Here's the 11th soft skill you really need in order to thrive in your career. This one is not talked about as much, it's a little more of the secret sauce. But here it is. Are you an interesting person? Now this can be hard to quantify one person's interesting can be another person's boring. But here's the one thing we know about other people, our co workers, the stuff going on in their life, in their head in their hobbies, that's the most interesting thing to them.
So the more you can talk to them about their interests, the better. Too many of us especially after a certain age, we get stuck in ruts and we spend all of our free time either watching football or watching soccer, just watching one type of show, reading one type of book. The problem with that is it just makes us boring to be around. So my advice to you is you've really got to figure out how can you talk to yourself. Colleagues, other people in your industry, your boss, your co workers in ways that are interesting to them. Now I have friends of mine, great buddies.
I like them. I like hanging out with them, but they can only talk about one type of professional sport might be baseball, it might be football, but that's all they can talk about. So when they find someone else, another co worker or someone they're trying to network with, and that person only likes talking about opera, or Broadway shows, the conversation falls flat. There's a lot of let's look at the time here, and they're just not interesting. So, again, a lot of your career success can be determined on whether the boss wants to spend four days with you going to an important industry conference in Las Vegas, the CES conference, for example. And maybe the boss can pick anyone they might pick You just because you're more interesting person to sit next to on an airplane for three hours, believe it or not, that is often how careers are made, and not made.
Are you interesting enough to sit next to the boss on an airplane for three or four hour trip, if all you can do is talk about one sport or you only watch the Kardashians, nobody is gonna want to sit next to you on a plane that can impede your career. So my advice is, try to pride in yourself. First of all, find out other interests of people in your certainly in your circle at your office, your work your career, your bosses, other influential people. So you can have common reference points. But beyond that, when someone asked you what did you do this weekend, don't just say Oh, same ol same ol watch the game that's boring. I'm not asking you to create a whole new persona and new things.
Just so you have something interesting to talk about. Monday morning. But living a more interesting life will make your career better too. It'll make you a more interesting person to hang out with. So try to have something to talk about other than watching TV. If you're really into sports, try to go to a ballet or a drama or a musical, expand your horizons.
People said, what do you do on your vacation? Well, if you just say I went to Disney again for the 12th time, nobody's going to want to hear about it. So you may actually want to consider a vacation to a different place. In part, it'll expand your mind. That's something else to talk about. Because remember, life can be very short.
I know that's a cliche, but people do have choices as to who they work with, who they hire, as a contractor, as a client as a vendor, who they hire as a substitute. They hire as a colleague, Board of Directors got to decide who they want to hire as a CEO. And there is a lot of leeway. It's not all cut and dried, very rare. Do you get resumes and they're all stacked in priority. And one person just on the points is obviously the person you have to hire.
People get to hire people and promote people based in part, do they like them? Are they a likable, interesting person? The fact that you have more things to talk about, and that you are more interesting will increase your odds of being hired and seeing yourself promoted. So here's your homework assignment, you need to pick something new, to do a new hobby, a new genre of book a new type of music to listen to a new sport to play, and do it enough said you can actually talk about it in the office. It'll make you a more interesting person. Money