Simple gifts are your core competencies, your constants. Your simple gifts are the special “something” that you bring to each of your interpersonal interactions, time after time.
Everyone has simple gifts. No matter whether you are a student, a business person, a technical or engineering professional. You get the picture, don’t you?
Your core capabilities, your core competencies, “are your personal as well as professional differentiators.” (p 60, Do YOU Mean Business?). Your core capabilities create value: for your colleagues, your company, your employer and your customers or clients.
Your simple gifts –your core capabilities – lead to great outcomes. “Simple” gifts are no small matter.
I adapted the term “simple gifts” from the Shaker dancing song, Simple Gifts. The words to the song, written by Elder Joseph Bracket in 1848, are:
“Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, “Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, “Twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gain’d, To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamd’d, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come ‘round right.”
Your simple gifts often are overlooked – by you more than anyone else.
If you feel your simple gifts are not important to others, think again.
What you do, so effortlessly day in and day out, is difficult for others to deliver themselves. What you take for granted about yourself, even dismiss, is beyond the grasp of many of your colleagues.
Take the time to put yourself in the shoes of your colleagues, your employer and your customer. What is the view from the receiving side of your simple gifts?
Your simple gifts, your core capabilities, are the essence of who you are as a person of worth. What you bring to the business table, when you are simply yourself, catalyzes others towards greater collaborative outcomes.
It’s time you took your own simple gifts more seriously. The first step is by defining them, a topic I deep dive into in Chapter 5 of my book, Do YOU Mean Business?
Determine your professional value by defining your core capabilities. Begin each day with the understanding that you will be delivering your simple gifts to others.
Simply by being you.
What are your simple gifts?
Babette N. Ten Haken, President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, is a management consultant and business coach. Her simple gift is the ability to facilitate communication between professional disciplines. She helps startups and small-to-medium manufacturing and service companies who have difficulty with unpredictable revenue streams. Babette was named one of the Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers by Top Sales World in 2013 and 2014.
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