Universal Skills

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

There are three universal skills that would increase our odds of professional success according to the famous cartoonist Scott Adams in his book “How to Fail in Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life”.  The title of the book might seem irrelevant to the universal skills that are enumerated below. But these are actually skills Scott has learned based on his experience of many failures before becoming a successful artist and cartoonist of comic strip “Dilbert.”

Here are his sensible three universal skills you should have regardless of your profession:

Clear Writing

The goal of all business writing is to write clearly. That means removing unnecessary words and passive language.  The author says, “As it turns out, business writing is all about getting to the point and leaving out all of the noise. You think you already do that in your writing, but you probably don’t. Consider the previous sentence. I intentionally embedded some noise. Did you catch it? The sentence that starts with “You think you already do that” includes the unnecessary word “already.” Remove it and you get exactly the same meaning: “You think you do that.” The “already” part is assumed and unnecessary. That sort of realization is the foundation of business writing.”  Based on his tip, I try to simplify my articles as best as I could, and I have to admit it is still a work in progress.

His second tip is to follow the ‘Actor-Action-Object’ structure.  He says, “Your brain processes “The boy hit the ball” more easily than “The ball was hit by the boy.” In editors’ jargon, the first sentence is direct writing and the second is passive sentence. It’s a tiny difference, but over the course of an entire document, passive writing adds up and causes reader fatigue.”

Creating a Conversation

The goal of conversation is to get people to like you. A proven conversation technique is smiling, using open body language, introducing yourself, and searching for a common interest by asking questions.   The author says, “The technique is laughably simple and 100 percent effective. It’s all you need to be in the top 10 percent of all conversationalists.”  He says we can make use of the five go-to questions:  Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans?

Why those five?  The author says, “The secret to making the list of questions work without seeming awkward is in understanding that the person you meet will feel every bit as awkward as you. That person wants to talk about something interesting and to sound knowledgeable. Your job is to make that easy. Nothing is easier than talking about one’s self.”

Persuasion

Scott says, “No matter what your calling in life is, you’ll spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people to do one thing or another.” Scott is a trained hypnotist, and he knows a thing or two about persuasion. Here are two of his favorite persuasive words/phrases:

“…Because”: People are more cooperative when you ask for a favor using a sentence that includes the word because, even if the reason you offer makes little or no sense. And “Would You Mind…?”: It’s hard to be a jerk and say no to any request that starts with “Would you mind.” The question comes across as honest, while also showing concern for the other person. It’s a powerful combination.