Archive for the 'Hot Skills' Category

Archives for Hot Skills

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In our modern world, we’re moving at such a rapid pace we often miss seeing extraordinary signs and messages that pop up in our daily life. Whether you’re a soldier in Afghanistan, a corporate executive, a parent, spouse, or employee, when you can slow down enough to recognize and listen to your intuition, it can reveal truth, warn you of danger, uncover an ingenious idea, or help you understand people and situations in new ways.

In my new book, Second Sight, I show how to keep an eye out for intuitive experiences in everyday life, and what they can teach us. Drawing from my own experiences as an intuitive along with new scientific studies on the value of intuition in decision making, I include strategies anyone can use to develop their intuitive intelligence. In the book, you will learn how I came to be a pioneer in intuitive medicine, using my intuitive gift as a potent healing tool and incorporating it into my medical practice.

From Second Sight, here are five types of intuitive experiences you may encounter, and what they can teach you:

Body signals. Your body has many ways of getting your attention. It could be goosebumps when something feels right or strikes you as true. Or it might be your hair standing up on the back of your neck when you sense danger.

How to use it. Most commonly referred to as a “gut reaction,” your body’s response to the world around you is often instant–quicker, in fact, than your conscious thought. Next time you sense your body is trying to alert you to something, check in with it. Are your shoulders tense? Is there a knot in your stomach? Or do you feel energized and excited? When you learn to read your body signals, a whole new type of information will be available to you.

Read More

Archives for Hot Skills

In a useful BusinessWeek report called Managing the Global Workforce we learned that winning the war for talent is a challenge that few corporations are well-equipped to handle.

I wouldn’t call this news, but it’s certainly a macro-trend: as corporations morph from multinationals into transnationals that establish talent centers around the globe, talent management becomes a more strategic skill set for aspiring executives. Some b-schools are starting to teach these skills, but mostly it’s on-the-job training.

The key takeaway for job seekers is that you want to work for a company that doesn’t try to replicate its culture around the globe but instead embraces diversity as strength and not a weakness.

Read More

Archives for Hot Skills

Terry Hird is a professional negotiator in Silicon Valley who enjoys teaching others the craft. Arranging a time to interview him by phone didn’t involve a lot of back and forth. It was a take it or leave it proposition.

Well, not really, I suppose I could have held out for an in-person meeting and then I would have been obliged to accept his location. That’s the thing about negotiations – you have to know when to press for what matters to you and be very selective about it. We agreed I would call him, but I’m no pushover.

A lack of good negotiation skills can hold back career advancement – and worse – says Hird who in addition to running his own firm also teaches an extension course at UC-Berkeley. “The most popular topics for [my students] are how to get a raise, and how to deal with a bad boss,” he says.

Read More

Archives for Hot Skills

Clients who don’t know what they want can chew up countless hours of your time with exploratory emails, phone calls, meetings, and requests for more details if you let them. Ditto for blood-sucking zombies who milk you for free advice but have no intention of ever hiring you.

Here are some suggestions for “training” indecisive clients and weeding out the bloodsuckers:

Cap getting-to-know-me meetings. Bloodsuckers are fans of meetings with agendas like “let’s spend the next four hours talking about how you’d execute our project were we to actually offer it to you.” For this reason, I have a rule about complimentary getting-to-know-me meetings: One hour max is all you get – by bat phone, webcam, or in the flesh – and then I’m billing you for it. Likewise, I don’t dress, drive, and give up my morning for just anyone. Unless there’s big money, repeat business, or real PIE potential, I phone it in.

Use templates. Although I have a bio and work samples on my website, I still need to email interested clients my references, additional samples, and a more detailed bio or resume from time to time. The materials I send vary wildly, depending on whether I’m talking to an arts organization that wants me to teach, a potential copywriting client, or a news website that wants an article written. Rather than reinvent the wheel each time, I have a nice collection of templates I emply: ShamlessInstructorPromo.doc, Fortune500Bait.doc, and MediaWhore.doc.

Read More

Archives for Hot Skills

The art of everyday communications should be every executive’s number one priority. Every statement and every communication must contain the elements connected to company success, including its values, motivation, goals and objectives. However, successful communication is not just about idea, it’s also about how it is said.

These eight steps will help you turn communication into a hot skill, pivotal to advancing both your career and your company’s agenda:

The first step for leaders is to constantly keep internal and external communication lines open. Quick and responsive replies to all queries will ensure that everybody is on top of the game and keeping evolving situations transparent.

Read More