Indispensable Skills
What’s your indispensable skill?
What is YOUR indispensable skill? You do a lot of things well, and maybe some things extraordinarily well. But what makes you irreplaceable? Whether you are looking for a new job, a promotion, or a new contract, being able to effectively communicate the answer to this question is critical to your success and the success of the company you support. Additionally, it provides insurance and security in your current job. This question, though, has two parts: (1) What is that unique ability, knowledge, experience, talent or even philosophy that will set you apart from all others, and (2) Is that skill of value to your intended audience?
For example, because I have a strong scientific research and strategic marketing background, I have the unique ability to take highly technical scientific language or concepts and convert them into comprehensible persuasive marketing campaigns. Now is that of value to companies? In my experience, this combination is rare and often needed. Add my ability to rapidly generate new ideas and write content for all audiences, and I can now present an indispensable skill.
So how do you determine YOUR indispensable skill? Begin by building your personal SWOT to identify your Strengths and Weaknesses, as well as Opportunities and Threats to your success. It is important to be exhaustive and honest in each of these categories. Next, conduct the following exercise for each category:
• Strengths: Identify only the strengths that you believe are unique and would be of value to a potential employer, boss, or client. Both uniqueness AND value are critical to differentiating yourself.
• Weaknesses: Determine if a weakness is a liability in light of what your audience values. Your weakness may seem important to you but may actually be irrelevant to the needs of the job. Conversely, you may have a weakness in an area that is universally valued like time management or organization. In that case, you need to take active efforts to eliminate that weakness through education, coaching, or experience.
• Opportunities: Identify opportunities in the market that might give you an indispensable skill. For example, certain training, certification, or work experience may enable you to offer a skill that will become a valuable commodity in the near future.
• Threats: Identify market trends that will make your skills easily replaceable either because the skill is becoming obsolete or because there is a wave of new people gaining that same skill.
You have now identified your indispensable skill, but as they say, “If an indispensable skill falls in a forest . . . “ How will you communicate your indispensable skill? One technique is to start with the creation of a simple brand message – ideally exactly seven words. You should be able to understand your skill and its value in a simple, easy-to-remember way. And with only seven words, every word needs to be imbued with significant power. For example, going back to my indispensable skill above, my seven word tagline could be “Leveraging marketing savvy to communicate YOUR science” or ”Rapidly generating innovative ideas; executing with precision” or ”Bridging skilled writing, science, and marketing expertise.”
This seven-word “tagline” is not intended for your external communications, but instead provides a foundation or framework for communicating that indispensable skill. It is a theme to anchor your thinking as you promote yourself to employers, clients, or bosses. The goal of course is that they equally see you as indispensable.
What is YOUR seven-word tagline? .
One final message to employers, clients and bosses: It is important to recognize that EVERYONE has an indispensable skill. It is easy to fall into the trap of not leveraging that skill because the job description is limited to a specific set of KPIs, but to not take advantage of someone’s indispensable skill is to miss a tremendous opportunity. So the next time you look at your staff, company, colleagues, or suppliers, ask yourself, “Do I seek out indispensable skills and then use them, or am I so focused on day-to-day responsibilities that I forget to look?” Hopefully, you identify them and realize the great potential in everyone.