The past two years have been incredibly successful in terms of rounds, participation and revenue while at the same time being incredibly “grinding” and wearing on PGA professionals and staff at our facilities. “Feeling the Burn” has taken on a new meaning indeed. As part of this context, coworkers, vendors, supervisors and customers are under the same level of stress. The burdens are different, but the weight of the stress is very much the same for all of us.
For 2022, I would share the following to help you focus on the hard work to make career success easier for you, using “soft skills”.
Hard Work (for Easier Career Success)
Level Two: Hard Work (for Easier Career Success)
- With self-awareness and with self-management, we can become more effective at:
- Inspiring: our message of inspiration (or motivation) is more likely to resonate with others when it’s not clouded or muddied by conflicting messages of words, actions, non-verbals, etc. (that appear to be self-centered or worse).
- Mentoring: our message of encouragement, coaching and purpose is also more likely to resonate with those we seek to coach for the very same reasons listed in the bullet above. Further, when the messages we send in our words, actions and non-verbals are consistent and aligned with each other, those we work with and live with can develop trust in us and our intentions and motivations.
- With positivity and adaptability, we can can become more effective at:
- Helping: when inspiration and trust are built, our positivity and compassion can be combined to provide support and stability to those around us. This puts us in a position to influence, to lead and make a difference (even when we don’t have the title or position of leadership.)
- Adaptability: a positive perspective, supported by trust that is earned gives us a platform to help through adaptability, resourcefulness and similar. Adaptability and resourcefulness are two of the most valuable traits we can bring to the workplace, the team and/or the employer we work for.
- With enhanced and trained organizational awareness, we can be more effective at:
- Giving the best of ourselves and our time to maximize the effectiveness of “us” in our career
- Giving valuable perspective as constructive feedback and coaching to others (most often in a 1:1 manner)
- Giving strength, support, a positive attitude and example to the “team” we are part of, the customers we serve and lead, etc.
In conclusion, as we approach this coming new year, I hope you will join me as a leader and example for focusing your time and energies on growing your “soft skills” and emotional intelligence capacity. Doing so will benefit your own career in the long run and it will benefit the people you work with, live and play with. If you have a situation where you’ve had success in being “a soft skills professional” I would love to hear about it (or about another PGA professional). Or, if you would like to grow in your abilities to develop, leverage and refine your soft skills (even though they seem hard at times) to make career success easier for you, I hope you’ll reach out to me in the coming weeks or months.
Monte Koch, PGA Certified Professional/Player Development | Career Consultant
PGA Career Services | PGA of America
Serving PGA professionals, employers in the Pacific NW & Rocky Mountain PGA Sections
Email: Mkoch@pgahq.com Cell: 206/335-5260
Lea Hill, WA | My LinkedIn | My Professional Blog
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