Resolve To Evolve: Skill-Wise That Is!

By: Heather Meeker Green

According to an examination by LinkedIn on the most impactful stories of the past year shared across their social networking site subscribed to by 225 million professionals, how to stay relevant through skill development is what so many successful people want to know. As Accordence professionals continuously learn, the crucial set of skills that we all need for individual and collaborative success is grounded in communication.  

In thinking about your personal and professional evolution, what sets you apart from earlier versions of yourself? It is a greater emotional intelligence; a heightened self awareness, which, in a highly interactive world, allows you to be a more successful communicator. Recognizing that the art & science of communication is an ongoing intentional practice, the ways in which you evolve should be approached by drawing from this framework of strategic skills:

  1. Transforming Your Mindset

  2. Communicating Well

  3. Negotiating Effectively

  4. Resolving Conflicts

  5. Giving Feedback Smartly

  6. Influencing Successfully

Challenge yourself here, asking, “What is my current and desired level of these essential skills?” Think about other successful communicators and imagine the opportunity to engage with them. What higher level of proficiency would you want to attain? Consider some of your more challenging situations with people with whom you must communicate and have had a hard time. As Grande Lum, Founder and former Managing Director of Accordence, and author of “Tear Down the Wall” says: “[identify] approaches with which you may already be familiar, though have overlooked, and [find] ways to utilize them more consciously.”

You have room to grow; we all do. You encounter situations every day at work (and in your personal life) where strengthening your aptitude and attitude as a communicator would enhance your value to your organization, your team, and your customers. Consider what more you could accomplish if through deliberate training and application you achieve these outcomes regularly:

  1. Shift from reactivity to creativity and gain the insight needed to discover your strengths, foster attitudes of success, manage your energy and emotions and leverage professional relationships to help you obtain results

  2. Discover what it takes to approach difficult topics and behaviors and prepare for and conduct conversations for the best outcomes.

  3. Approach negotiation as joint problem solving that requires an understanding of other parties' needs and concerns.

  4. Enhance relationships and achieve more meaningful resolutions by removing personalization from conflict.

  5. Utilize a framework for giving effective feedback, both constructive and corrective, and construct solid working agreements and manage broken agreements well.

  6. Understand situations from 3 perspectives: first person, second person, and third person. 

Accordence training programs deliver these results for organizational leaders and their teams who recognize and sponsor skill development that prioritizes relationships and mutually beneficial agreements. Unquestionably, these competencies serve professionals well as you navigate the current business environment. Economists, professors, and politicians have been making reference to a “VUCA World” - volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. To administer the ‘antidotes’ to these real and challenging consequences, you must maximize communication (as well as vision, direction and agility).

As results-oriented people are accustomed to doing, use your new year’s resolve to actively develop and enhance your savvy as a communicator. Rather than being a singular event, or a linear conduit, there are many paths that lead  to greater communication, negotiation and personal effectiveness skills. Most certainly your personal and professional achievements in these areas add tangible value from which you and others can benefit.