25/06/2024
The Key Work of Managers: Overseeing and Managing the Work of Others
One of the key roles of managers is to oversee and manage the work of others. This skill is crucial, but oddly, it is often overlooked in management textbooks.
When we say ‘manage’ the work of others, we do not mean being capable of delegating, and then giving feedback on the work, although this is important. We actually mean the much broader idea that a manager is responsible for ensuring that each member of the team has a reasonable workload that keeps them busy but not overstretched, and enables them to develop their skills further.
Put like that, it starts to sound more complicated. To achieve this, managers need a wide range of skills, including delegation skills, feedback skills, and coaching skills. They also need to be able to accept that they probably won’t get it right the first time, or every time after that. The workload may need to be juggled repeatedly over time, and as new people enter the team. The work of a manager is seldom finished…
For more about this essential area of management work, head to our page on Overseeing Work:
18/06/2024
Growing Old(er) Gracefully: The Art and Science of Aging Well
Growing older is inevitable—or rather, the alternative is pretty unattractive to most of us! The skill, therefore, is likely to be in aging well or gracefully. But what would this look like in practice?
There are three key areas where you can take actions that will make a difference:
1. Looking after your physical health, for example, by eating well, taking plenty of exercise and getting enough sleep. You can also help by reducing your alcohol intake and stopping smoking.
2. Looking after your mental health, for example by getting out and meeting people, and keeping up with your friends.
3. Looking after your cognitive health, or the ability to think and remember things—which is best served by looking after your physical health.
Our page on aging well has more on this topic, which is, after all, relevant to all of us!
https://buff.ly/3XzKxLk
You may also find the new edition of our eBook, The SkillsYouNeed Guide to Life: Looking After Yourself useful with advice on how to look after yourself for people of all ages.
11/06/2024
Don’t Believe Everything You Read... Busting Common Myths About Food and Diet
Over the last few years, scientists have been making a lot of new discoveries about food, diet and nutrition. Indeed, it sometimes seems that almost everything we thought we knew is actually wrong. However, some incorrect beliefs are turning out to be extremely persistent, despite all the evidence.
For example, did you know that exercise doesn’t help you lose weight? It’s very, very good for you—and we should probably all be doing more—but it has no effect on your weight.
Another common myth is that you should take a vitamin supplement ‘just in case’. Wrong again. Unless you have a medically-diagnosed vitamin deficiency—and that applies to very few of us—then taking supplements can be harmful, and may cause real problems.
For more common myths (and the evidence that shows they are untrue), head to our page https://buff.ly/3VgLPIt
You may also be interested in the new edition of our eBook, The SkillsYouNeed Guide to Life: Looking After Yourself. This contains a lot of new content on food and nutrition, including all the science busting some common myths.
04/06/2024
Developing as a Creative Leader
The concept of creative leadership—leadership that nurtures and encourages creativity within the organisation—has recently become a lot more mainstream. This is probably because of a growing recognition that organisations cannot afford to stand still in a rapidly-changing world. Instead, they need to grow and change—and this sometimes needs revolution, not evolution.
Creative leaders share several important characteristics:
• They do not see themselves as the source of ideas, but instead encourage other people to have and develop ideas;
• They ask good questions, which tap into the imagination of employees at all levels; and
• They help their organisations to incorporate a wide range of different perspectives.
All these encourage creative insights, and facilitate creative collaboration. In other words, creative leaders create a climate in which creativity can flourish, and then they nurture ideas. To sum this up, creative leaders don’t manage creativity itself. Instead, they manage for creativity.
For more about developing as a creative leader, head to https://buff.ly/4aLOPlZ . You may also be interested in our series of eBooks, The Skills You Need Guide to Leadership, recently reissued in a new edition.
28/05/2024
A Shortcut to Leadership? The Top Skills Needed by Leaders
If you’re hoping to move into a leadership position, what are the key skills that you need to develop? Or perhaps we should say, which skills do you need to develop first, because it is arguable that leaders never stop developing a very wide range of skills.
