Entrepreneur’s Handbook recently published an excellent article by Michael Thompson titled “According to Warren Buffett, Honing This One Skill Can Improve Your Worth by 50 Percent.” So, what one skill does legendary investor Warren Buffett consider so incredibly valuable?
The ability to communicate well.
According to Thompson, communication skills were something that did not come naturally to Warren Buffett. Though brilliant in many ways, young Buffett struggled with a fear of public speaking, and he knew that in order to reach his potential and achieve greater success, he needed to hone this skill.
This insight and determination led him to take a Dale Carnegie public speaking course as a graduate student, which helped him tremendously. According to Buffett, Thompson writes, “developing the confidence to speak in public changed his life.”
To this day, Warren Buffett still feels strongly about the incredible value of well-honed communication skills. In a brief video clip posted to LinkedIn, he gives this sage piece of advice:
“It’s very simple: invest in yourself. And the one easy way to become worth 50-percent more than you are now (at least) is to hone your communication skills—both written and verbal… If you can’t communicate, it’s like winking at a girl in the dark—nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it, and the transmission is communication.”
There you have it from the legend himself: communication skills are incredibly valuable! And as a very experienced leader, speaker and author, I would go so far as to say that the ability to communicate well is the MOST valuable skill in the world!
So how do you hone your communication skills? If writing or public speaking don’t come naturally to you, what steps can you take to improve in those areas? Thompson’s excellent article goes on to give 6 practical tips for getting started honing your own communication skills, both written and verbal. I encourage you to read it! And stay tuned here as well, as we’ll be taking a closer look at these and other tips in the weeks to come.
