The First 3 Critical Career Competencies ? Jim's Blog

At Career Investments, we work with people at all stages of their careers who want more out of their professional lives ? more meaning, more freedom, more money. After working with hundreds of people in intensive, one-on-one coaching sessions, we have identified a set of 12 key competencies for career success. In this post, I would like to explain the first three: Language Skills, Critical Evaluation and Self-Awareness. They are first because they lay the groundwork for many of the others that follow.

Language skills include the ability to write and speak well, the ability to organize your thoughts clearly to help others to understand, and a predisposition to recognize the audience?s skills and adjust your own language appropriately. Language skills are critical because they are the most immediate reflection of your thinking to the rest of the world. It does not matter what your skills are, how good your ideas are, how great your insights are or how compelling your arguments are if you cannot get them out of your head and into the discussion.

You build language skills through practice, excellent editorial advice, and thoughtful exposure to the best writing and speaking you can find. Use TED.com to set your standards for verbal presentations and read the best writers you can. The subject does not matter. Try the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, or the short stories of Hemingway. Pay attention not only to the content, but to how it is said or written. Consider taking a course in creative or business writing, find reasons to make business presentations, solicit honest feedback from people you trust, keep a daily journal or find other ways to practice these important crafts frequently. Even modest improvements in these skills can make big differences in how you are perceived at work, in a job search or in relationships.

Critical evaluation is the ability to recognize the quality of your own work in relationship to others. People good at critical evaluation do not agonize over their shortcomings, but recognize them and develop strategies to close the gaps. They have an equally clear-eyed view of what they do well and they know when and how to engage their strengths to maximum effect.

Develop your critical evaluation skills by getting into the habit of looking at your work with an unbiased eye and working with mentors to develop a clear external perspective of its quality. Strive constantly to improve your work, no matter how good it already is, and benchmark yourself against the very best you can find in your organization and industry. This will give you a better understanding of where and how your work compares to others.

Self-awareness is closely linked to critical evaluation, but includes not only your knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses, but your motivations, values, emotions, blind spots and hidden assumptions. People who are self-aware are less driven by the winds of their emotions and are better able to match their careers to their deeper personal motivators. They are often perceived to be smarter, calmer and are sought out by many for their advice and insights.

You develop self-awareness by careful and repeated self-examination of your internal landscape and how it effects your behavior and decisions. You do not develop self-awareness by reading about it ? it is experiential and direct. Some people find meditation or therapy helpful in developing self-awareness, but they are not necessary. What is necessary is time with your thoughts and a willingness to examine and learn about your internal landscape, even when the discoveries are hard.

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