Trivial Treasures

Simple tweaks to your skills oftentimes make the biggest impact on your value as a professional. Let me suggest a few.

1. Avoid “scavenger hunts” in your reports and other written communications. Learn to understand and list all the important points of your work in the first few pages of the document. Beyond just calling your opening “Executive Summary” or “Introduction” ask yourself how you could save your clients time and provide simple answers to their key questions. Then, cross-reference your key points with relevant detailed sections and page numbers in case clients want to “dig” more deeply.
2. Poofread, roofreed, and proofread again. The polish of your written deliverable is not only in the intellectual value, but also in minutiae of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting. This is how you learn a habit of being detail oriented. If you don’t believe me, listen to this fascinating podcast from Malcolm Gladwell: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/21-divide-and-conquer.
3. Learn everything you can about body language. Non-verbal communication can give away your true feelings and intentions even when you are not ready to share them. Just have a look at Mark Bowden’s work here and Amy Cuddy’s work here. Learning how to master your own body language can also help you to become a better public speaker.
4. Commit to completing 6 tasks every workday. This will help you to set priorities, manage your schedule, and collaborate with your peers and senior leaders in an honest and transparent way without feeling inundated and stressed.
5. If a task takes less than 2 minutes to complete, do it right away.
6. Start and continually update your own knowledge management library. The format is up to you as long as you’re able to easily retrieve materials based on themes and keywords.
7. Set a reminder on your mobile phone with a weekly alarm on Mondays to ask yourself about your personal and professional growth in the past week. Some sample questions are:

• Did I learn anything new and meaningful last week?
• Did I help anyone?
• Did I compliment a colleague for their effort?
• Did I share any ideas in professional circles?

I sincerely hope that at least one of these will become your habit.

Thank you for your attention.

Soar above mediocrity!

www.spherestate.com