There are three main areas of skills needed by leaders:
• Personal skills, because leadership starts with you. Key personal skills for leaders include self-motivation, integrity and honesty, and self-confidence.
• Interpersonal skills, because every leader needs followers, and has to be able to work with others. Key interpersonal skills for leaders include communication skills, motivation skills, and delegation skills.
• Technical skills, such as the ability to solve problems and make decisions, and to think creatively and innovate. Leaders also need to be able to think strategically, to set out a vision for the team or organisation and work out how to achieve it.
Start your leadership journey today by reading our page of ten top leadership skills. You may also like our new video summarising the content on this page. Subscribe to the SkillsYouNeed YouTube channel and be one of the first to hear about new videos.
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21/05/2024
Embracing Your Internal Ecosystem: Understanding and Improving Your Gut Microbiome
There is growing evidence that each of us is not, in fact, a single organism, but actually a community of millions and millions of micro-organisms. Many of these live in our guts, and make up our gut microbiota. There is also evidence that a more diverse gut microbiome—that is, more microbes of different varieties—contributes to better health.
You can help your gut microbiome to thrive by:
• Eating a wide range of plant-based foods as a regular part of your diet;
• Trying some fermented foods like kimchi and kefir;
• Stopping snacking, to give your microbes a chance to rest; and
• Avoiding ultra-processed foods (those made using industrial processes and including the vast majority of packaged snacks and foods).
For more about how to improve your gut microbiome, head to:
https://buff.ly/3K92JDJ
You may also be interested in the new edition of our eBook, The SkillsYouNeed Guide to Life: Looking After Yourself. This contains a lot of new content on food and nutrition, updated to reflect new understandings about food and our bodies.
14/05/2024
Helping Your Children Through Exams
As a parent, one of the hardest skills is to let go. This is especially true when it comes to exams, because we all want our children to succeed.
You obviously cannot take their exams for them, so what can you do to help? Ideas include:
• Encouraging your child to understand the consequences of success and failure, to help them develop intrinsic motivation.
• Encouraging your child to develop good study habits. For example, encourage them to turn off social media and notifications, take regular breaks from studying (but study hard in between) and develop a revision plan.
• Asking what support your child would like from you during exams. Be prepared to provide encouragement, remove noisy younger siblings if necessary, and help to minimise distractions.
• Make sure that your child is looking after themselves. Ensure that good, nutritious food is available both for meals and snacks, and that they are getting enough sleep.
For more about this important topic, head to our page on supporting children through exams. Your children may also be interested in our eBook on Study Skills, part of the Skills You Need Guide for Students, available from our shop.
https://buff.ly/4bBHZQR
30/04/2024
Exam Time 😨
In the northern hemisphere, exam season is rapidly approaching. Nervous teenagers and students are preparing to take public or institutional exams, many for the first time.
If this is you, you may be wondering what you can do to give yourself the best possible chance of success. Some important tips for this time are:
• Start your revision early. There really is no substitute for this. You need plenty of time to review what you have learned, and ensure that you have understood it.
• Organise your study time. Take time to plan your revision, and work out how much time you need to spend on each subject.
• Look after yourself during revision and exam time. You will work better if you are completely healthy. Make sure that you eat properly, and also get enough sleep. It is also good to take exercise periodically, even if it is only a walk around the block each day.
For more ideas to help with your revision, head to our page of top exam preparation tips. You may also be interested in our eBook on Study Skills, part of the Skills You Need Guide for Students, available from our shop.
https://buff.ly/3oXktZz
23/04/2024
Regrets? I’ve Had a Few... Learning to Live ‘Your Best Life’.
Most of us would probably say that we want to be able to look back on our lives and say that we lived the life we wanted, and had few regrets. However, what, in practice, will make that happen?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle felt that the answer lay in living a ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ life. He outlined eight virtues that he felt everyone should try to develop if they wished to live a ‘good’ life. These are:
• Courage, and not cowardice or impulsiveness;
• Self-control, instead of self-indulgence or selfishness;
• Generosity;
• Friendliness and politeness, not rudeness or other unpleasantness towards others;
• Tact and discretion;
• Truthfulness and integrity;
• Good temper, even in the face of provocation; and
• Fairness.
