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ways. I love that the core of my job is getting things right, learning, and teaching others. I don’t know what I’m going to wear tomorrow or what I’ll be doing in one year, five years, or beyond that. As great as it can be to set goals sometimes, obsessing over them can blind you from the opportunities right in front of you.”
    Getting to be a reporter with The New York Times is no easy feat, so it’s hard to argue with Mary. That said, while she may not have a firm plan, she definitely has goals and ways of measuring her progress as she moves toward those goals. Make sure you do the same.
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    Become the Expert Your Company Can’t Live Without
    The four most important things you can do throughout the process of making yourself the go-to subject matter expert are:
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    â€¢ Pay attention to what’s going on around you. What skills seem to be in more demand now than before? And don’t forget to check in with yourself too: What skills are you using less frequently than you did in the past?
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    â€¢ Keep communicating. No matter how much you pay attention to what’s going on, there’s no way you’ll be able to absorb everything. So, talk to people: coworkers, managers, people in jobs you’d like to be doing. And ask lots and lots of questions: What are the skills they value most? Least? What jobs are most in demand now? What jobs do they think will be most in demand in the future? We’ll talk about how to network in the next chapter.
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    â€¢ Make a plan. How are you going to get the skills you need? You should always be learning, acquiring knowledge and skills that will benefit you as you advance in your career.
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    â€¢ Stay flexible. Remember, things change constantly. What’s important today may not be tomorrow, and what will be important tomorrow may not even have been invented yet.
    As you’ve seen in this chapter, obtaining hard skills and getting known for them can position you to get a job and can enable you to function efficiently while you’re there. But if you really want to get to the next level, to be a manager, or to advance your career at all, you’ll also need soft skills. That’s exactly what we’ll be exploring in the next chapter.

 
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    Soft Skills: Make Every Impression Count
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    We are being judged by a new yardstick: not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how we handle ourselves and each other.
    â€” DANIEL GOLEMAN ,
    AUTHOR OF E MOTIONAL I NTELLIGENCE
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    Job results are king, right? Make your numbers, land the contracts, finish on time and within budget. Do those things and it’ll be smooth sailing toward the top. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Anyone who’s been in the corporate world for even a little while knows that’s not the way things always play out. You’ve seen deserving people skipped over for promotion (hopefully you weren’t one of them). You’ve seen underperformers advance. You’ve wondered how the guy who can’t think his way out of a paper bag got to be a manager. So you know that there’s more to career advancement than job results. So what’s the missing ingredient? Soft skills.
    On the most basic level, soft skills—sometimes called emotional intelligence —are nontechnical skills. But it’s a little more subtle than that. They’re interpersonal skills, skills that enable you to form relationships with coworkers, fit into the corporate culture, and communicate successfully. Hard skills, which we talked about in the previous chapter, are what will help you navigate the technical elements of your job, but it’s soft skills that will enable you to move ahead. Soft skills are generally very apparent to the people around you, and if those skills are sharp, people will notice. By gaining and mastering communication and other soft skills and developing your own emotional