Most of us desire to succeed in the workplace. Whether you’ve just landed your dream job or you’re looking to grow or advance in your current position, here are eight strategies that you can implement to take your career to the next level.
- Be trustworthy
One of the most important things you can do to cultivate workplace success is to build trusting relationships with company leadership, colleagues, and teammates. Below are some important behaviors that build trust.
- Treat everyone with respect, regardless of their position
- Extend trust to others
- Put others’ interests before your own
- Keep your word
- Be open and honest
- Share credit and recognition
- Encourage participation/feedback from others
- Increase your self-awareness
Self-awareness involves an understanding of your values, strengths, and weaknesses. If you aren’t self-aware, you won’t have a baseline to grow and enhance your performance. In addition, self-awareness helps you to manage your emotions in a healthy manner. Some methods of increasing your self-awareness include taking personality assessments; reflecting on what triggers negative and positive emotions; getting clear of your core values; and asking others for feedback.
- Do your job well
To ensure you’re doing the best job you can, you need to make sure that you understand what is expected of you. If the expectations are not clear, ask questions to clarify and check in with your leader regularly on progress. Further, you should always be on the lookout for ways to increase your efficiency and productivity. And when you make a mistake or misstep, learn from it rather than repeating it.
- Show initiative
Showing initiative involves proactively making suggestions and going above and beyond expectations. To show initiative, you might volunteer to lead a project, offer suggestions for improvement, and/or actively participate in team meetings and interactions. Finally, when you go to your boss with a problem, share at least one idea for a solution. Even if your boss doesn’t take your suggestion, you will be seen as a problem-solver.
- Be collaborative
To be collaborative, you need to establish and maintain cooperative work relationships with others on your team and across the organization. You can start by completing your own tasks in a timely and responsible manner as this will directly contribute to reaching group goals. In addition, you might assist others in the completion of their tasks to support the team. Last but not least, ask others for their feedback and ideas and really listen to them.
- Take ownership and accountability
Celebrate your successes, analyze them, and learn how you can build on them in the future. Accept accountability for your failures or mistakes without letting them drag you down. Many of the world’s most successful people would not be where they are today if they did not accept their mistakes and learn from them.
- Be positive and professional
Showing positive energy is critical to your success in the workplace. You can do this by trying not to complain and display negativity. In addition, you should be professional and avoid gossiping and engaging in other similar behaviors.
- Set and achieve goals
A set of well-thought-out goals can serve as a roadmap to success, providing you with objectives to meet along the way as you work towards your long-term career goals. Make sure your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound).
By adopting these eight strategies for success in the workplace, you will increase your confidence and be on the right path to achieving your career goals.
