Developing the skills you need is one of the most daunting things about transforming your career (that and public speaking :-|). But in honesty it really doesn’t have to be. It shouldn't be an arduous ordeal for you to build the hard and soft skills your employer is looking and will pay for! I’m going to show you why.

Last time we spoke about how to discover what skills you need to learn (found here). Once you know what skills you need there is a simple 6 step method to start developing them. I am going to give you the keys to start right now:

1. Write down your skill on the top of a page or spreadsheet
2. Spend two 30min sessions diving into as much online information as you can find about that skill. Just follow the rabbit hole for 30 mins. Leave it for 2 days and then jump back in and learn another. By Thursday you have what you need
3. List out the 4 core aspects of what you want to grow within that skill. **2 aspects should be devoted to being better able to help others (helping yourself in the process). 
4. Spend a further 20 minutes researching the best ways to develop each aspect. There is so much amazing free content out there online you can find what you need to learn fairly quickly. It could be accomplished by a quick YouTube video or blog post!
5. Once you have a good idea, spend 1 hour a day developing an aspect. Rotate them, 3 days on, 1 day off. The 4th aspect is done on the 5th day. Giving your brain time to rest and absorb the new information is vital. Do this for 6 cycles and then rest a week.
6. Record everything you are doing, summarise what you are learning daily. Look back on them periodically to see how far you have come!

You’ll notice in these steps the power of research and recording your skills. Please, please don’t forget this part. So important!
Feel free to send us examples of some of the work you are doing via email or to ask any questions.

The greatest investment you can make is in yourself and your skills. Skills are what employees pay you for. They can be hard skills like construction, accounting, programming and web design. Or they can be soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, positive influence, empathy and persuasion. Both have a powerful place in the workforce.

We all have strengths and weaknesses and the key is to not flounder on what we already know but to rather commit to being life long learners, constantly looking for new opportunities to grow and build the skills we have and incorporate new ones.

The world is always evolving and so should you if you want to build a career to be proud of!

Getting the skills your industry needs isn’t always simple but the good news is you already know what they are. This method works 9/10 times so let us know if you are having trouble and we can help you out (if you are in the 10%).

Below is a powerful method you can take to get the skillset you need. Starting with discovering what those skills are.

1. Draw up a table with two columns, use this template if you want.
2. List out your top 2 skills (hard or soft) which makes you a good employee.
3. Now list the bottom 2 skills you know you are weak in but wish you were good at them.
4. Look at the list side by side. Read first the top 2 skills and then the bottom 2.
5. Visualise for second you are as good at the bottom 2 as you are at the top. What would that feel like? It feels great!
6. Write down, below the table,  why you fear becoming good at the bottom 2 skills. You will know why you are scared of being good at these skills. This will be different for everyone. But it is what is holding you back. The answer you write down is valid.
7. Finally, cross out the statements of why you are scared to have those skills. Use the strikethough if on a device. So important!
8. Last step: Print the template out or make it your wallpaper on your computer or device
9. Last last step: Build a plan to gain the skill. Check out our next post where I will go through how you can do that.

 
Feel free to jump in here to access more free resources shorturl.at/kzMO9
or register on the website if you want to speed up your growth. shorturl.at/bgmxR

Sometimes talking through your specific set of circumstances can really help move your progress along. Often it just takes one answer to get the ball rolling.

Any other thoughts or questions just leave a comment below and one of the team will get back to you.

[5 Meta-tools for Career Growth]
I meant to send this out to you yesterday but to be honest I got too deep into writing my new book and didn’t want to tear myself away. When it's done I’ll send all of our team out a copy. But that’s for a later date. 

For today I want to share with you a few key things you can do to harness the meta-tool of [Identifying Opportunities]. As with everything I aim to do with you, we are all about generating value. Distilled down to its essence GENERATING VALUE is the only thing which is rewarded in the world. Don’t believe me? Just think about it. Big hitters and force multipliers. Movers of capital are the ones that get rewarded, every time. The manager, the investor, the entrepreneur. They are the ones which get rewarded, not because they are working hard or even smarter, but because their actions and decisions propagate through their bound network and yield far more value than any individual’s labour can ever generate.
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So how do you go about building that network? Well as per my last email its the combination of of these 5 meta-tools which allows people to transform their careers and grow their income
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1. [Identify Opportunities]
2. Develop your Skillset
3. Build a Communication Framework
4. Capture the Momentum
5. Capitalise on the Value

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Let’s focus on [Identifying Opportunities]. What are three things you can do today to begin transforming your career? I’m giving you all this information to you FREE. Well almost free, because what I want you to do is when you have tried this out at work or in your business I want you to hit reply and let me know how it's gone and what successes you have had. Deal? Great!

Okay three things you can start doing today to begin identifying opportunities and generating VALUE

1. Reinvent Your Image - put on the hat and make yourself the expert. This mindset shift will realign you and allow you to start approaching issues as opportunities. People will see you are gathering expertise and see you as the person to get input from.
2. Focus on the quiet spaces - most value generation comes from focusing on the aspects which get little attention in your business, once you uncover them, gather input from stakeholders and highlight them to your boss (or those with resources to help you tackle them.
3. Ignore the obvious solution - If the obvious worked you wouldn't still have a problem. So try approaching the issue from a different angle. Maybe things which are clear to you are not clear to others. Value isn’t generated by grinding out a problem, that’s just the status quo.

So there you go, kick start your work week by trying to implement these three tools and let me know how you get on. We start using very similar tools in our programmes. Obviously it works a lot better in 1-on-1 mentorship sessions so if you are keen to work together on transforming your career let me know and we can start working together 1-on-1 one. That’s where you will get the most benefit, and generate the most value in your own career.
 
Click here to get started. https://www.datamanagementsolutions.co.nz/transform-your-career
 
I look forward to hearing from you soon