The only 6 skills you need to get the job you want
Karren Brady CBE delivered the opening address at Women of Silicon Roundabout last year, where she discussed some of her early experiences of running the business side of a football club aged just 23, to being Alan Sugar’s aide on The Apprentice.
According to her, these are the 6 key skills you need in order to have the career you want.
1. Leadership
Everyone can have leadership skills, no matter their level of seniority, because leadership has nothing to do with management: it is about vision. And persuading and communicating with people in order to get the buy in and help you need to deliver that vision. Leadership is facing the music even if you don’t like the tune, and how you behave when you don’t know what to do.
2. Ambition (and hard work)
Ambition is having a spark, a fire inside of you, one that says, “I’m not going to settle for that, I’m going to keep going.”
Ambition is often seen as a bad thing — we’re frightened to say we are ambitious in case that is taken to mean we are ruthless. But this isn’t the case at all. Ambition is a desire to do and be the best that you can, and never giving up on that desire.
Nobody ever started anything without ambition, and they wouldn’t ever finish it without hard work.
3. Determination
Determination is the key to your own success. The ability to pick yourself up when you’ve been knocked down, whether it is a temporary defeat or total failure. How you react to failure sets your path.
You need to find your backbone, grit your teeth, and keep going.
4. Attitude
If you don’t like something, change it. And if it’s not possible to change it, you need to change your attitude and mindset towards it.
This includes your attitude to taking risks. Karren will ask herself, “If I take this risk, what is the worst thing that can happen?” If you can truly confront the impact of a decision, the consequence of it, and could face the worst case scenario — then you should do it.
5. Direction
It is important to have direction, and visualise where you want to be.
Opportunities and direction are often actually disguised as hard work. The constant passion, strategy, integrity, desire, and absolute willingness to do your best every day is what will direct you.
It doesn’t have to matter where you start out— and it’s where you finish that is entirely up to you.
6. Positivity
Finally, you need to be positive. You just need to. The people who are truly successful are the people who hang on and keep believing, even when everyone else has let go.
