People Skills
Mentors and Personal Coaching
Mentors or personal coaches can improve confidence and lead to job opportunities you had not considered. Personal coaches can be hired to fill gaps in your experience or ability, perhaps with public speaking, prioritising, management and career planning.
Perhaps the best option is to find a mentor, although they can be difficult to find. They will be a person with lots of experience in your field or a similar area. They must like you and be enthusiastic about your career, because they will be doing this for the enjoyment of seeing your career grow. A good mentor is a coach, always challenging you, inspiring you and demanding that you do your best. They are familiar with a range of professional opportunities and are guides who enjoy helping others and love their work. They will also have a large network that will assist you.
- Read more about mentorship here
- 101 things to work on with your coach
How to Win Friends and Influence People
The book How to win friends and influence people has been influential in business and politics for nearly 100 years. It offers brilliantly simple insights into improving all personal relationships, perhaps most importantly with clients and customers, which anyone can use.
The author, Dale Carnegie, found he was having trouble selling to some customers, and by applying some thought and different approaches, he could be much more successfull. He soon realised these techniques could be applied to personal relationships as well, and that there was a huge demand from people who wanted to improve some relationships in their business or personal lives.
"Dale Carnegie offers practical advice and techniques for how to get out of a mental rut and make life more rewarding. His advice has stood the test of time and will teach you how to: make friends quickly and easily, increase your popularity, win people to your way of thinking, enable you to win new clients and customers and, arouse enthusiasm among your colleagues." (Review in the Guardian)
"It is humanity and deepest sincerity that connects human beings together; and if they happen to be seller/buyer then that's just the way things are." (Customer review from Amazon)
- This is a summary of Carnegie's ideas
- Buy the book How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
More Benefits of Networking Skills
How to get 100, 200, 500 people thinking about how they can help YOU with your project, your passion, your school, your business. Networking isn't accidental, but a skill to be honed. The more you care, the better you listen, the more likely you are to reap what you sow.
Learn more about networking here
Why You Need Good Listening Skills
The ability to listen carefully will allow you to:
- better understand assignments and what is expected of you
- work better in a team-based environment
- resolve problems with customers, co-workers, and bosses
- find underlying meanings in what others say
How to listen well:
- maintain eye contact
- don't interrupt the speaker
- sit still
- repeat instructions
- ask appropriate questions when the speaker has finished
Learn more about listening skills.
