Underrated Skills

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  • Disagreeing well: it’s easy to disagree badly (and agree badly), and we all know the truism that different viewpoints is good, but harnessing dissenting views in practice is so much harder than you think
  • Managing meetings effectively: many companies would baulk at an expense of several £’000, but routinely allow such sums to be wasted through badly run meetings
  • Listening: We’re wired to talk, to believe that our point of view is more valuable, more right
  • Saying “no”: because saying yes is easy and rewarding, but saying yes to everything implicitly means we say no to what matters most
  • Making things simpler: length and complexity superficially signals effort and thoughtfulness, flawed thinking that is not challenged as often as it should be)
  • Diary management: Because doing more superficially feels like work, when doing less is often the answer, and if you don’t manage your time, someone else will
  • Asking better questions: because knowing the answer is easier than asking questions

You don’t tend to find these on CV’s or on “skills of the future” lists (Like the one below) – which focus on trendy things like data scientist and AI specialists. But they should be.

Related: Simple, but not easy


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