Work Qualities needed to stay ahead ...

Experience shows you may need some critical characteristics-- attitude, competence and potential--to proof your worth and rise within an organization and not lose out to those won over by "favouritism" or those "blue-eyed" boys. You need much broader strengths than just competence alone.

Attitude-  What is right attitude? It can't be measured, but you can see it clearly through what is called emotional intelligence, EQ. Some organizations rank this one of the top in assessing or reviewing their staff potentials.

According to Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, EQ is the ability to "motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one's moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope." It's ability to maintain a positive attitude and emotional control in the face of what life throws at you. Intellectual ability, or competence, can't by itself predict total success in one's career. Intellectual ability plus EQ is what it takes to be a "complete staff". Failure to manage your emotions appropriately can ruin your ability to learn and impede your ability to make use of what you had learnt but not applied.
Potential -  is not of EQ but of what you could call organizational intelligence, meaning understanding the moving parts within an organization and being able to function at your peak across a variety of organizational settings. Understanding the full knowledge chain of information in the organization ( which in big organization, you may not be able to totally apprehend ), people's roles and responsibilities, how they get their jobs done and the organization's overall mission and goals. Understanding fully your organization as well as your place within it enables you to identify gaps between its goals and reality, so you can work to help it reach those targets. In so doing, you usually develop new skills and responsibilities that make you a more valuable employee and better positioned for career advancement.

Competence-  With my some 20+ years of experience, do I know what I am doing as an engineer or manager or a facilitator ?? Technology improvements and knowledge gained with additional new training courses complemented my existing experience and enhanced my overall competence at the job in the company.  The willingness to reach out to others and to act on those desires exemplified a healthy attitude and strong EQ. We need to understand what management and the others would need to know before giving the go-ahead to execute your plans and try to achieve the goals.