Whether you’re in sales, service, content marketing, advertising, in marketing or design, everyone needs to make a decision every day about the skills they want to learn and what they’re not good at learning. Because if they truly want to get better at what they do every day, they need to learn something that they’re not good at because when you know you’re not a great hm…
In her new book, “I Can Be a HCM Too!,” which just came out from Little, Brown and Company, Candace Fawcett offers guidance for everyone in any career. From millennials to baby boomers, Fawcett makes it clear that getting the right skills for a career is not about an externship. And you don’t need to wait for more than a year to figure it out; you can start practicing, taking classes, and exploring on your own. Because research shows that if you want to get better at something, you must work on it everyday.
“An externship isn’t necessary for skills training,” she explains. “It’s a learning environment designed to help someone continue learning.”
And even if you don’t have an externship, Fawcett says you can still learn new skills every day by doing the following:
Take notes. “Study what you hear in your meetings and what you see on your computer screen,” she says. “The last thing you want to do is have to write something down in a report, but it’s so important to keep a mental record of what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing.”
Learn at a slow pace. “Some skills take a while to learn,” she explains. “So, instead of doing everything all at once, start slowly, take small steps.”
Get out there. “The more time you spend training and working on new skills, the more comfortable you will be with them and the less you’ll need to learn them every day,” she says. “Then, you can take your time working on the ones you can master.”