10 Core Capabilities That Differentiate High Achievers From Everyone Else

As you come across Career Gates – those times when you need to show you’ve “got what it takes” in order to keep advancing – what’s the “right mix” of capabilities you need to “Learn, Do and Show” to others?

All of us achievers want to know the answer to that question. And it’s important to keep asking it because the answer changes over the course of your career.

However, the right answer is hard to come by.

Sometimes, people fob you off with “just keep doing what you’re doing” (which is the worst career advice of all) because they’re too busy focusing on their own careers, or don’t want to risk offending you with the truth. Well-meaning people can give conflicting advice. And in the end, it also needs to be tailored to your own unique set of attributes, assets and abilities.

To make matters more complicated, it’s not something we can easily see for ourselves because we’re so close to the situation.

Three categories to help you find your answer

Well, over the years through my own 24-year career and now through helping my coaching clients navigate their leadership and career challenges, I’ve come to see that there are three main categories of capabilities you need to “Learn, Do and Show” you’ve mastered for the role and level you’re aspiring to:

• Working with People – the way you interact with others matters since none of us succeeds on our own
• Working on the Business – the ability to deliver results matters whether you’re in a business, non-profit, higher education or government setting
• Working on Your Self – your most important asset is you, and the investments you make in this category is completely portable and therefore never wasted

And across those categories, I find there are 10 capabilities that can make the biggest difference.

Before we move on to the specifics of the 10 Capabilities, it’s important to note that these three categories – People, Business and Self – are all equally important, and you’ll want to make sure you’re building your career muscles in all three.

While one of the categories will come more naturally to you than others, don’t fall into the trap of becoming lopsided in your approach.

Being over-reliant on just one or two aspects has stopped many achievers from advancing beyond a certain point in their careers. For example:

• Don was a commercial animal. He delivered results like no one else. Yet, he was a terror to work for and chewed through junior associates. He aspired to run bigger parts of the business, but ultimately topped out because he was seen as a lone wolf producer who couldn’t lead a team.

• Jean was all about her team and taking care of her people. But management worried that she was so nurturing that she wouldn’t make the tough decisions or have the commercial drive to deliver on the numbers for a larger unit. Would her concern for people completely overshadow the ability to deliver results through those people? Was she even focused on results?

• Bob had great business acumen and showed he could lead a high performing team. However, as his business unit became more and more successful, his previous confidence now came across as arrogance. This lack of self-awareness was what ultimately brought his career to a plateau.

So, don’t let that be you!

10 Achiever Capabilities That Will Serve You In Any Career

Working on these 10 Achiever Capabilities will stand you in good stead no matter what your role, industry or career stage. And working on them will put you in a much better position to pass through your Career Gates whether or not you’re aware they’re there.

Think of these Achiever Capabilities as muscles that you need to continually use and keep in shape. These aren’t like school papers that you turn in and never look at again – they’re living, breathing capabilities that you need to keep fresh.

In fact, these are “evergreen” capabilities you’ll want to return to over and over again to develop in an increasingly advanced and nuanced way because they will help you keep progressing to higher levels of excellence as you advance in your career.

And the more you work on them, the better you’ll become, the more natural they will be, and you’ll be on your way to creating a virtuous cycle that can lift your career onward and upward.

Working with People:

1. Stakeholder Management – reading the lay of the land and building key relationships
2. Team Leadership – becoming a great leader of people who attracts, develops and retains talent
3. Communication – being clear, engaging and effective in getting your point across
4. Influence – using your “soft power” to get results when you don’t have authority, or have it but don’t want to resort to “hard power”

Working on the Business:

5. Vision and Strategy – developing a bigger vision for your business and a strategy for owning that “space”
6. Decision-Making – preserving your decision-making capacity so you can crisply make the ones that really count, and learning to frame the key decisions to get to the best outcomes
7. Creating New Business – being a Rainmaker who delivers commercial results and grows the pie

Working on Your Self:

8. Self-Awareness – being aware of how you come across and able to self-manage to achieve the results you want
9. Presence and Profile – managing your brand, reputation and visibility
10. Building Your Network – beyond the job at hand so you can develop into future roles, and find mentors, sponsors, and advocates

Focus On The 1-2 That Matter Most Right Now

Now, it’s hard to work on 10 things at the same time and, frankly, I don’t recommend it. Instead, it’s about identifying the one or two that will make the biggest difference to your progress if you were to focus on them right now.

You may know intuitively what they are, or perhaps you’ve been told in your latest performance review. If you don’t, then asking a few people you trust will help reveal them.

So, take a look at these capabilities and identify which ones are your strongest, your most challenging, and the single most important one for you to work on right now to advance your career.

And by the way, the one to work on right now is the one that gives you the biggest boost – it may not be the area that’s weakest or most challenging for you. It may even be your strength that you need to lean into. It’s the one that will most move the needle for you now and in the future. Where do you get the greatest benefit from investing your energy to improve?

To use a sporting analogy, these days, careers are more like a decathlon than a single athletic event. You’ll have a better chance of winning when you engage in cross-training and working on multiple dimensions in combination, whether that’s strength, endurance and agility in the fitness world, or People, Business and Self in your career context.

If you’re an achiever who wants to advance in your career then you’ll need to equip yourself with the skills, experiences and capabilities needed to succeed at every stage.

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