Communication and interpersonal skills

It never ceases to amaze me how many good ideas there are out there. Listening, asking questions, and putting pieces together have been the foundation of everything I have accomplished.

When I started my Masters, I wans't sure I had what it took to be successful in the field. How could I, mother of five out of the workforce for eight years, possibly keep up with all of these professionals? With no experience in the field what could I possibly contribute?

More than anything else, completing my Masters at AU gave me confidence to get involved in the dialogue, to become an active participant.

It also gave me opportunities to do all of the things I used to avoid: Public speaking, publishing papers, virtual presentations, participate in conferences. I can not truthfully say that I now love to do those things - I'd quite happily work in my quiet office and let someone be the public face of the ideas - but it did prepare me well.

I've recently taken a new postion as a Learning Consultant, which means I speand a lot more time doing three things (not necessarily in this order):

1. Talking and negociating with clients

2. Sharing a vision with a cross-functional team and motivating them to produce results

3. Putting out fires and getting derailed project trains back on the tracks

The skills I honed in the beloved "group work" of the AU Masters program, set me up with the skills I nee to succeed (and how to recover when a project completely derails).