What’s the most important skill you’ve picked up that’s can be applied across all roles? How did you develop it?

Great question. Rather than pick 1 most important skill, I'll mention several that, from my performance review data over the years, were key to promotions and higher performance (GE twice and RE once). 1. Effective Communication -> this is a super undervalued skill, but being able to understand who's in the room, the right level of detail to pull in, and how to communicate, whether it's with regards to project status, a SEV, a VP/exec review, or even just a tiger team/core team lead. Different audiences are engaged in different ways, and identifying how to best engage and communicate with your key audience is a big one. For example, leveraging a VP review to discuss hot topics, and also to make direct asks from leadership on how they can engage/support/decide things to help the team get unblocked and move fast. 2. Understanding problem statements before proposing solutions -> I see this quite frequently, where even senior XFN partners will start discussing solutions before a) understanding the problem and b) engaging with subject matter experts to understand the problem/system in sufficient detail before beginning to problem solve. 3. Leadership in ambiguity -> When a project veers off track or when there is a "fire" with very little available data, being able to quickly understand the problem (see 2) and effectively operationalize the right team members to bring a program on track OR resolve the issue is a very underrated skill. This also includes the ability to assess trade-offs and make decisions quickly and ensure the team is focused on the right things. These are some top of mind right now, but I'll think about this a little bit more and try to formulate a more stack-ranked list if I have the data to back it up.