For more about how to develop these virtues, head to our page on Living Well, Living Ethically. You may also be interested in our eBook, The Skills You Need Guide to Life: Living Well, Living Ethically, which is designed to help you think through how you might want to live. It is newly published in its second edition.
16/04/2024
You Only Get One Body... Living a Healthy Life
We all want to be healthy. We know that we only get one body, so it pays to look after it. We also probably all understand that this means eating the right things, getting enough sleep and exercising well. However, the details can be harder to work out. It is difficult to unpick all the (often conflicting) advice that is available and work out what is best to do.
One option is to use a framework for your thinking. In everything you do, ask yourself:
• What do I want to do? That is, how do I feel about it?
• What is best for me? That is, what do the facts say?
• What am I going to do? That is, how am I bringing those two together?
For more about improving your lifestyle and health, why not head over to our page on Caring for Your Body and start reading?
You may also be interested in our eBook, The Skills You Need Guide to Life: Looking After Yourself. This is a new third edition of one of our most popular titles, with lots of new content, especially on food, diet and nutrition.
https://buff.ly/2Oa0hT6
09/04/2024
A Journey of a Thousand Miles… Working on Your Personal Development
Many people who visit the Skills You Need website, or sign up for our newsletter, are trying to develop their skills. Few, however, stop and think about the process that they use for their personal development.
The evidence suggests that setting goals, planning, and reviewing your progress, can help you to achieve what you want. It can be helpful to follow a cycle in personal development, such as:
• Developing a personal vision, or purpose for your development;
• Planning your personal development, and deciding what you are going to do to achieve your goals;
• Undertaking activities to help you improve your skills;
• Recording your personal development;
• Reviewing your development, and perhaps revisiting your plans and goals to reflect how you may have changed.
For more, head to our pages on personal development. You may also be interested in our eBook, The Skills You Need Guide to Personal Development.
https://buff.ly/2GbQiVT
02/04/2024
Social Media Marketing
Social media is an increasingly important medium for marketing for many businesses. A huge number of people now use social media every day. It makes sense for businesses to reach out to potential customers this way. However, social media marketing is not always easy, as many businesses have found out the hard way.
How can you avoid the pitfalls of social media marketing? Our tips include:
• Use scheduling tools to make life easier—but make sure that you monitor your posts so that you can respond to any engagement.
• Use monitoring tools to pick up mentions of your business—both good and bad. This will enable you to respond quickly to any criticism, and also thank people for positive feedback.
• Evaluate your social media activity to see what works. It is easy to get caught up in a hunt for ‘likes’ and ‘shares’, but you also need to monitor the effect of your activity on your bottom line!
There is more about this area in our page on Social Media Marketing. This is part of a relatively new section of SkillsYouNeed, focusing on marketing skills, so why not have a look at the whole section here?
https://buff.ly/3TY2f9l
26/03/2024
Starting a New Business
Setting up a small business is a challenging process. There is so much that you need to understand and do to help your business succeed. Unfortunately, this also means that there are a number of places where you could go wrong in the process, and cause your fledgling business to falter.
The main steps include:
• Generating your business idea, and then pulling together a plan setting out how your business will operate.
• Sorting out the legal issues such as your business name, and the type of company.
• Employing staff and finding suitable premises.
For more about how to get your business up and running, you may want to head over to our website, and have a look at our pages on Entrepreneurship and self-employment. There is plenty to help you, including advice on developing a business idea, the legal and financial aspects of starting a business, and what to think about in terms of people, place and promotion. For a single handy guide, all in one place, you might like to pick up a copy of the Skills You Need Guide to Self-Employment and Running Your Own Business from our shop.
https://buff.ly/43AnzFd
19/03/2024
Managing Difficult Behaviour in Meetings
Meetings do not always run according to plan. Sometimes the participants simply do not want to cooperate. When that happens, you need to have some idea about how to manage this behaviour.
