If your job has anything to do with vision, leadership, business growth, external sales, internal sales, marketing, or PR, then there is one skill you cannot live without:

You must have the ability to tell a good story.

Your company's vision is a story. It's the story you tell your staff, the story you tell your customers, and the story you tell your investors. Most of all, it is the story you tell yourself.

What do you think when you hear a company say they're in communications?

Most people think media, PR, Austin Powers-type shmoozers air-kissing each other on the cheek.

But communications is a much more massive beast. The way your employees interact with each other is communications. Your systems are communications systems: they are the means of communicating your company's way of getting things done. Your internal sales jobs -- budget requests, anyone? -- are all driven by how people communicate with each other.