skills Archives - CoachOiseau Career Coaching

Depth over breadth?

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the general store of a small, rural Ontario town. It was amazing to see the variety of products in this one-person shop.

Non-perishable groceries, household hardware, beer…even a 16-flavour ice cream stand!

I stopped for a moment to pay particular attention to what the store was offering in terms of plumbing parts. The selection sat on a stack of three shelves, about one metre wide.

“Interesting,” I said to myself, “I could maybe fix a few basic plumbing issues with this gear, but would struggle to tackle the bigger, more expensive issues.”

More advanced parts would have to be bought elsewhere. And with my (very) limited plumbing skills, the more complex, valuable and expensive work would have to be done through someone else. I’d need the help of a true hardware store and a real plumber in a lot of cases.

Here’s the $64 000 question: does your career resemble the general store, or is it a specialty store?

Leadership development is something we talk a lot about here and in the world at large. It’s a topic that’s somewhat ethereal – a lot of people can talk about it at a surface level, but if you were to ask someone directly “what are the core skills required of a good leader?” you would likely end up with a lot of humming and hawing.

If you were to ask this question to 100 different people, you’d likely get (after the humming and hawing) close to a 100 different answers.

Although this post doesn’t won’t go super in-depth on the topic (we’re going to write a series of posts that will do just that, so stay tuned!), here is what we define as the core leadership skills needed to successfully influence others:

Self-Awareness
Relationship Development
Communication
Productivity and Personal Growth.

Tag: skills

Is Your Career Like a General Store?

Depth over breadth?

The Four “Core” Leadership Skills (and Why They Matter)