Thoughts over coffee: Part thirteen (Part one - career acceleration)

Coffee and I are old friends (coffee is older than me of course) and I do a lot of thinking over coffee. With this in mind I decided to start a little concept called *thoughts over coffee* which I'll be doing from time to time. *** *** Over my professional career I've had to come up with strategies to push forward, become better, learn more skills, hone the ones I have and generally to continually improve; it's in my nature to want to that as a human man and it has made sense to do it in my career as well. Staying in place, not moving forward is tantamount to going backwards compared to others who develop, grow and progress - not something I'm willing to accept. Here's the first of two installments on some skills I've learned and used to accelerate my career and to progress. It's never just been about promotion and more income, it's always started with the need to continually improve and my desire to chase excellence rather than perfection. ### Career acceleration **Active listening** - This is something so many people do not do well mainly due to inattentiveness, thinking about their response prior to hearing what's being said, ego and hubris and many other reasons. Active listening involves eye contact, body-language and verbal cues all of which show the speaker they are being listened to and *heard*. Reflecting back to the speaker and clarifying any points is next and then paraphrasing what they said generally to demonstrate they've been understood is a solid way to find better results. **Find and nurture resilience** - Things won't always go your way, challenges are part of life and business and understanding this, accepting it, will help a person on their path to excellence. It goes hand-in-glove with confidence (not arrogance) in one's abilities and if the right coping mechanisms are found and used it can help a person move along their career journey towards greater results, progression and even promotion. **Resolving conflicts** - This is always going to raise its head, conflicts in the workplace. Getting good at conflict resolution is a big leap forward for anyone looking to accelerate their career. Understanding the reason or cause for the conflict, acknowledging and validating other people's emotions and allowing everyone to be heard and actively listening are three of the steps that move conflicts to satisfactory resolution; finally is managing the outcomes, collaborating with all stake-holders to find beneficial resolutions. Staying calm along the way and keeping discussions focused on the problem not the person/people helps grease the cogs of conflict resolution and those that are good at it typically rise to the surface within organisations. **Body language skills** - It might sound easy but it's not. Learning to read other's and control our own body language is a critical element to excelling in one's career. It's how we stand, shake hands, where we sit, where our eyes look, how we mirror and match others in certain situations, our gestures and even down to the micro-expressions our faces make without us even knowing. Study it and get good at it and people will open up more, feel more comfortable and connected and for the individual it brings confidence, likeability and other such things. Body language forms the greater part of communication and is often much more important than the words. *** What do you reckon? If you want to comment below then go ahead, I'm interested in your thoughts and experiences.