Harness Your Maximum Potential – Featured on The Straits Time (4 Feb 2016)
These days, it takes more than sheer hard work to achieve recognition at the workplace. I am not suggesting that we should not work hard, but there is more to it. High achievers often ask themselves the powerful question to themselves, “how can I grow?”
Stop asking your organization how they intend to help grow and start asking yourself how you can grow. If you have a growth plan, the potential is limitless. Stop waiting for other people to decide for you, and decide for yourselves today.
Motivate yourself to chart a blueprint for your career success by asking, “Is that all I can do?” The answer is a definite no. There is a lot more you can do and here are proven strategies that will ignite your performance and career success in time to come.
1. Create a Timeline
This means forecasting your milestones. Giving yourself a timeline of what you intend to achieve within the first two years in the organization is key. You can aim to achieve a deeper insight of your field through further certification, or move into a team lead role at the end of a two years journey with a specific action plan.
With the map drawn up, you will have a greater clarity on how you are going to get there. Identify projects you like to be involved in and ask for bandwidth from your supervisor, and let him or her know the career direction you like to move towards.
2. Find A Runner
Get a partner in the workplace to monitor your progress. This person should be either your boss if he or she is open to coaching you to succeed, or a friend in the workplace. It can even be a friend who is working in another organization in a similar industry.
The idea is so that both of you can work together to pace each another. A good analogy is like a runner pacing another runner to keep in step and achieve significant milestones within a timeline. This will boost your motivation and energy during tough times.
3. Be The Business Future
It is not about the years of experience that define your market value, but the number of good experiences that define you and your market value.
Organizations are looking for dynamic individual who have good business acumen and are creative and innovative. Even if such individuals fail, they are willing to learn about what works and not repeat the same mistake. This is one of the critical factors that will help a business to thrive in the future. Are you part of the business’s future?
4. Identify Your Natural Acumen
Have there been times when you could do something relatively easily and naturally while others failed? A strong sign of natural acumen is when you are able to something effortlessly while others struggle to get the hang of it. Think about the skills you have that fall into this category, and develop them further.
5. Keep Simplifying
What is gravely missing today is the ability to simplify one’s message during presentation and meetings, The more senior an executive is, the more he or she needs to simplify things.
Years of research into the topic of influence have proven that the more simple the message is, the easier it is for us to understand something and be convinced by it. But often, we ended up dumping data on other and lessening our credibility.
Draft up a timeline, find a runner and be the future. Most importantly, identify your natural acumen and start learning how to simplify complex concepts to sky-rocket your performance and achieve career success over time.
Article by:
Joseph Wong, a behavioral transformation coach and chief leadership facilitator of TrainingGearAsia. He is an author and thought-provoking speaker on topics of influence, leadership and motivation at work. Email him at ignite@traininggearasia.com.
