#78 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: Upskilling to Propel Your Career with Cherry Siu

Upskilling, or focusing on personal development, can propel your career.  But what skills should you focus on and how should you develop them? Cherry Siu, chief of staff at Deloitte, shares personal development insights from her personal experience and observation of other global professionals.   RESOURCES Cherry Siu & Deloitte * Cherry on LinkedIn –  linkedin.com/in/cherrysiu * Deloitte – com Dr. Andrea Wojnicki & Talk About Talk * Website – https://talkabouttalk.com * Free Weekly Email Newsletter – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * Email – [email protected] * Book Andrea for a free 20min “communication skills training” consult * Andrea on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/     INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: Thank you so much, Cherry, for joining us here today to talk about the importance of consciously developing our communication skills at work. Cherry Siu: I’m very excited to be here. AW: Why don’t we start by having you share with us a little bit about what you do in your role as Chief of Staff? CS: As chief of staff, I’m really a strategist and a connector, I drive in develop our global CNI financial advisory strategy for Deloitte. But I’m also connected in the sense that I connect different leaders from different countries together to align on the strategy, make sure we’re all leading global initiatives together, and I also lead complex projects for the firm. AW: Okay, that helps me a lot, because you know, I know these big global organizations, they have silos. So your role is to bring them all together. CS: This is very exciting, because you get to work across different cultures, different levels of executives, and try to align them into one strategy. We’re a strong believer that we stronger together as one. So I’m the person who pulls everyone together and make sure we’re all aligned and doing the same thing for bigger impact. AW: So you’re really focusing on I guess, identifying best practices, and then making sure that those are permeated throughout the organization. And one of those things, may be training people on things like communication skills? CS: Absolutely. As part of a global advisory firm, we are very strong in training our practitioners, because our people are our assets, and communications, that interpersonal skill, and how do you deal with both internally and externally with clients – is a skill set that’s fundamental to what we do. AW: But I think that’s an interesting insight, right, your organization is not selling widgets, you are selling professional services, which means you’re selling the services of human beings. And therefore, instead of investing in capital improvements, instead of investing in product improvements, you’re investing in your people and their skill development. CS: Yeah, that’s true. Especially for professional services, we’ve definitely got the technical skills. But beyond that, there’s a huge element of that interpersonal skills that people really need to develop. Because you’re not just buying a person helping you do a project, you’re really buying that relationship and someone you want to work with, AW: Oh, I love that word relationship,