Got business acumen? What is business acumen? And what does business acumen have to do with building a better career?

This article discusses business acumen, what it is, and how it can help you build a better career.

Business acumen is the ability to see and take advantage of opportunities, understand, and communicate with every behavioral type at every level of your organization, solve problems, make good decisions, have discernment, and focus on the right priorities at the right time.

Aaarrggghhh! Well blow me down, it’s National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Shiver me timbers, it’s September 19^th and batten down the hatches because you don’t want to wind up in Davie Jones’ Locker! Ahhh for the love of jargon. Yes, every industry niche has its own language and to facilitate understanding, one must learn that language. However, effective communication goes even deeper.

Understanding another person’s communication style and adapting yours to theirs helps facilitate conversations, projects, and teamwork. This can be especially helpful on a job interview as it can put you in control and calm nerves. Pirates’ lives were no doubt rich with stores, as is yours. Along with understanding communication styles, stories are another tool to help you win at interviewing.

Letters written in long hand have gone the way of the dinosaurs. In fact, we can say the same for letters in general. And this is especially true of the cover letter. Cover letters get a bad rap. Most job candidates fail to see the point in them, believe they serve no purpose or that they are not read by anyone at the other end of the void that is cyber space.

A study by Gallup entitled “Gallup Global Emotions” in tandem with a book by Gallup CEO, Jon Clifton, entitled Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.

Mr. Clifton states, “people who are miserable at work are statistically more likely to experience negative emotions than someone who has no work at all.”