Six Transferable Job Skills That Are Powerful in Any Career
Are you currently overwhelmed by the feeling that you need to develop new tech skills to be marketable? Instead of fretting, consider honing skills in other arenas that can also support your career growth. Critical thinking, communication, and teamwork are the more commonly discussed soft skills. The following are underestimated and overlooked skills just as powerful assets across careers.
Anticipation: Do you have a knack for predicting the future and anticipating emerging trends in your industry? Foreseeing trends, challenges and opportunities will help you develop a competitive edge in any field.
Curiosity: Harvard Business School’s Francesca Gino explains that cultivating curiosity helps leaders and employees adapt to market conditions. She writes, “When our curiosity is triggered, we think more rationally about decisions and come up with more-creative solutions.”
Emotional Intelligence: Employers are now recognizing that an employee's capacity to recognize and contextualize their emotions and the emotions of others is an asset. Understanding your colleagues, teammates, employees, and their motivations will assist in inspiring good work, support fair conflict resolution, and assist others to tap into their professional potential.
Maintaining Trust: Building and maintaining client trust is important to ensure positive relationships that can go the distance. Ensuring a client benefits from and feels valued in partnerships is essential to maintaining trust, loyalty, and positive outcomes.
Managing Up: “Managing up” is about understanding – it’s when an employee listens to their manager’s expectations and develops a productive relationship with the manager. To be successful at managing up, an employee must adapt to a manager’s work and communication style. It is also important for an employee to communicate their own styles. Finally, an employee must align their performance to the team’s goal.
Unlearning and Continuous Learning: You may enter a new role as a subject matter expert with processes that were successful in your previous position or industry. Unlearning those processes and adapting your knowledge to a new context demonstrates that you have a growth mindset, are teachable, and will make you a powerful player in your field.