Some things don’t change.

Many things will change over the span of a person’s career.

Businesses change.

Technologies change.

Customer tastes change.

Markets change.

Goals change.

Roles and responsibilities change.

Stages of life change.

Needs change.

As you traverse the landscape of these changes, you may find yourself learning and applying new knowledge while sunsetting approaches that are no longer effective, relevant or valuable.

Some things, however, remain consistently valuable, uncorrelated from the list above.

Communication can never be too good.

Excellent managers do many of the same things.

Team players are usually more effective and carry greater influence.

Great leadership usually has similar ingredients.

Personal development is always a high leverage investment.

People patterns are universal and get easier to spot and navigate.

Great talent with a high EQ is promoted much faster.

No one ever said, “That person is too self aware and easy to work with”.

There are many things that you can learn from your current employer and your boss. The things that will probably create the most future value and opportunity for you are ways to improve yourself and improve your interactions with those around you.

Even if you don’t manage people, you will seldom be an army of one. The better you are at knowing yourself and working with the people 360 degrees around you, the more valuable you will be to any organization now and in the future.

If your organization offers personal development resources, manager training courses or the opportunity to be exposed to and learn from great leaders and managers, you are in a great spot – especially if it’s early in your career.

The same can be said of the opportunity to work for an excellent manager. Learning a great playbook is invaluable and should be just as important evaluation criteria as things like compensation or scope of responsibility, when considering the personal return on of your time investment in any position.

Leverage all of these things to level yourself up on top of just getting better at the “work” you produce.

EQ is just as important, if not more so, than IQ.

It’s all people, the higher up you go. That part will never change.