How to Become the Expert Your Company Can't Live Without

 

Everybody has got a desire to be expertly treated in his/her working area. This situation always brings the sense of purpose. There are many ways a person can use to make sure he/she becomes an expert his/her company can not live without, Let's go together

Pay attention to what’s going on around you.

What skills seem to be in more demand now than before? And don’t forget to check in with yourself too: What skills are you using less frequently than you did in the past?

Keep communicating. 

No matter how much you pay attention to what’s going on, there’s no way you’ll be able to absorb
everything. So, talk to people: coworkers, managers, people in jobs you’d like to be doing. And ask lots and lots of questions: What are the skills they value most? Least? What jobs are most in demand now? What jobs do they think will be most in demand in the future? We’ll talk about how to network in the next chapter.

Make a plan. 

How are you going to get the skills you need? You should always be learning, acquiring knowledge and skills that will benefit you as you advance in your career.

Stay flexible.

Remember, things change constantly. What’s important today may not be tomorrow, and what will be
important tomorrow may not even have been invented yet. As you’ve seen in this chapter, obtaining hard skills and getting known for them can position you to get a job and can enable you to function efficiently while you’re there. But if you really want to get to the next level, to be a manager, or to advance your career at all, you’ll also need soft skills.

We are being judged by a new yardstick not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how we handle ourselves and each
other.

Job results are king, right? Make your numbers, land the contracts, finish on time and within budget. Do those things and it’ll be smooth sailing toward the top. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Anyone who’s been in the corporate world for even a little while knows that’s not the way things always play out. You’ve seen deserving people skipped over for promotion  (hopefully you weren’t one of them). You’ve seen underperformers advance. You’ve wondered how the guy who can’t think his way out of a paper bag got to be a manager. So you know that there’s more to career advancement than job results.

So what’s he missing ingredient? Soft skills. On the most basic level, soft skills—sometimes called emotional intelligence—are nontechnical skills. But it’s a little more subtle than that. They’re interpersonal skills, skills that enable you to form relationships with coworkers, fit into the corporate
culture, and communicate successfully. Hard skills, which we talked about in the previous chapter, are what will help you navigate the technical elements of your job, but it’s soft skills that will enable you to move ahead. Soft skills are generally very apparent to the people around you, and if those skills are sharp, people will notice.

By gaining and mastering communication and other soft skills and developing your own emotional intelligence, you’ll become the person everyone wants to work with. You’ll become an influencer and a leader. You’ll also be very much in charge of managing the way you’re perceived by others.
Don’t wait to be judged by others. Instead, focus on highlighting your abilities in a way that clearly demonstrates (as opposed to you having to say anything) the skills you have and the value you and those skills bring to your team and your employer.
The difference between hard skills and soft is kind of like the difference between a single computer and a network. You can do a lot of stuff with the computer, but the network allows you to communicate with other computers, access the company’s intranet from home, and print a document from the other side of the building. One computer gets the job done, but the network lets you get so much more out of every device that’s connected. A  number of managers asked at Fortune 500
companies to tell  about the soft skills they think young employees will need if they want to move up in their careers.

Here’s what they said:

• Strong work ethic 

• Optimism/positive attitude 

• Good communication skills

• Good conversation skills 

• Storytelling abilities for presentations 

• Time management abilities 

• The ability to listen and to speak to the “human needs” of coworkers and customers.

• Being good at reading people 

• Ability to build relationships and connect with others on a deep level 

• Exercise tact when delivering a message 

• The ability to propose solutions to problems, not just talk about problems 

• Meaningfully contribute to brainstorming 

• Ability to write well 

• Problem-solving skills 

• Team player 

• Being likable 

• Self-confidence 

• Can accept and learn from criticism 

• Flexibility/adaptability 

• Can work well under pressure 

• Empathy 

• Integrity 

• Sense of humor