Original piece was written as a guest blog for Portfolio People.
I believe we all have a portfolio, we just need to realise it.
The universe works in mysterious ways. I am forever being shown this. I’ll tell you why;
Last year Rupa met with me to help me figure out the areas of my life I felt passionate about, the tangents of thoughts, ideas and projects that were flitting around my mind, things that I had decided I identify with and how I went about making my mark on the world…. My Portfolio!
She has always championed my cause, showing support to my movements, and of course, helped guide me through my own thoughts and realise the portfolio I had in front of me. At this meet, she also casually asked me to write a guest blog.
I wrote it down on my to-do list.
And have forever been pushing it back, reprioritised it, pushed out by weeks, months, till one day it lands on top of my list, I even came to this site to re-read guest blog, by Anthony Bennet on saying YES and not too soon later did I get an email from the team at Portfolio People to write a piece… the universe hey, its been decided that I’m doing this then, with joy of course!
What’s also musing to me is how my portfolio is so heavily influenced by my parents’ passions and roles in societies and the jobs and ladders they climbed. My mother has been a school teacher for 30-something years and also lead and instigated many local groups, including a multi-lingual story club at the local library. She heavily influenced my educational achievements and pushed me down routes of speaking, reading and writing and was instrumental in my uptake of a part-time role at a successful tuition centre. My father was studios and deep into the ever-growing IT sector, where most of my technical passions stem from. Both very hard working and esteemed role models for the growing mind of Sumit Sharma.
Today, I am a solutions architect for a global cloud company, where I look to solve business problems with cutting edge technology. I also teach, educate and give back. I taught as a senior supervisor and tutor part-time during my studies and now constantly hold workshops for younger crowds, assist at local schools and volunteer time to youth organisations.
I literally have a portfolio of projects I am involved in.
This can sound somewhat flustering, it flustered me for many years, but with the help of mentors, guides and leading lights, I’ve come to formalise what my two main verticals are.
1. Being a technologist. through my career, working to solve business problems using technology. I do this as a matter of habit, I admire and appreciate the technological advancements made in various sectors and am in awe of what the future holds. There has been no other sector that has empowered the human race to be more connected, be able to communicate in a plethora of ways, instantly and through ubiquitous systems and platforms. IT is seen to be fundamentals to healthcare, where we are able to leverage technology to simulate test environments, carry out remote operations and analyse health data.
I scope out and help these services as part of my day job. To be able to have a commercial conversation and simultaneously balance the need for accurate technical information requires clarity, it requires effectivity, herein lies my passions for public speaking:
2. Effective communication and public speaking. Today, too little time is spent face to face, we very quickly WhatsApp each other, send a text, an imessage, logon to Facebook or slack each other, for the sake of convenience or just so that we don’t need to speak directly to people.
When we do get actual face-time, real interaction, we are somewhat reserved in what we say, for fear of offending and often post conversation think, ‘I should have said this’, or ‘I should have said that’, it is those few and far between live moments that I hold key, in which we should be communicating the most efficiently.
In today’s working world, we have executive leadership, senior managers, C level execs, D level leaders, who, respectfully and admirably have reached their positions through experience and graft, but, when holding a presentation or giving a speech are not receiving engagement from the audience or even getting their message across. In today’s market and hypercritical businesses, this, quite simply, will not do anymore. Nobody wants death by PowerPoint or hours of a draining voice. They want to be told a story, led on a journey, be a part of the experience. It’s time we got better at speaking, giving speeches, to be eloquent orators. This confidence alone will allow you to take on new challenges and realise new opportunities.
— We are multi-faceted beings, with skills outside of a job description or a written testimonial, with a portfolio ready to be realised. We have many skills, unique in each approach, thought and character and our gift to the world is the ability to provide a new view, a different thought or an alternative solution…. that can ultimately help one another and humanity as a whole.
Look no further than the actions you take and the passions you think about to realise what your portfolio is, we all have one, in some way, all it requires is discovery.