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The colleague who keeps to himself may never reach his fullpotential as a professional because he did not put enoughvalue on these critical life lessons.

ET SPECIAL: Save precious time tracking yourinvestments

By Devashish Chakravarty

Not all important skills are taught in classrooms. Yet these critical life skills may actually bethe very foundation on which you build your career. If you lack any of these, you may haveto compromise with your professional growth.

Taking decisions

Every moment is a moment of decision. And, poor decision-making will take your careerdownhill. But do you know how to take a good decision? It is important because as yougrow your decisions get bigger and have a huge impact on the organisation and careers ofpeople.

Therefore, ask yourself three questions every time: Will it take you a step ahead towardsyour career goal? Will it enhance your profile? And, finally, will it generate avenues forgrowth? Then compare the costs of your decision versus the benefits it will generate foryour company, team and you.

What is the possibility of success and by when do you expect the desired outcome? Can you handle the consequences of a failure?Your decision making will improve if you take risks, fail and learn from your blunders. Read up on cognitive biases of the human mindthat cause poor decision making. Recognise and control your own biases.

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Listening with intention

One of the greatest failures of professionals is the inability to listen effectively. This leads to their communication abilities remainingstunted. Listening with intention is about total focus on the speaker his choice and sequence of words, sentence construction, tone ofvoice and body language.

His complete message, including the unspoken part? Listening intently means to respond in such a way that the speaker is encouragedand continues to speak. Suspend your judgement while he is speaking and accord respect to his views even if you ultimately disagree.Finally, summarise what you hear before you choose to speak. Without mastering listening, you will not be able to understand people'sneeds and will fail to deliver results to your clients and leadership to your team.

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Building connections

You cannot remain cut off from your surroundings at the workplace. Irrespective of your core skills, you will not achieve the best possibleresults unless people are willing to work with you, help you and connect you to the right opportunities.

This is possible only through your personal relationships. Thus, the ability to relate to people and build lasting connections is essentialfor your success. Make a start by reaching out to people you are genuinely interested in. Invest time on find out how you could add valueto their lives or careers or progress. Do some research on where they come from, what matters to them and what their goals are.

Reach out to people close to them and increase the depth of your relationship with the person. Don't give up if your initial efforts do notyield instant success since relationships flourish with time and persistence. Finally, show up for people through simple gestures likewishing them on life events, calling them and meeting them. If you are unable to connect with people, you will be denied both happinessand the successes you deserve.

Creating time

Highly skilled people get more done and, therefore, progress faster. People with lesser skills are work overtime to meet their basictargets.

Therefore, they don't have the time to spare for learning new skills. Sounds like a Catch-22 situation? Not quite! People with higher skillsare usually those who mastered the art of creating time within their routines. This time is invested in learning or gaining more experience.

To create time, spend your first 10 minutes to plan your work day. Start your day early, deal with most important tasks first, convert criticaltasks into a daily routine, set deadlines, do not multitask and lock yourself into 2-4-hour blocks for completing projects.

Stay away from distractions. Create a free space of 1-2 hours for thinking, training and investing into growth. If you fail to create time, youfail to grow.

Promoting yourself

Are you socially conditioned to frown upon people who brag about themselves or take pride in communicating their abilities andachievements? If so, it is unlikely that you are selling yourself correctly on your CV, to your boss, to your team and to your company.

Terrible strategy! If you do not market and negotiate for yourself, no one else will. Your employer does not have systems to measure,evaluate, hire and promote without inputs from you. Invest in learning how to craft a good CV and get short listed for roles.

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Practice hard for interviews and learn to sell yourself in short interactions. Finally, learn to stand up and advertise yourself and youraccomplishments so that rightful credit and resources come to you. Avoiding self-promotion will cost you years in time and lakhs ofrupees in lost opportunities.

Understanding business

The aim of business is to make profits. Do you know where the revenues come from? Who are your customers? Why do they pay yourfirm and not the competitors? Are you aware where the cash goes? What are the largest expenses for your firm? Does it need to invest inmachinery or infrastructure? Does it need to borrow cash?

And, finally, why does your firm pay you a salary, i.e., do you help in reducing costs or increasing revenue? Your job is safe only as longas you are generating a large multiple of your salary as revenues or reducing expenses. If you do not understand your company's cashflow well, you will never know why you were replaced by someone.

If you don't understand business, you will not align your interests to that of your firm's and, thus, miss out on the most valuable growthand learning opportunities.

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