It is important to remember that someone engaging in disruptive behaviours may not have thought about the impact of their actions on other people. It may therefore be enough to remind them politely that time is limited.
However, if they are responding emotionally to the situation—or even to something outside the meeting of which others are unaware—you may need an alternative approach. A good way is to start by recognising their concern and naming their emotion. You can then respond to it by applying logic to their questions or concerns. In other words, recognise that they are upset, and why, and then provide an answer. This may be to take the conversation elsewhere at a different time, to avoid wasting other people’s time.
There is more about the principles behind this approach in our pages on Managing Difficult Behaviour in Meetings and Transactional Analysis. Head over there now to find out more about this interesting area. After all, you never know when you might need it!
https://buff.ly/4aBZVdN
12/03/2024
Developing Your Coaching Skills
Coaching is a process that aims to improve performance. It generally focuses on the present, rather than the future. Coaches usually see themselves as facilitators, not experts—although if you are coaching someone you manage, you may also have a good knowledge of the subject area. However, the purpose of coaching is to help someone to learn, rather than teaching them.
Good coaches have a variety of skills, including:
• Very good listening skills, with skill in clarifying and reflecting to ensure that they have fully understood.
• Questioning skills, to help people to think things through and reach their own conclusions.
• Understanding the importance of how you say something, as well as what exactly you say.
• High emotional intelligence, and particularly empathy, to help them understand how others feel.
• Giving people space to experiment and innovate, and allowing them to fail without being blamed.
For more about how to develop your coaching skills, you may find it helpful to read our pages on coaching, starting with What is Coaching? You may also be interested in our eBook, The Skills You Need Guide to Coaching and Mentoring, now available from our shop.
https://buff.ly/2NiwsuE
05/03/2024
Developing Mutual Respect: Improving Your Intercultural Awareness
Intercultural awareness is an understanding of the similarities and differences between your own and other cultures. These may be a matter of values, beliefs, or behaviour, and they are important. People with good intercultural awareness are particularly aware of what may cause offence in different cultures.
You need at least a modicum of intercultural awareness when going abroad on holiday. It may even be the vital ingredient that prevents you from being arrested, as a number of tourists have found to their cost over the years. However, those who live and work abroad, or who work in multicultural teams, need particularly good intercultural awareness.
The first step in developing better intercultural awareness is admitting that you don’t know—and then trying to find out more. This may sound simple, but it is essential. You also need to check your assumptions, which may well be both deep-rooted and incorrect. Finally, you need to take the approach that you will gain, not lose, by finding out more about how other people live.
For more about developing your intercultural awareness, and the importance of celebrating diversity, head over the Skills You Need site now.
https://buff.ly/3wOX5Dh
27/02/2024
“Fight the Good Fight…”: Managing Conflict, Including in Relationships
Conflicts can be a normal part of life for many people. Some people even seem to thrive on arguments. However, there can be times when the level of conflict is too much, and then you may need to take action.
There are broadly five strategies for dealing with conflict:
• Compete or Fight, the classic win/lose situation, where the strength and power of one person wins the conflict;
• Denial or Avoidance, where you pretend there is no problem;
• Smoothing over the Problem, where you ‘agree to disagree’: you acknowledge the problem, and maintain harmony on the surface, but do not resolve the underlying issue;
• Compromise or Negotiation, where both give something up to create a middle ground; and
• Collaboration, working together to create a shared outcome.
You can use these strategies both at work and at home. Our page on managing conflict in relationships also suggests some ways that you can change the pattern of your relationship if you have already established one of these, and wish to break away.
To find out more about conflict resolution, why not head over to the website now?
https://buff.ly/3Tf4qoK
You may also like Part 3 of the Skills You Need Guide to Interpersonal Skills (Conflict Resolution and Mediation), available from the Skills You Need shop.
