There are many ways to unlock your true workplace potential including keeping the right company at work, regularly practicing mindfulness and making sure that you’re always performing with passion and purpose.
Today we’re going to share our 5 fast track tips for accelerating your professional development so that we can hopefully take you over some of the hurdles that you might have been facing in the workplace.
Our 5 Tips To Excel In The Workplace
These 5 tips are in no particular order, because they’re all as important as each other. When you’re able to follow them all at the same time be prepared to see some serious professional and emotional growth.
#1-Try Not To Get Involved In Negative Office Chatter
We know what it’s like. When you first get started somewhere it can be really tempting to try and fit in so you’re happy to engage in pretty much any and all conversation that comes your way.
However, after a little time it becomes apparent that there’s often a correlation between the people who are projecting negativity the most and the people who aren’t moving forwards professionally the most.
Negative chatter usually comes from a place of frustration and the reasons why people instigate it are entirely understandable. But it still isn’t going to help you. The last thing you need is to absorb that kind of energy if you want to progress.
Try to steer the conversations you have towards a positive outcome and if you can’t? You’re probably better off without them. Consider seeking more productive conversation elsewhere in the office.
Positive energy always breeds positive activity and a positive outcome.
#2-Create A Meaningful, Forward Thinking And Constructive Relationship With Your Line Manager
It’s worth starting this point off by saying that we’re not talking about being a “yes” person by default or “sucking up” to management here. What we’re alluding to is something that holds far more value.
Managers are people too and what they often dislike above all else is negativity and pessimism. When you marry that with a lack of any solution being provided suddenly you’re not poised to be on the best terms with them if these are the underlying themes of your interactions.
Whenever you liaise with line management regardless of whether you’re discussing an area of improvement or a work place victory. Always try to create value with the conversation.
Discuss what’s happened, discuss areas that could be improved, discuss areas that are great, but ultimately always aim to provide a way forward that’ll make things work better, even if they’re already good.
The last thing a manager wants to hear is that that something isn’t good and also to not have any constructive input provided. You’ll just make them feel like you wanted to “dump” the problem on them. If you take our approach, they’ll see you as a truly valuable person.
Forward thinking is also better for your emotional health.
#3-Maintain Your Identity Outside Of Work
Some people fall prey to “becoming” their job. This is especially true if you’re in a high pressure position. The problem with this is, if you’re always at work, then when do you get chance to step outside of your professional bubble and gain a wider perspective to add further value to what you do?
The saying “think outside of the box” couldn’t be more appropriate than when we’re referencing this thought process. We all need down time. We need to relax, de-stress and generally explore who we are away from our professional settings.
By doing this we’ll have other thought processes at our disposal that can actually lead to us considering work place tasks in a totally different light, too. Socialising is incredibly important for example not only for emotional health but also because it can help with our ability to communicate with teams or colleagues.
Taking part in a rigorous sporting activity is always going to be great for our health and fitness but it’ll also enhance our ability to solve logical issues and condition our bodies to be able to tolerate stress more effectively, too.
Personal recreation leads to enhanced professional creation.
#4-Try To Emotionally Detach From Feedback
Feedback can be really difficult to hear. We’d even go so far as to say that almost nobody can genuinely say that it’s ever “nice” to receive it if it’s about something that we could be doing better.
Of course, this usually revolves around how it is delivered. Depending on the personality type of the person you’re speaking to, they might just not be equipped to be naturally “good” at delivering feedback effectively to the person in front of them. This is a skill in itself.
Regardless, you can always use feedback to your advantage. Always try to deconstruct the sentences and pull out the most practically useful parts. Take the information being presented for exactly what it is.
Use the guidance as a series of building blocks that you can layer onto your existing foundation to become more effective overall at work. No matter how feedback is delivered, always try to view it with logic and remember that it isn’t a critique of everything that you do and who you are as a person.
#5-Regularly Assess Your Work Place Performance
The only thing scarier than feedback for some people is actually asking for that feedback.
We all need to know how we’re doing. If we don’t, then we have no idea how we can grow and set personal and professional goals. You should always seek to regularly discuss your performance at work and gain as many different perspectives as possible.
Talk to your line managers, your work colleagues and professional coaches to get the most well rounded perspective on how you’re performing and how you can improve. You should also self-assess daily to improve self-awareness.
Constant self assessment displays passion and it’s something that your managers and company directors will truly value.
How Did You Unlock Your Potential At Work?
What did you do to get to where you are now? Can you give some useful tips to others?
If you think that the 5 tips we’ve shared could help your friends and colleagues we’d love it if you could share this post whilst giving a few ideas of your own.