Nine Skills
You Should Learn That Pay Dividends Forever
·
Published on July 23, 2019 Travis Bradberry - Phd
Coauthor
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 &President at TalentSmart
The further along you are in your career, the easier it is to fall back on the mistaken assumption that you’ve made it and have all the skills you need to succeed. The tendency is to focus all your energy on getting the job done, assuming that the rest will take care of itself. Big mistake.
Recent
research from Stanford tells the story. Carol Dweck and her colleagues
conducted a study with people who were struggling with their performance. One
group was taught to perform better on a task that they performed poorly in. The
other group received a completely different intervention: for the task that
they performed badly in, they were taught that they weren’t stuck and that
improving their performance was a choice. They discovered that learning
produces physiological changes in the brain, just like exercise changes
muscles. All they had to do was believe in themselves and make it happen.
When
the groups’ performance was reassessed a few months later, the group that was
taught to perform the task better did even worse. The group that was taught
that they had the power to change their brains and improve their performance
themselves improved dramatically.
The
primary takeaway from Dweck’s research is that we should never stop learning.
The moment we think that we are who we are is the moment we give away our
unrealized potential.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The
act of learning is every bit as important as what you learn. Believing that you
can improve yourself and do things in the future that are beyond your current
possibilities is exciting and fulfilling.
Still,
your time is finite, and you should dedicate yourself to learning skills that
will yield the greatest benefit. There are nine skills that I believe fit the
bill because they never stop paying dividends. These are the skills that
deliver the biggest payoff, both in terms of what they teach you and their
tendency to keep the learning alive.
Emotional
intelligence (EQ). EQ is the “something” in each
of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate
social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results.
EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others
and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and
relationships. Decades of research now point to EQ as the critical factor that sets
star performers apart from the rest of the pack. It’s a powerful way to focus
your energy in one direction, with tremendous results.
TalentSmart tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills
and found that EQ is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full
58% of success in all types of jobs. Of all the people we’ve studied at work,
we've found that 90% of top performers are also high in EQ. On the flip side,
just 20% of bottom performers are high in EQ. You can be a top performer
without EQ, but the chances are slim. Naturally, people with a high degree of
EQ make more money, an average of $29,000 more per year than people with a low
degree of emotional intelligence. The link between EQ and earnings is so direct
that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary. Increasing
your EQ won’t just pad your bank account, it’ll make you happier and less
stressed as well.
Time
management. One of the biggest things that
gets in the way of effective time management is the “tyranny of the urgent.”
This refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to
get in the way of what really matters. When you succumb to it, you spend so
much time putting out fires that you never get any real work done. How many
times have you left work at the end of the day, only to realize that you didn’t
move the important things along even one inch? Learning to manage your time
effectively frees you up to perform at your absolute highest level, and it does
so every single day of your life.
Listening. This one should be easy. If we’re not talking, we’re
listening, right? Well, not exactly. A lot of times, we think we’re listening, but we’re actually planning what
we’re going to say next. True listening means focusing solely on what the other
person is saying. It’s about understanding, not rebuttal or input. Learning how
to suspend judgment and focus on understanding the other person’s input is one
of the most important skills you can develop.
Listening
is a bit like intelligence—most everyone thinks they’re above average (even
though that’s impossible). A study at Wright State University surveyed more
than 8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as
listening as well as or better than their co-workers. We know intuitively that
many of them were wrong.
There’s
so much talking happening at work that opportunities to listen abound. We talk
to provide feedback, explain instructions, and communicate deadlines. Beyond
the spoken words, there’s invaluable information to be deciphered through tone
of voice, body language, and what isn’t said. In other words, failing to keep
your ears (and eyes) open could leave you out of the game.
Saying
No. Research conducted at the
University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty that
you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and
even depression. Saying no is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to
wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing
commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you
learn to say no, you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up
your time and energy for the important things in life.
Asking
for help. It might seem counterintuitive
to suggest that asking for help is a skill, but it is. It takes a tremendous
amount of confidence and humility to admit that you need assistance. This skill
is critical because the last thing a leader wants are employees who keep on
trucking down the wrong path because they are too embarrassed or proud to admit
that they don’t know what they’re doing. The ability to recognize when you need
help, summon up the courage to ask for it, and follow through on that help is
an extremely valuable skill.
Getting
high-quality sleep. We've always known that
quality sleep is good for your brain, but recent research from the University
of Rochester demonstrated exactly how so. The study found that when you sleep,
your brain removes toxic proteins, which are by-products of neural activity
when you're awake, from its neurons. The catch here is that your brain can only
adequately remove these toxic proteins when you have sufficient quality sleep.
When you don’t get high-quality deep sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your
brain cells, wreaking havoc and ultimately impairing your ability to think—something
no amount of caffeine can fix. This slows your ability to process information
and solve problems, kills your creativity, and increases your emotional
reactivity. Learning to get high-quality sleep on a regular basis is a
difficult skill to master, but it pays massive dividends the next day.
Knowing
when to shut up. Sure, it can feel so good to unload on somebody and let them know what you really
think, but that good feeling is temporary. What happens the next day, the next
week, or the next year? It’s human nature to want to prove that you’re right,
but it’s rarely effective. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your
heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you and the relationship
severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to
choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.
The vast majority of the time, that means biting your tongue.
Taking
initiative. Initiative is a skill that
will take you far in life. In theory, initiative is easy—the desire to take
action is always there—but in the real world, other things get in the way.
There’s a big difference between knowing what to do and being too scared or
lazy to actually do it. That requires initiative. You have to take risks and
push yourself out of your comfort zone, until taking initiative is second
nature.
Staying
positive. We've all received the
well-meaning advice to "stay positive." The greater the challenge,
the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and
unrealistic. It's hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when
positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to
positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats.
This survival mechanism served humankind well, back when we were hunters and
gatherers and living each day with the very real threat of being killed by
someone or something in our immediate surroundings.
That
was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the
mind's tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These "threats"
magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to
go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this
mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months
convinced that the project you're working on is going to flop, this mechanism
leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life.
Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention.
You must be intentional about staying positive if you're going to overcome the
brain's tendency to focus on threats.
Bringing It All Together
Research
shows that lifelong learning pays dividends beyond the skills you acquire.
Never stop learning.
How do you keep the learning alive? Please
share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from
you as you do from me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr.
Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling
book, Emotional Intelligence
2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His
bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in
more than 150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered
by, Newsweek,
BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post,
and The
Harvard Business Review.