Conflict Resolution | SkillsYouNeed
Interpersonal conflict is a fact of life and can arise in almost any sphere. Learn about how to manage it in a way that does not increase your stress levels.
20/02/2024
Freelancing 101: Finding Work as a Freelancer
As a freelancer, no work equals no money. It is simple. Finding work as a freelancer is therefore essential. Unfortunately it is particularly hard when you first start freelancing, because you have not yet built up any kind of reputation, and have no word-of-mouth recommendations.
If you are lucky, you will be freelancing in an area where you have previously worked, and may have contacts who can provide work, or recommend you to other people. If not, you will have to try other methods. There are three main routes:
• Through your network, including social media. You never know, someone might know somebody useful;
• Using freelancing websites, where you can bid for work or projects posted by other people; and
• Through agencies and service providers (though you need to be aware that some of these may not be very ethical—and may not pay very well).
Our page on Finding Work as a Freelancer contains more ideas to help with this essential area. It is well worth a read even if you are busy trying to find work…
https://buff.ly/3wkutSq
13/02/2024
Test, Test and Retest: Improving Your Exam Skills (or Exam Support Skills…)
It is approaching exam season in the northern hemisphere. The thoughts of students everywhere, from school through to college and university, are turning reluctantly to revision. Exams may be a month or two away, but they loom on the horizon.
Fortunately, there is still plenty of time to improve your exam skills. You have time to prepare, also known as revising your course content. You also have time to work on your exam technique, and practise answering questions.
Our top tips for getting the best out of your exam preparation time are:
• Get started on your revision. The first step is often the hardest, so stop thinking about it, and just do some.
• Mix it up. Variety is the spice of both life and revision, and you will work more effectively if you ‘ring the changes’.
• Look after yourself. Eat well and healthily, remember to exercise, and get enough sleep. All these will help you to concentrate better.
For more about improving your exam skills, head to our page on Exam Skills. You may also like our tips for preparing for exams. Parents may also be interested in our page on Supporting Children Through Exams.
https://buff.ly/3SUnWXm
06/02/2024
Standing Up for Yourself? Being Assertive in Close Relationships
It is surprising how hard it can be to stand up for ourselves with someone we love. Even those who are most assertive at work can sometimes struggle in close relationships. It is, perhaps, something to do with wanting to please the other person, especially if the relationship is relatively new. However, it is also vital for the health of the relationship, and for your ongoing self-confidence.
In a relationship, assertive people talk honestly about their feelings. However, they also listen carefully to their partner and ensure that they understand their views. They are prepared to admit to mistakes. Finally, they see themselves as equal to their partner—but they also value their partner, and are grateful for the little things, like a cup of tea in the morning. These people build their relationships on mutual respect, and their relationships are stronger for that foundation.
To find out more about how to be assertive in your personal relationships, head to our site now. For more about how to apply other life/work skills in your personal relationships, have a look at our section on personal relationships.
https://buff.ly/485qTIX
30/01/2024
Managing Relationships in Business: Rapport, Client Relationships, and Self-Employment
Building relationships is essential whether you are employed, self-employed or somewhere in between. The world revolves around human contact, and that means that you need to be able to establish a connection with other people quickly, and then build upon it. Our page on Building Rapport explains more about how this essential process works in practice, and provides some tips about how to get started.
Building good relationships is perhaps especially important for freelancers and self-employed people. They need to develop relationships rapidly with potential clients to help them get work—and our page on Networking for Freelancers may be helpful in this process—and they also need to communicate effectively to develop shared contracts and expectations once a job is awarded.
Our pages on Contracting for Freelancers and Managing Ongoing Client Relationships explain that the key to good client relationships is to set clear expectations—and then meet and manage them on an ongoing basis. Maintaining good, clear communications is obviously essential, as is being in touch regularly, in case the brief changes. Clear communication is also the key to invoicing, and more importantly to getting paid!
https://buff.ly/3HA61yK
23/01/2024
Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
Research suggests that many of us feel chronically tired much of the time—and that this is probably because we are not getting enough sleep. Most of us need around eight hours’ sleep per night.
