Have you ever met someone who seems to be working very hard but have no apparent success in what they are doing. Perhaps, this person might be you. Ever since I started team building and training for our junior consultants, I've paid a keen interest on what works and what doesn't. In this article, I hope to share 4 important skills to master if you wish to increase your odds for success at any endeavour you choose to pick up.

1. Knowing how to make choices (prioritization)

While prioritizing isn't exactly a skill, knowing how to make smart choices is. Regardless of the endeavour you take up, the one you prioritize will flourish while the ones you don't will falter. In my opinion, this is common sense.

To provide some examples and context, when I became a financial consultant, my family seemed to interpret being in control of your own time as not having to work. They started to appoint me as the errand person in the house. In my case, I rejected this behavior by not allowing myself to be free even on days when I have no work engagements. This is because, I was very clear that if this arrangement happened once, people will have the expectation it can happen again and again. If I had allowed my priorities to change from work to home errands back then, I wouldn't have qualified for any incentive trips or accolades at all my work places.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because I've seen people with prioritization issues. It doesn't matter if you are a financial advisor or working in the office (now working from home). The logic still applies. If most people have to work during the day, why does a self-employed not have to? Likewise, if you have flexibility of working from home or simply more control of your time, the choices you make with your time will determine how much success you get from your career.

Does this mean, you need to sacrifice family for career? No, I'm saying be reasonable. Everyone needs to work, so work when you need to. Even as a self-employed, I work weekdays and spend weekends or public holidays with family like everyone else. Occasionally, when I'm on 'leave' I bring my family out on weekdays. Sometimes I work weekends but don't every executive in the workplace does this when they cannot finish their work or when they have company functions?

2. What you focus on matters

One key ingredient of success is understanding the essence of what is communicated and not what is seen on face value. For instance, most people celebrate successful people by their accolades but very few question how they achieved it. Even as someone who have a huge soft spot for successful people (because I very much want to learn from them), my interest/respect for some individuals drop once I learn about their questionable methods/unsustainable approaches to attaining success.

Likewise, I've been borrowing Dan Lok's quotes and posting it on Instagram because I agree with the contents of the quotes. I get a lot of messages informing me that he is a fraud (I don't know if he is, nor bother to verify). So Mr 'Fraudster' has very good quotes that we can learn from. Does being a fraud take away the good practices you can learn from the quotes? Why is whether he is a fraud important? In the first place, I'm not celebrating his success as Dan Lok. I'm just saying adopting the essence of the quotes will help someone become better if they really follow through with it.

I've observed over the years that if one wishes to increase their odds of success, what they focus on when taking in information matters. You can give neutral information to 2 people and negative person will find all the faults with the info while positive person will find all the good points about the info. If you multiply this reaction 10 folds to all the information they receive in their lifetimes, you don't need to be good with data analytics to predict their life success trajectory.

I think a mindset shift is a skill. Not everyone knows how to perceive information differently from what they are used to, that's why they keep perpetuating their similar behaviors.

3. Be the ultimate learner

The ability to learn is definitely a skill not a behavioral trait. It's interesting because every interviewer would classify the willingness to learn as an important criteria. Yet, nobody ever ask how to learn or what does learning mean. Most people associate sweat equity with learning.

During my group coaching sessions, I've observed an interesting behaviour whenever I run through individual case studies with the group. The one whose case study is being observed pays in-depth attention while there will always be that 1 or 2 individuals who uses the time to do their own stuff. I'm sure, this behavior is typical in any group meetings.

The ultimate learner has an innate natural curiosity. They want to absorb all the information that they do not know, not only pertaining to what they encounter but also what they have not encountered. If we adopt this 'none of my business' attitude and only care about what happens within our scope of experiences, what happens is you will only learn based on past experiences. This means, you need to make mistakes to learn. When you are curious and keep your eyes and ears open to learn from other peoples' experiences, you definitely reduce the need to make mistakes in order to grow.

If you are wondering how to learn, refer to point 2 in this article.

4. Develop situational awareness

Have you ever heard employers complaining that their staff thinks they are working hard because they worked 9am-5pm and considered that a basis for promotion or increment? Don't everyone else does that too?

This is my point. The ability to have situational awareness is important. What does giving value truly mean in different settings? Even within the sphere of learning and doing, a lot of content junkies actually believe that they make excellent employees. Many times, these people are the hardest to push to get real work done. Likewise, I've also known the other end of the spectrum where people just mindlessly work, work, work and they spend almost little to no time to plan their work. So while they become pretty astute at doing their limited scope of work, they have no real growth outside that scope because they never once stopped to develop new skills. Both types of individuals, if you speak to them, they do not see problem with their approaches and many times get disillusioned when they do not see desired results at work.

Situational awareness is a very important skill. It helps to connect theory with reality. Even within the sales realm, value is only created when you give clients what they want. People who try to peddle their products and fit every client's need to that one super product will wonder why people dislike them. It is always easy to comfort ourselves by saying life is such and such that's why we end up at certain circumstances. However, if you are serious about increasing your odds for success, then get real, accept the actual reasons why something is not working and fix it.

Personally, I find the skills listed as very important qualities in any work place and even more so for the advisory business. If you know anyone with these four skills or strongly believe you have these 4 qualities, do drop me a message and I'll very much would like to explore the opportunity in working with you or the person you recommend.

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Disclaimer: The content created are based on my personal opinions and may not be representative to everyone or any organisation. If you have any doubts or queries pertaining to insurance or investment, please seek professional advice from a trusted adviser in an official setting. You may also reach out to me if you do not have a present adviser using the message box under 'Let's Talk'.