Promote Yourself by Dan Schawbel Page B

of taking an idea from conception through to completion. To be a good project manager, you’ll need to be extremely organized, have the ability to prioritize, create to-do lists, assign ownership of various elements of the project, and track milestones and deadlines—all hard skills.
    But the project managers who truly excel are the ones who can keep their team on track, help them work through obstacles and stay focused when they run into them, encourage their teams when they feel discouraged, and motivate them to work together to accomplish things they might not have thought they could accomplish—all soft skills. The secret here is to break things down into digestible chunks. Say you’ve allotted three weeks for your team to finish a project. Figure out what needs to happen in week one and which people can best get the job done. Then think about weeks two and three. Throughout, check in regularly with the team to see how they’re doing and what additional resources they might need.
    Building a strong network and becoming a leader are mutually reinforcing. When your colleagues respect you and your manager trusts you, it’s much easier to take charge of a project. Promote yourself into leadership roles rather than waiting around for someone else to give you more responsibility. Let people know that you want to be in charge, while assuring them that they’ll be integral to the success of the project. Prove yourself with the first project, and you’ll solidify your position as a leader and you’ll get trusted with bigger projects. As you manage larger projects, you will become more visible, with more responsibilities, and you will gain new experiences and relationships that you can leverage in the future.
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    Soft Skills Are Life Skills
    One of the greatest things about soft skills is that they don’t just apply to your work life. Soft skills that might seem work-related can help you in your personal life and vice versa. A friend of mine, Bill Connolly, was petrified of talking in front of others. But after taking an improv class, he was able to eliminate his fear of public speaking, which helped out at work but also helped improve his dating life. Adam LoDolce, another friend, had always been shy and awkward around women, so he forced himself to take a class on dating. It worked, and the skills he learned in that class—starting conversations, showing interest in other people, coming across as confident—also helped him attract more customers to his business. As you go through your day, think about the skills you’re learning on the job and try to figure out how to apply them in other areas of your life.
    If you’re fortunate enough to work at Google, you should definitely sign up for their “Search Inside Yourself” program. In a New York Times interview, Karen May, Google’s Vice President for Leadership and Talent, said, “We have great people. Now how do we keep them? Teaching employees with terrific technical abilities also means helping them to develop presentation skills and communication skills, helping them to understand their impact on other people, their ability to collaborate across groups, and cultivate a mentality from which great motivation can spring.” So far, over 1,000 employees have been through the course, which teaches attention training, listening skills, self-knowledge and self-mastery, developing useful mental habits, and dealing with failure.
    Of course, Google’s program is a pretty rare case. Plenty of people struggle with acquiring and polishing their soft skills. As we’ve discussed, there are a lot of ways to do that. But the most successful one (which is also the hardest) is to jump into the mix and give it a shot. It might be tough the first few times (or few dozen), but the more you do it, the better you’ll get.
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    Master Soft Skills to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Work With
    If you’re