Sleep is essential for our well-being. When we don’t get enough sleep, we are:
• More likely to catch infections such as colds;
• Less able to regulate appetite and therefore at risk of becoming overweight or obese; and
• More at risk of developing conditions like diabetes.
These conditions are bad enough as a starting point—but they also have other consequences. For example, we know that people are more likely to develop severe coronavirus infections if they are overweight or have underlying health conditions. It is clear that paying attention to your ‘sleep hygiene’ could have long-term benefits.
For more about why sleep matters, and the consequences of not getting enough sleep, why not read our page on The Importance of Sleep? You might also be interested in our page on What is Sleep? which gives some advice on how much sleep we need, and how to improve the quality of your sleep.
https://buff.ly/3kImYLz
16/01/2024
Study Skills – The Key to Your Success, and Not Just for Students
Starting a university or college degree?
Going back to school to study for exams?
Starting a new course of any type?
Researching potential opportunities for work?
Want to boost your knowledge and skills?
If so, you may need to work on your study skills. Study skills are key life skills that maximise your learning potential. The good news is that we have lots of pages that can help you here.
Studying often involves reading and assimilating information, and then producing some written work or making a presentation. While these skills are generic, there may be some very specific tasks you need help with, such as writing an essay or writing a report. Another useful study skill to develop is good active listening.
Before you can even think about how to study, you need to make sure that you’re ready to do so. Get yourself organised, and make sure that you’ve done some basic time management. If you’re not in the right environment, with enough time, you’re making your task several times harder than it needs to be.
Being able to work effectively means working out when and how you work best, and making the most of that time and place. The important thing is to understand what works for you, and then do it.
If you’re looking for a quick summary of some good ideas to help you study, why not head straight to our Top Tips for Study and get started?
Top Tips for Studying | SkillsYouNeed
It can be hard to find the best way of studying. These Top Tips provide some ideas to help you get going on study and make the most of your study time.
09/01/2024
Taking Your Skills With You Through Life: Understanding and Developing Transferable Skills
Transferable skills are those which you take with you through your life, from job to job. Of course, they also affect your personal relationships too, but mostly we talk about them when we are thinking about employment.
In other words, they are the skills that relate to how you work with other people, your awareness of yourself, and your ability to get on in life, or even generic practical skills like the ability to use certain computer programs and apps. They are not anything that you needed only for one job, like the ability to use a particular piece of machinery.
The difficulty for most people is not necessarily developing transferable skills; most of us have plenty, which we have been developing since early childhood. The key issue when we wish to change jobs is actually to identify those skills, and then market them to potential employers.
For more help with this key area of life, you may want to start with our page on Transferable Skills. You may also find our Interpersonal Skills Self-Assessment useful, which is available online, or as an ebook from the Skills You Need shop. You can also find help with writing a CV, covering letter and LinkedIn profile.
https://buff.ly/2S5Lyaq
03/01/2024
New Year, New Career? Or Should You Just Make Some tweaks?
New Year is traditionally a time to think about personal development and change. This year, with the economic climate looking somewhat gloomy around the world, it may be a good opportunity to take a long hard look at your work and decide if you want to make some changes.
But do you need an entirely new career?
Current thinking suggests not. Careers are no longer linear or upwards. Instead, they are much more flexible. You might want to try moving sideways, or into a different industry, to see if you find that more rewarding.
To do so, it may be helpful to think about five key areas:
• Your strengths, which make you stand out from the crowd;
• Your values, and what motivates you;
• Your confidence and belief in yourself;
• Your network and relationships with others; and
• Your ability to explore and capitalise on opportunities.
For more ideas about how to shape your career into what you want, visit our Career Management pages. You may also be interested in two of our eBooks, on personal development and getting a job.
Career Management Skills | SkillsYouNeed
Nowadays, we expect to manage our own careers, rather than having a job for life. Learn how to plan and develop your skills to create a fulfilling career.