What skills or knowledge do I need to acquire in the next 6-12 months to enhance my personal and professional growth, and how can I go about acquiring them?

I think one important and critical skill which helps everyone in their personal and professional growth is communications. Communications skill is required for whatever profession you are in. It is not about having mastery in any specific language like English. It is about how you express your ideas and views and most importantly showcase your work to others and let them know what value you can add.

I think not just for next 6–12 months, but everyone should keep working on their communication skills. Keep practicing it and make sure that your work and persona is getting noticed.

To start with, have self awareness about how things are going around you. Identify places where you not making enough impact and start working on how you can make better communication to create the impact and leave your foot prints.

You will see people around who do lot of hard work but not able to communicate it properly, no one knows or acknowledge their hard work. But at the same time, people who are doing mediocre work but good in commutations, will take all the lime light. Their communications skill will cover up their mediocre work also. Also such people are liked and appreciated by everyone and many times get leadership positions as they are good communicators.

In summary, excellent communication skill is something you should focus on first. If you are not good in communicating, how much hard work you, it will go in vain. It is like you have all ammunition, but you don’t how to fire, then it will be simply waste. So focus on improving communications skill, rest of the skills may wait for sometime.