6 Best Self-Development Skills

 

Self-Development:

In this Blog today I've got for you five essential skills like empathy, conflict resolving skills, asking questions, negotiating, body language and listening skills that are not usually taught. But these skills are extremely important for the real world and by real world I mean the practical world where you need practical skills. For example, skills to operate at your workplace, at your college or with your network of friends and colleagues.

So here is a cheat sheet to the five essential skills that you have missed learning you and how you can cultivate these skills now.

 Well the first skill for the day here you go,

 1-Empathy:

 What is empathy?

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Basically

it means to put yourself in someone's shoe, whether it fits you or not, but try to feel what they are feeling. So this is one skill that we are not taught.

 Now the question is, how to show empathy towards someone and how to use it as a tool for building relationships? So step one is, ‘to be present for the person and hear their side of the story’. Step two is ‘when you hear someone's story, see it from their point of view, do not judge what's right or what's wrong’. Just listen to their emotions. Step 3 ‘ask questions to understand them better, give encouragement and offer to help if possible’.

Okay now the second skill for you to guess, here we go, “You broke my pencil.” “That's because you didn't return my eraser.” “I'm going to talk to you, you are so mean, go away.” Could you guess which skill is this? Well this is a bomb-disposal skill which we call as ‘conflict resolving’.

 2- Conflict resolving:

So conflicts are so common in our lives just like you saw one now and conflict is a serious argument or disagreement that you can have with someone over a matter.

Now conflicts aren't avoidable, are they? But resolving them is possible.

So this is another skill that is ignored in our lives and that's why the person you had a disagreement with, almost became your enemy. Okay, well that's happened with me though. Now the best way to resolve conflict is first, ‘respond but never react’. So responding to the situation means you keep emotions in control and focus on the problem not the person. Let's say your colleague, let's say you found out that your colleague complained about your late coming to the boss.

 Now here is a conflict. You're quite angry. So the first thing is respond to it by coming on time and don't react by shouting on them. So that's the difference. Second you should let the other person know that you want to come to an agreement, so in this case you will talk to your colleague and resolve the matter before it escalates or before it increases.

 Third, clearly and quietly communicate what you want from the situation. So here you could respectfully go to your colleague and tell them not to interfere in your personal decisions, fantastic.

Now let's guess the fourth skill, “Yes you know that answer, I will answer to this question.” “What do you ask me?” “I know the answer.” Well I never asked too many questions because I didn't know if the answers were right. Okay, so I think you must have got it now I'm talking about, ‘asking questions’. Here we go.

 3- Communication Skills:

A good communicator is not somebody who has all the answers, but someone who has good questions in order to keep the interaction going. So a great way to ask good questions is to ask questions that could lead to interesting answers. To do that you should keep your questions open-ended. By that I mean you should ask questions that cannot be answered yes, that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. But questions that require a detailed answer and this will add spice to your conversations and keep your conversations going. For example, you could ask, “What are you planning to do immediately after your graduation?” Instead of saying, “Are you graduating in April?” Which would be usually answered as, “Yes.” Or, “No.”

 Okay, now here is for you to guess the next skill. “Can you give me that cookie?”

“Yes but It’s 400 bucks.” “Okay but my mama gave me only 50.” “Okay, take

it for 50 but give me the rest tomorrow.” “Okay this is such an expensive cookie,

it must be delicious.” Oh! Do you think this child knows how to negotiate?

 

4-Finding Negotiations:

Many people find negotiation as one of the hardest communication skills to learn. Well there must be nice people. I said that because negotiation is a skill which is all about trying to gain personal interest by reaching to an agreement with the other party. But this is also a necessary skill if you are involved in dealings every day and the fact is that no one can avoid negotiating in life and work. So whether you're at a grocery store or at office doing a business deal you will need to negotiate.

So let's learn the technique to negotiate which wasn't taught. First step, ‘be assertive’, which means you should be confident and Stern about what you want as if someone is ready to negotiate with you, you have something they need. So when you're asking aim as high as you think is possible for them. Second, ‘you should have options’, so if they don't agree with your demands you should have other options to present.

Third, ‘show them how you're looking for a win-win situation’, which means that you want both the parties to have enough benefit.

 So here we are at the next skill for the day have a hunch, I mean have I guess, “She

talks so much, she's always blabbering, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, “Oh you

know what I got a new car and you know what, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”

 5-Listening Skills:

Actively listening to others is another essential skill which was not put in our goodie bags. So, how to develop this skill of listening to someone patiently? Well this is pretty simple, you should listen to the other person like he or she is the most important person in the world at that time. You should be fully attentive and you should not pass judgments about what they are saying and most importantly don't keep thinking about what you will say next.

These are the qualities of a good listener. So, here you have your next guess, I hope you're enjoying this? “Today I am going to talk about my family, I have five people in my family they are my parents and my family.”

“They always fight with each other, whenever I go home my brother never opens the door for me, so this is my family thank you so much.” Do you know that almost 97% of all the communication that you make is nonverbal? Like you just saw this kid, he didn't move his arms, she didn't move his arms.

So what I mean here is that when you're communicating with someone your body language is as important as what you speak and this is one skill you must master. So for having a good body language the first most important thing is ‘smile’. 

6-Positive Body Language:

Smile at everyone from the bottom of your heart when you meet them. Next is ‘eye contact’ look at the person in the eye when you speak to them so that they know that you are attentive and listening to them. And lastly combine smiling with eye contact and a good firm handshake. So, this is how you can improve your body language with three very simple steps. So, here we saw some essential skills, yeah, lesson over… yippee! So here you saw some really useful, essential skills like showing empathy, resolving conflict, asking great questions, listening to others and using your body language correctly.

So, these are some of the skills that we have missed learning and that's why I've seen so many young adults who have just passed out from the school and they are absolutely clueless about the practical challenges that the world is going to bring for them. And for this very reason I've made this special session with you so that you won't face any trouble in your workplace or in your day-to-day dealings. But I genuinely believe that some of you have been benefited by this and you will try to develop and cultivate these skills in order to have a better hand at dealing with practical problems through practical solutions.