Anonymous |
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INTERVIEW BY ANTHONY FASANO ABOUT CAREER ADVANCEMENT - Anthony Fasano, CEO of Powerful Purposes Associates, a coaching, training, and consulting firm, interviewed me about career advancement for engineers. Click here for my answers to his challenging questions.
WANT TO GET A ROI FROM YOUR NEXT INTERNAL TRAINING & EDUCATION EVENT? Then click here for the complimentary white paper "6 Steps to Getting a Solid ROI from Your Internal Education and Training Events."
USE PROPS TO MORE FULLY UTILIZE YOUR SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES - Creative use of props can enhance the effectiveness of your presentations, especially if you are an engineers or architect. Click here to learn more.
TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE IS NOT ENOUGH - Do you see a disconnect between the high-level of expertise in your professional services firm and your less than desirable business success? Perhaps you should consider improving your personnel's communication knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Click here if you are interested in learning more.
FRUSTRATED BY MEETINGS? - Recently, at a meeting, a friend asked me what percent of meetings were carefully planned, conducted, and followed up. My answer: 10 percent. His response: one percent. While I am not as pessimistic as him, we can easily do much better than 10 percent meeting success. Click here for thoughts on how you can improve your meetings.
PLAN YOUR PROJECTS FOR SUCCESS - The advice "If you fail to plan you plan to fail" clearly applies to design, construction, and other projects in the private, public, and academic sectors. Click here for the eBook "Project Plans: Why and How?" which describes 20 elements that could be in your next project plan. For addtional information, click here.
COMPLIMENTARY EXAMPLES OF SELF-STUDY AIDS -- This website offers over 60 self-study aids to help you further develop your non-technical or "soft-side" knowledge, skills, and attitudes. If you would like to learn more about the content and format of the various types of study aids:
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Some examples of “soft side” knowledge, skills, and attitudes are:
- Communication – Asking & listening: Improving your listening level
- Communication – Writing: Including effective use of active and passive voice and applying proofing tools
- Communication – Speaking: Finding speaking opportunities, addressing speaking fear, preparing visual aids, and using perfect practice or deliberate practice
- Communication – Meetings: Emphasizing meeting planning and team essentials
- Time Management: Distinguishing between effectiveness and efficiency and learning best practices
- Delegation: Releasing the leader within you while helping others grow
- Attitude: Exploring your personality profile
- Goal Setting and Achieving: Deciding where you want to go and taking action to get there
- Mistakes - Learning From Them: Reduce errors and omissions
- Ethics: Practicing it by means of the golden rule and beyond
- Teamwork: Focusing on team essentials
- Leading: Releasing the leader within you
- Mentoring, Coaching, and Teaching: Drawing on the leader within you
- Dealing with Difficult Behavior: Bringing out the best in someone by understanding their personality profile
- Change: Accomplishing it on a foundation of vision-mission-values
- Quality: Achieving it through continuous improvement while minimizing scope creep and applying quality control and quality assurance
- Marketing: Introducing a simple marketing model built on ethos-pathos-logo and the platinum rule
- Giving/Contributing: Including the value of mentoring, coaching, tutoring, and teaching
- Project Management – Planning: Incorporating project planning elements such as scope creep, risk analysis, and the Critical Path Method
- Project Management – Execution: Using quality control, quality assurance, and the Earned Value Method
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So called nontechnical, “soft side” competencies are often devalued or diminished. They are said to be of little importance or easy. “Soft side” competencies are neither.
Too many professionals fail to advance in their careers – to acquire career security – because they lack “soft side” knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Sometimes they do not realize their liability. We need to know something is “broken” if we are to “fix” it. In other cases, individuals know they have “soft side” deficiencies but fail to see the value in taking corrective action. Either way, the result is the same – failure to realize individual potential, to find and release the leader within.
If you recognize the value of “soft side” competencies you also know that they are not necessarily easy to acquire. Mastering nontechnical competencies requires knowledge of best practices and then thoughtful application of them. This website provides those fundamentals in the form of pragmatic self-study aids. These learning tools will help you practice improved stewardship with your gifts and your personality profile and make better use of who you are and what and who you know.
Perhaps you need help immediately. For example, you were just: asked to respond to a request for proposal, offered speaking opportunities, asked to meet with potential clients and need a marketing model, assigned dealing with a person exhibiting difficult behavior, asked to provide project planning including risk analysis, or invited to conduct meeting planning. These are somewhat new functions for you. Not to worry! Help is available JIT and right here.
You are responsible for the development of supervisees and others. You are also busy. Please consider two suggestions.
- If self-study of specific nontechnical or “soft-side” topics is likely to be of value to certain supervisees and others, refer them to this website or specific portions of it, such as the Buy Self-Study Aids Online and the Managing and Leading Books. These individuals could purchase one or more self-study aids to meet their needs. If they do this, ask them to share what they learn with you and/or others.
- Some “soft side” needs or deficiencies may go beyond individuals, that is, many individuals at one or more locations need help. For example, individuals may be working extra hard but not achieving as much as you and they would like. In this case, perhaps an on-site, face-to-face seminar or workshop about time management, effectiveness and efficiency, goal setting, and/or team essentials would be appropriate. Another option, and often a very cost-effective approach for simultaneous delivery to two or more locations, is a webinar, that is, use of the internet and a telephone conference call for which no one needs to travel anywhere. If the group mode of education and training interests you, for examples, please refer to the web page Tailored Education and Training. If you would like to discuss the feasibility of tailoring a seminar, webinar, or workshop to your organization’s needs, please call me at 219-242-1704.
We seem to be under ever-increasing pressure to increase productivity, to accomplish more with what we have and, sometimes, to do more with less. At a deeper level, many of us aspire to be even better stewards of our time and talents. At the very deepest level, we yearn for more than personal success; we seek significance in what we do. We want to get beyond ourselves, positively affect others, and make a difference. This requires managing and leading ability.
Do you want to improve your managing and leading knowledge, skills, and attitudes – your “soft side” competencies—so that you can remain employable, earn career security, and enjoy success and significance? If so, click here now for self-study aids!
Stuart G. Walesh
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Communication - Asking & Listening | Communication - Writing | Communication - Speaking
Communication - Meetings | Time Management | Delegation | Attitude | Goal Setting & Achieving
Mistakes - Learning From Them | Ethics | Teamwork | Leading | Mentoring, Coaching & Teaching
Dealing With Difficult Behavior | Change | Quality | Marketing | Giving / Contributing
Project Management - Planning | Project Management - Execution | Innovation Workshop
Communication: Writing and Speaking to Make Things Happen | Book Review: The Power of Place
Comparison Of The Essentials Of Strategic Planning And Basic Operations
Book Review: The Dumbest Generation | Thoughts for the Recent, Unemployed Graduate
Prop Up Your Presentations
White Paper: 6 Steps to Getting a Solid ROI from Your Internal Education and Training Events
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