In these changing times, you may find yourself surrounded by a lot of suggestions & advice to make your mark indelible in this highly competitive corporate world. Either you are a working professional or a business owner, you are always anxious about your career trajectory especially in this uncertain environment. While it is imperative to chart out your goals, it is equally important to spend a lot of time mastering all those needed to achieve them by bringing out the organic growth within yourself. Focus on the process & the results would be taken care of by themselves. However, there is a wide spectrum of skills that you can sharpen & display to stay on track and achieve the goals you had initially charted out. It is natural to get overwhelmed with so many of them & we end up pondering upon which ones to prioritize based on their strong direct impact. I have outlined 3 essential key ingredients required to achieve corporate success regardless of the position or the functional area you belong to.

Effective Communication: This is the only skill if mastered would lead you to do well in every rung of the corporate ladder. This is more important to have now than ever before, given the adoption of remote working in these turbulent times. It is said that only 7% of your message is being conveyed through your literal words. 38% is through your tone of voice & 55% is through your body language. These figures bear testimony to the importance of effective communication through words when the body-language component is completely missing while working remotely. Effective communication is all about putting across the idea in the right format to the intended audience keeping in mind the context under which it is being communicated. It does call for having an emotional quotient to get a sense of what needs to be spoken of, given the context. However, it predominantly depends on the way you put across: your voice, tone, message content, the words you choose that would largely determine the appropriate response you would receive & the way you come across as a person to others. It would help you create your first best impression as required in the corporate arena. Effective communication would reflect your values, beliefs & perception.

There are various contexts or scenarios in the corporate world where you’re required to communicate effectively. The higher you climb upwards, the essential it becomes for you to be an expert in this particular skill. Effective communication acts as a vital tool in resolving conflicts and build teams. It is crucial while negotiating with all the relevant stakeholders, esp. the customers & vendors. Sometimes you need to communicate a certain idea without mentioning it explicitly and sometimes you emphatically put across ideas. Communication is key in fostering good working relationships with superiors, peers & colleagues. One of the studies pointed out that it saw a 50% reduction in employees’ turnover rate, only by having effective corporate communication skills. Listening is another skill that needs to be developed when it comes to comprehending others and their message between the lines. All in all, Quality communication skills go a long way in building the required working culture for successful projects to thrive upon.

Business Domain knowledge: Everything originates from & revolves around business. The one who understands the domain, business model & its products thoroughly has greater leverage over others. They can drive businesses & take key strategic decisions. They are the ones who have strong business acumen and understand the nuances needed to stay competitive in the market. They do constant market research to understand the changing business trends, get a hold of the new market outlook to stay ahead of their competitors, thereby helping their organization achieve the competitive edge. Hence, being a subject matter expert in the domain an organization is into, puts one in a driver's seat. They have the power to set the business goals, design the marketing strategy, and direct the organization’s operations to keep their organization a notch ahead in the market. Hence it makes perfect sense for one to build the domain knowledge for their career success, as it places them at the helm of the company’s affairs. It allows one to show your mettle & skills to all the key people in an organization & thereby increases one’s self-worth. One can also hog the limelight by getting invited to various conferences & business seminars where people are curious to know more about the industry trends & their impact on the interplay of various variables involved. It also opens up an option to set up one’s own business by tapping an untapped niche market. While it takes longer to attain that expertise over the business domain, it is worth putting an effort, given its rich dividends reaped later.

Networking: Networking is a key ingredient in one’s growth in the corporate world. At an individual level, having a strong network provides one with adequate information & know-how to strategize one's next steps as a part of one's career planning. It gives one that insider information about the potential openings in the company. As a business owner, networking can open newer opportunities for them to meet new clients, industry experts & venture into newer markets, and thus with minimal effort, the profitability can be increased. With networking, one can learn a lot from their superiors who might have tread along the same path before. Their experience can be a great stepping stone for one to propel in their career. Especially in this VUCA world, networking gives one that insights & outside trends which can help one to stay isolated from any sudden shocks by taking certain proactive steps. Having said all this, one needs to be cognizant of the fact that networks don’t build in a day. It builds over a period of time by depositing trust & respect in the mutual relationship and by nurturing them throughout in a consistent manner. There are various forums created to bring like-minded people or people having similar interests to exchange ideas and thereby gain that additional mileage in progressing in their career.

While there are a lot more needed by an individual to achieve the highest levels of success, these 3 skills, in my opinion, form the base of everything, as this will give you the momentum needed to excel in other areas, thereby will help you to stay onto the path to achieving your career goals.

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