15 Personal Skills You Need on the Job

15 Personal Skills You Need on the Job

Employers are looking for workers who have that special something: the skills, tendencies and attributes that help to keep productivity—andprofits—up.
What are they? Businesses are looking for employees with strong "personal" skills, according to ACT research. Keep these in mind, because employerscertainly are.

Carefulness: Do you have a tendency to think and plan carefully before acting? This helps with reducing the chance for costly errors, as well as keeping a steady workflow going.
Cooperation: Willingness to engage in interpersonal work situations is very important in the workplace.
Creativity: You've heard of "thinking outside the box"? Employers want innovative people who bring a fresh perspective.
Discipline: This includes the ability to keep on task and complete projects without becoming distracted or bored.
Drive: Businesses want employees who have high aspiration levels and work hard to achieve goals.
Good attitude: This has been shown to predict counterproductive work behaviors, job performance and theft.
Goodwill: This is a tendency to believe others are well-intentioned.
Influence: Groups need strong leaders to guide the way. Influence includes a tendency to positively impact social situations by speaking your mind and becoming a group leader.
Optimism: A positive attitude goes a long way toward productivity.
Order: "Where did I put that?" A tendency to be well organized helps employees to work without major distractions or "roadblocks."
Safe work behaviors: Employers want people who avoid work-related accidents and unnecessary risk-taking in a work environment.
Savvy: This isn't just about job knowledge, but knowledge of coworkers and the working environment. It includes a tendency to read other people's motives from observed behavior and use this information to guide one's thinking and action.
Sociability: How much you enjoy interacting with coworkers affects how well you work with them.
Stability: This means a tendency to maintain composure and rationality in stressful work situations.
Vigor: This is a tendency to keep a rapid tempo and keep busy.


The Top 12 Presentation Mistakes

Mistake #1: Overlooking "Murphy" If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. This mistake basically means that you walk into the room where you're going to present and something is wrong. Le Roux tells a story about a multimillion-dollar sales presentation to which "Murphy" paid a visit—in the form of missing curtains and a boardroom window overlooking a huge pool surrounded by bikini-clad swimmers (you can guess what the attendees looked at instead of the presenter).

Remedy: Visit important presentation rooms at least a day in advance. If that's not possible, have someone take pictures from different angles and email them to you.

Mistake #2: Delivering Split Presentations It's difficult to read the subtitles of a foreign movie and follow the action. When sellers stand at a distance from the screen, they create a similar problem. You probably won't build rapport with someone whose focus is repeatedly divided.


Remedy: Stand next to the screen and present a united message.

Mistake #3: Positioning Yourself Incorrectly Right-handed sellers usually stand with the screen to their right. This allows them to point more easily. However, people read left to right. Salespeople are unable to capitalize on this fact when the screen is to their right.
Remedy: Position a screen, flip chart, or easel stand to your left. Then people will naturally start with their eyes on you and return to you after glancing at the screen.


Mistake #4: Choosing the Wrong Screen Size and Position In most meeting rooms, screens are two to three times bigger than necessary. The bigger the screen, the more it overshadows the presenter. Recessed ceiling screens are typically centered. This provides nice room symmetry, but it also diminishes the seller.Remedy: Bring a portable screen. For two to fifteen people, a 4-foot by 4-foot screen is fine. Place yourself in the room's center or key focal spot, and then angle the screen about 25 degrees toward yourself.

Mistake #5: Seating Decision Makers in the Wrong Chairs In important sales presentations, seating arrangements matter. The first chair to the presenter's left is the best viewing point for a decision maker and the first chair to the presenter's right is the least desirable.Remedy: Obviously, place the decision maker in the first chair to your left. Plant your feet firmly perpendicular to your group and be conscious that your body will continuously try to rotate toward the screen. Don't let it, or you'll give more eye contact to the non-decision makers.


Mistake #6: Dimming the Lights Darkness induces drowsiness and mental wandering. Plus it eliminates the best part of a resentation—you.Remedy: Keep the room lights on or dim them slightly. If multiple light switches are available, turn the lights off directly above the screen. (Of course, since the lights are on, you will need to design slides that are visible at higher light levels.)

Mistake #7: Promoting the Screen Too many presenters feel that the information on the screen is the real "star." But the audience needs to see you as well—you pull them into the story unfolding on the screen and bring the message to life. As an American Indian proverb goes, "Move closer to the campfire, so I can see your words."Remedy: Bring the lights up enough so that both you and your visuals are clearly seen.

Mistake #8: Playing with Pointers and Other Toys Anything you hold in your hands becomes a plaything with which you'll fidget. You might as well twirl a baton, since your hands gripping some object will distract people just as much.Remedy: Keep your hands free to gesture by not holding a pointer, marker, or remote.

Mistake #9: Blocking the Screen Do not turn toward the visual and point with your right arm. This causes you to partially block the screen from viewers to your right.Remedy: Point at the screen with your fingers together, palm down and parallel to the floor. Point to the screen with only your left arm, but when you gesture, use both arms.

Mistake #10: Holding Remotes or Clickers Remember, it's human nature to play with objects in your hands. If you're nervous, you'll speed up and change the slides faster than you should. Besides, holding a remote causes you to gesture less. You'll settle into the easier, boring role of a talking head instead of selling your ideas with your upper body.Remedy: Place your laptop or remote on the lectern or a table under the screen.

Mistake #11: Positioning the Lectern to the Side usually, in high-dollar presentations, two items dominate the room—the screen and the lectern. Too many presenters place the lectern well away from the screen (causing the aforementioned split presentation), and then they hide behind the "box." To "take cover" defeats the whole idea of selling visually.Remedy: Position the lectern, screen, and presenter together, so the presenter can interact closely with the screen and use the nearby lectern to hold content cue cards or the remote to change slides. If you're the presenter, stand in the center of the room or stage with the screen to the left and the lectern to the right.

Mistake #12: Reading Someone Else's Text Slides If you take over someone else's text-heavy presentation at the last minute, you face an uphill battle. By just reading the text slides, you'll put your audience to sleep.Remedy: Use different words from what appears on the screen. Be very enthusiastic. That will help viewers overlook the boring slides.


Train Yourself to Productivity

Think of an important project you want to get done. Are you putting off working on it on purpose? Are you missing key resources? Are you waiting for someone to get back to you before you can make the next decision? Or, are you procrastinating? Begin by exploring your own daily routines.Write down the approximate time you arrived and left the office each day for the last week. This represents your "workweek." For each single hour you were working, you made choices about what to focus on as "priority." You also chose what did not get done. Here are three ways to get going and sustain an action-orientation to your own productivity:

1. Chunk your objectives into smaller markers along your path to success. Recently, I worked with some of a Fortune company who realized that more important than managing time is his need to more effectively directs his focus within the small chunks of time he has to work.2. Do things differently. In less than five hours, my client realized that much of his success was going to come down to appropriately disengaging his focus on the urgent but not important tasks. He said it is critical to stop focusing on some of the things he'd grown accustomed to doing, such as checking his e-mail every 10 to 15 minutes and saying yes to every meeting he was invited to. 3. Acknowledge the accomplishment. Regularly throughout the day (before lunch and before you go home), take a moment and mentally check off what you've completed. This is your chance to recharge—acknowledging completion is a quick way to get back on track. (Have you ever made a list of to-dos…after you've already done them?!) Too often, long-range goals fall into the "important but not urgent" category of day-to-day workflow management. We put off doing the most important things while making start-and-stop progress. When this happens, the urgent—latest and loudest—clamors for our attention. Make a list, focus on your to-dos, and mark something as completetative it’s the best way to beat procrastination.