5 Basic Skills to Learn Today as a Professional

It does not matter what your particular job function is in life there are five skills that we know you will need. These are basic skills that most people overlook and get surprised when it is time to function. The professional life is not easy it demands that one be on their toes and be functional. So without much delay here is our five suggestions

1.Communication

We are humans after all, imagine living life without communication , that would just not make sense for society. It is the same for a working professional. Communication applies to making presentations, sending and replying emails, department meetings, being in good books with your boss, informing team members of new things among other things. Some emails that people write just do not make sense or they write expecting that the next person is thinking what they are thinking. Now communication involves (if you have picked it up by now) oral, written and non-verbal communication.  You can get trained on communication or simply read and self-train, choose between these two but make sure you get communication skills.

2. PowerPoint, Excel and Word (or equivalents in your IT World)

Now you may be wondering why we have put these together, well the fact is that one will need one of the three at some point. You cannot expect to become a manager if you don’t know how to write a report or how to do a budget or make presentation. Similarly every professional will always get a day when they are required to use their spreadsheet or word skills. Just don’t be caught out when the time comes for you to showcase your skills.

3. Grooming Skills and Others

If you are going to play the part then you need to look and act the part. Some people think all there is to being a professional is producing the work and forget the softer side of it.  When they get passed over from big meetings or simple conversations in the kitchen they don’t understand why this happens. There is no substitute for good grooming.

4.  Reading to Understand

Believe it or not this is a critical skill to have in the workplace. A lot of people see emails, documents but few people actually read to understand. In the end they are passed over by very important information and are always doing things last minute or simply don’t do what they are supposed to.

5. Organization Skills

In a professional environment you may receive a 100 emails, you must be able to organize yourself so that you can be ahead. Being organized means understanding priorities. Efficiency and effective are the key words in the different tasks that you need to. The best CEOs are where they are because they can organize themselves to achieve more than normal. Those who never get far will always tell you that “It’s not my job”, but the person who wants to get ahead and organize them to do the extra work.

Now these are simple basic skills. You can rate yourself in what you are good at out of five, with five being your highest.