From now though March I offer to you a countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build and convey a personal sense of power and engagement for your work. I suggest them as a countdown because I believe that they are a progressive set of skills that can be developed – meaning working on #10 provides a solid foundation that makes #9 easier to do and share with others. In other words, I believe it’s going to be very hard to tap into Secret Skill #1 if you haven’t yet incorporated Secret Skill #10 into your daily work.
You might be wondering 2 things…
1. Why should I value building a sense of power for my work? Because when we feel that we have something unique to contribute to others it energizes us and makes us feel like we matter. Do you want to tap into a greater sense of energy and fulfillment from your work?
2. Why should I value conveying a sense of power for my work? Because when others get a sense that we are powerful we inspire others (and stand out over other job candidates when we are interviewing). Inspiring others connects us to a personal sense of mastery of our work. (Check out what Harvard Business Review has to say about why inspiration matters). Becoming a master often frees us from external factors (i.e. what others think, do and say) as contributing more to our sense of self-importance and value to others and shifts our source toward internal factors (i.e. what we think, do and say) as contributing more to our sense of self-importance and value to others. We then become more intention-focused vs. (material) reward-focused. That shift creates a more sustainable connection to happiness and (therefore), success from our work. From that the materials markers of success flow more naturally and in greater abundance than we could imagine than when we were solely focused on collecting them. They become an effortless by-product of our happiness and engagement at work.
Our jobs are one of the easiest realms of our life to make a difference because unlike in family dynamics there is no pre-context for others about what we are capable of – (or what might be appropriate for us to be capable of in relation to our elders or given some scale of privileged or tradition we were born into). At work the people we serve are always welcoming and hopeful for us to give our best.
Boosting up the volume on the “secret skills” you already have can matter greatly to those who are served by you or work with you – especially if you…