Your People Skills Become More Important Once You Get Promoted

Most of the members of my career mentoring site want to get promoted.  By working hard and following the advice on the site, many of them do.  Then comes a big revelation — this is harder than it looks.

This slide show highlights 10 important tips for the newly promoted…

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I like all 10 of these bits of advice:

1. Don’t try to be everyone’s friend.
2. Fair and equal are not the same thing.
3. Ask for feedback and input.
4. Learn how to run a good meeting.
5. Find time to relax.
6. Find someone you can trust (and vent to) about work.
7. Take every opportunity to improve your people skills.
8. Be comfortable saying “no.”
9. Understand how to manage change.
10. Master the art of delegation.

While all of these tips are important, I really like number 7 — take every opportunity to improve your people skills.  Your people skills will make or break you as a leader.  They are the biggest key to succeeding once you get that elusive promotion.

I encourage members of my career mentoring site to take the time to review the interactions they have with important people — to ask themselves what went right, what went wrong and how they can improve their relationship with the other person.

Here are the questions I suggest…

1. What did I do well in that conversation?
2. What did I do poorly in that conversation?
3. What did I fail to do, but should have done in that conversation?

You want to continue doing what you did well.  You want to stop doing what you did poorly?  You want to start doing what you didn’t do?

For example, you may find that you did a great job of asking for the other person’s thoughts and opinions.  That’s something you want to continue to do.  On the other hand, you may find that you got frustrated when you had to explain your point of view a couple of times.  You will want to stop letting your frustrations get the better of you.  Finally, you may realize that you didn’t thank the other person for his or her time.  That’s something you will want to start doing.

If you ask these three questions after important conversations you have with the people you lead — and if you follow through on your continue, stop, start commitments — you’ll become a great leader and put yourself in line for the next promotion.

Try this.  It works.

Your career mentor,

Bud

PS: I write this blog to help people create the life and career success they want and deserve. Now I’m going one step further. I’ve created a membership site in which I’ve pulled together my best thoughts on success. And, as a reader of this blog, you can become a member for free. Just go to www.BudBilanich.com/join to claim your free membership. You’ll be joining a vibrant and growing community of success minded professionals. I hope to see you there.