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The fact is that we are likely to be working remotely a lot more in the future. Maybe not 100% of the time that is the case for many of us during the current crisis, but the future of work is going to be more directed by your own rules in terms of where, when and how you work - this transformation is already underway. This means that with less of our days formulated by the physical nature of being in the office and around colleagues, customers and office distractions, we will need to work harder to manage our personal and professional environment and development to support our career growth.
This puts the ball firmly in your hands to create the structures and processes that will help you achieve your career goals, which is great news, but not without it’s challenges. It will require additional focus and discipline to concentrate not only on your work scheduled but to ensure you are doing the things that are going to help your career in the long term, which until now, at least in part, have been supported through office life, be it networking, skill development or team building.
Let's focus on the 5 key skills and how to grow them, in order for your career to flourish when you don’t call the office your home.
A strong and activate network is critical to your sporting career. It’s a ‘people industry’ and if you are not making the right connections because you are stuck behind your computer in your garden shed all day long, you need to change your approach. You need to attend events and utilise opportunities that allow you to connect and build relationships with industry professionals and businesses. These can be virtual, although nothing makes up for physical interactions. Whatever the format, make sure you have a clear schedule over the coming months of opportunities you will be attending and a plan for how and where you will be making meaningful connections and building your network. Use your social networks and associated groups to stay active and ‘part of the conversation’ and leverage these interactions to join new events and meet new people that will intern help build your schedule.
Soft skills are personal attributes such as leadership, communication or time management that have long been overlooked in favour of developing ‘hard skills’. However in today’s competitive sports business marketplace, they are essential to career success. Add into the equation remote working and managing personalities, projects and teams virtually, and having a refined set of soft skills will not only enable you to get the best out of your team but be sought after by future employers. The top soft skills to focus on refining for a remote focused world of work are: Communications, Self-Awareness, Decision Making, Time Management and Adaptability.
Check out our article on future proof skills for more detail on building these skills.
Aim to find training that will help you manage an existing challenge so that you can put into practice your learning and see immediate impact while refinding your methods.
We are part of the largest remote working experiment the world has ever seen, this provides the backdrop for a steep learning curve, where we need to adapt our skill sets to flourish in a new world. The skills you need to beat the competition and flourish in your career are dependent on your functional expertise or where you are aiming to take your career.
[...] you will quickly become an invaluable commodity in the organisation while building your employability
Cloud computing, Artificial intelligence, coding, Marketing Automation, business analytics, video production and the list of in-demand skills that employers in the sports industry need. Quality training for all these skills can be easily found via online provides for you to learn in your own time and for self-starters YouTube and free software can get you a long way to becoming proficient in many of these areas. Identify the niche skills that can either empower your current role or business in general, or where you want to take your career so that you can sell this into your current or future employer while building you capabilities. If you can identify how you can add value to your business through skills they aren’t currently utilising (or using with limited structure) you will become an invaluable commodity in the organisation while building your employability.
Without the office, being effective, productive and creative with workflows for you and your team is a whole new concept. You will have no doubt developed valuable skills and used new digital tools during 2020 and your forced WFH setup. However, as many think of this time as a temporary situation, developing hard coded knowledge and processes to enable winning remote teams for the long term is something many individuals won’t have adopted. If you can develop the knowledge and skills around making you and your team (and even organisation) remote optimized, so that your output and culture are both aligned and improved, you will quickly gain a position of authority and leadership. This is the challenge all businesses face today and are needing their people to take the lead. This can cover all aspects of your organisation from building effective project planning and delivery frameworks and how to collaborate effectively all the way to monitoring team wellbeing and engagement.
Remote working relies on digital competency. All of the above skills require you to rise above others in the development and ownership of digital and technology skills and tools to ultimately support business flourish in a brave new world. The learning curve is steep, but our capacity to learn new skills is infinite. Irrespective of where you are in your career journey, today is the time to concentrate on improving these skills in order to build a position of strength in your career of tomorrow. Concentrate on identifying skills and tools that will support your current role and your organisation within the above categories. Take the lead and build a position of authority on their implementation across your business.
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