5 Skills to Advance Your Career

Today's continuously developing professional landscape has employees taking on increased responsibility and feeling more stressed than ever. Our everyday attention is focused on simply crossing tasks off of our seemingly never-ending to-do list, leaving less time to focus on long-term projects, career advancement and development.

You don't have to make a major time commitment to implement lasting changes that will positively impact your career. Dr. Lori LaCivita, director for the MS and PhD in Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology programs at Walden University, explains that when it comes to career advancement, emotional intelligence (EI) should be your focus. EI is a measure of your ability to understand emotions (both your own and your colleagues') as well as their effects. Understanding and implementing EI in your daily life will allow you to more effectively address and engage your colleagues while demonstrating crucial qualities to your manager.

Focus on these five EI categories to set yourself up for success:

1. Self-awareness: This is the ability to recognize an emotion as it is occurring and manage your own feelings in real time. Recognizing your own emotions will improve your interactions, allowing you to better understand how your feelings affect others.

2. Self-regulation: Being able to manage your own emotions is crucial in the workforce. It can help you handle conflict so you can work with your peers and managers to not only achieve results but also to build trust. This gives your leaders the confidence that you will do the right thing and bring people together rather than letting conflict divide them.

3. Motivation: Identify your career aspirations and build specific, detailed plans to take ownership of their completion. Think about where you see yourself in three to five years. What does success look like? What is the real challenge you must overcome to achieve a certain goal? Once you have identified your goals, share them with your manager to make sure you are on the same page.

4. Empathy: Having an understanding and intuition for the feelings of others is a very important skill when working in teams. By empathizing with others, you will become a natural leader because you will be able to show a true understanding of the issues others are facing and find positive ways of responding to these challenges.

5. Relationships: People skills are very important in a career environment. The ability to build high-quality connections can be a source of energy at work and lead to new opportunities and learning experiences. Build your network at the office by seeking mentors to guide you in your career development.