A whopping 80% of our GDP is service-based. We all know that ‘service-based’ is really code for ‘relationship-based.’ Competitive differentiation, both lasting and enduring, is the only real prevailing victor in such turbulent times. In this post, I’ll share some tips from a recent interview with one of America’s Top Coaches and some of the latest research from Harvard that will help create your own competitive advantage in today’s corporate landscape.

A few years ago, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for which the US is a participating member, published their findings from a forum that evaluated the impact of the transition to service-based economies on business and society. The OECD noticed that in some segments, such as business services, the growth has been 10% per year. This was driven by the need to outsource non-core activities, greater flexibility in responding to customer demands, the rise of knowledge-based economies and the ever-increasing specialization of labor. For the workforce (i.e. me and you), these changes have forced an ‘upskilling’ and a need to invest in continuous learning.

For many of us, this isn’t anything new. We know jobs have been outsourced. We know that if we want more opportunity, we’ll most likely have to learn a new skill set to get it. Thus, we go back to college to learn business skills through an MBA program, obtain a quicker improvement by acquiring a certification such as a Project Management Professional (PMP) or some other development. We dedicate many additional hours and dollars into this learning in an effort to improve our career success, usually characterized as more money and recognition. We do these things because they aren’t clouded in obscurity. That is to say that we know where the school is, how to enroll and how to study and learn. But what about those who have a good education, sufficient work experience and are already in the service sector? Do they need to improve their skills?

For answers to these questions, I sought out one of the top coaches in the United States, Dr. Ken Selig. As one of the top 50 Executive coaches to management, Dr. Selig is a licensed Psychologist with over 20 years of experience in the service sector. ‘Managing relationships and personality are the tickets to driving success and viability,’ claims Dr. Selig. He also states that the higher one goes in an organization, the more relationship-based their activities become. Therefore, personality plays a larger and larger role in daily activities, which tend to be more about human interaction. So, as you climb the corporate ladder, your work becomes ‘people centric.’ You have to motivate, encourage, direct, reprimand, guide, support and follow people. According to Dr. Selig, the best leaders are team leaders. As we look at how the economies of the global marketplace are changing, it’s easy to see that a leader must be able to work with many different people, across many different cultures, in many different capacities.

While organizations have already moved to team processes some years ago, it is likely that the learning that occurs in these teams is not sufficient to develop the team skills you need to improve your upward mobility. In looking how organizations develop team activities, I found that many develop templates and guides for the activities that the team engages in. In essence, teams are created to perform specific tasks, which are often repetitive in nature. While this creates learning, it’s not the learning that we really need from the team experience if we are to improve our upward mobility. In his August white paper, ‘Repetition of Interaction and Learning: An Experimental Analysis,’ Harvard Professor Gary Pisano states that it’s the repetition of interaction that improves a group’s ability to learn. Frequent interaction improves the group’s ability to identify, transfer, and apply knowledge. This will then lead to the better storage and subsequent creation of knowledge.

At this point, we know that the service economy requires a mastery of relationship management. The practitioners (e.g. Dr. Ken Selig) tell us that as we move up in the company, the soft skills become extremely critical to continued success and that team leaders are the best suited for the climb. Academia tells us that we learn from team activities but may not necessarily be capturing the learning we need to improving upward mobility.

Putting all of this information together, one could draw the conclusion that enhancing career mobility could be accomplished by developing soft skills in a team based environment that meets frequently. Imagine creating a small team of high performers who drive one another to measure, test, and improve their soft skill sets. Risk is reduced by using multiple perspectives to develop strategies. Meetings could be held weekly to review progress and develop new strategy for improvements. Results would be immediate since methods are tested right in their existing workplace.

This is exactly the approach I took in creating a team-based approach to career development, referred to as the Blitz Approach, several years ago. This method, published in a book entitled ‘Blitz The Ladder,’ outlines in detail how a small team of individuals can develop a strategy for improving a myriad of skill sets and their upward mobility in any organization. It shows you how to create a strategy map for achieving your desired goals. The Blitz Approach is the culmination of years of academic research with the experience of practitioners into an easy to follow, step by step guide.

The lessons from this post are simple: 1.) the transition to a service-based economy requires the development of different skills, which are mostly soft, 2.) moving up in an organization demands the mastery of human interaction and team leadership, 3.) team learning is improved through repetition of interaction, not just repetition of task, and 4.) there is a team-based solution for developing these skills and managing your career in a way that promotes upward mobility.

Thanks, Dr. Ken Selig, for taking the time to share your experience. Dr. Selig can be reached at www.theimpactgroupinc.com.

Todd Rhoad, MSEE, MBA is Director at BT Consulting, a career consulting firm in Altanta, and author of the soon to be released ‘The MBA Owner’s Manual.’ He can be reached at [email protected].

(Via Career Rocketeer - Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.)

The internet, being an extremely popular source, makes competition for getting that job highly competitive. Get started with your My Online Career Space and let that prospective employer know you are the primary candidate for them. With your own personalized career space you will rise above the rest of the job seekers on the internet.

If you would like to get up-to-date information, join us on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and MySpace.

Job and Career Books are available here and get Online Career Coaching here.

Want to read more articles check these out:

How to Network
Video Resumes
5 Interview Questions You May Be Asked
Job Specialization: A Great First Step in Your Job Search
The Essential Skill of Executive Branding
Oprah Winfrey: Her Online Personal Branding and Your Job Search

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Career. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.