Create an impact & get noticed

Who does not want to progress in one’s career? Everyone does and so would you. You make be proficient and conscientious, but that may not be enough. You have to be noticed. You have to make an impact – not only on your team, but also on your boss. Making an impact means creating an impression.

Remember that your boss plays a very important function in your career advancement. He or she is perhaps one individual who can make or mar things when it comes to a rise or promotion. The boss is indeed the most vital personality in the loop if you seek to move up in the organization that you are serving in. So, how do you impress your boss? You can do so without much effort if you adhere to some basic procedures outlined below:

·   Be punctual:  Any person would get impressed if, the first thing in the morning after entering office, one finds all subordinates are present and working. Punctuality impresses everybody and your boss is no exception. You must make it a point to be present at the correct place at the correct time. Punctuality is the soul of all business and corporate activity; after all, ninety percent of wisdom is being wise in time.

·   Be a confident talker:  A person who possesses good communication skills and is confident and pushy in his conversation is also truthful and straightforward. If you are disposed to information sharing and frank in putting across new suggestions, you will be always appreciated. Even if there is anything off-putting that has to be brought to the notice of your boss, you should be candid in your expression, but with due diplomacy. Employees who possess such attributes are regarded as amiable and welcome; in fact, they are accepted well in teams. Therefore, assertive communication skills are worth acquiring and developing.

·   Be enterprising and dynamic:  All managers abhor employees who as a habit, keep asking for guidance. Unduly cautious workers who have a tendency to avoid taking risks and are wavering in their approach are seen as irritants and regarded as organizational encumbrances. On the other hand, if you seek genuine clarifications and thereafter proceed on your own keeping organizational interests in mind, you will earn a high credibility and reliability rating. Whatever be the results achieved, your initiative will always stand you in good stead.

·   Be a go-getter:  Being a go-getter implies being result-oriented. The results that you achieve at work are the barometer of your performance. Your achievements manifest your capabilities and abilities; they are also pointers towards your sincerity and commitment towards work. In addition, your good performance shows up your drive, initiative and enthusiasm. It sends signal to everyone in the organization that you can actually execute tasks well. If you have to be a top member of staff, you have to make it obvious that you are truly one. Therefore, you need to make result-oriented hard work precedence for yourself.

·   Make your attainments known:  Achievements are significant alright, but by themselves they are not adequate. Your boss should be in the know of them on a continual basis. A boss would be preoccupied in the management and monitoring of several people like you; and it is quite likely that he or she does not get to be fully aware of the tremendous effort being put in by you or your accomplishments. The onus of doing so rests on you too, though you should not blow your own trumpet at the drop of a hat. It is appropriate to periodically have a session with the boss and apprise him about the progress made on various tasks assigned to you. During the course of such interactions, you should make it a point to discreetly pop in your achievements.

Remember that if you create a good impression on your boss, windows of prospects will open up for you. You will undoubtedly be assigned additional responsibilities and which will lead to promotions and raises. But it is imperative that you carve out a niche for yourself. And if you miss doing so, you make get a second chance but thereafter take it that you will miss the bus.

You & your career

People tend to misunderstand you when you talk about your career vision. They may even fail to comprehend what you say. Some may comprehend what you say alright, but knowingly or unknowingly discourage you. The fact is that most people will never appreciate your career dreams. On the contrary, they may dampen your spirits by advising you to stay put wherever you are and not take any risks.

You may be convinced in your mind about what you intend to do in life and feel confident that you will be able to do well. But there may not be any encouragement from any quarter.  If this happens to be a fact, then how do you go about? The solution can be found if you:

· Do not seek endorsements:  Everybody feels that his perspective of career perspective is correct; if this could be true, things would be superb. But unfortunately, this is not so. When people contest your viewpoints, it is not that they are in disagreement with you; on the contrary, they relate themselves with you. It is quite likely that disappointments suffered by them in their careers prompt them to do so. They may not wish likewise for you, but believe that you could also meet with the same fate. The fact is that other than you, nobody else can comprehend the finer points of your life. You will encounter immense problems if you pay attention to what worrywarts tell you; in fact, you should take cues from winners and victors. Remember that a single pessimistic remark by a wet blanket puts positive comments by others in doubt. Hence, you should guard against all supposed spoilsports. What will eventually matter in your life are you and your vision and opinion. Appreciation from others will seldom be instantaneous and though you may like to seek endorsements, it is you alone who has to approve whatever you do.

· Make a schematic plan:  You may be plagued with apprehensions with regard to your plans and line of actions. However, unless you attempt to do something, these apprehensions will be baseless. Since nobody sits inside your head to understand the nuances of various ideas that you may have, you need to be clear about them. The best way is to record in writing all your thoughts. You should query yourself on what you intend to seek, related knowledge about it that you possess, the pros and cons of it and how you can go about, including additional qualifications that you should acquire. If you have to really move forward in your career, you should make a schematic plan and prioritize your actions. Remember that you will not be able to execute and realize anything unless you have a practical acquaintance with them. Therefore, you need to experience things and hence make efforts towards such realistic encounters.

· Proceed slowly and steadily:  The famous Aesop’s fable about the hare and the tortoise is well-known. Anything done deliberately, that is, slowly and steadily will always bear fruit. You cannot achieve all your objectives in one go; they can be attained in a phased manner. One small success will boost your confidence and serve to exhort you. And as you move ahead with feathers in your cap being added progressively, your final objective will be in sight. Remember that the world always sides with winners and hence your increased confidence level will bring about an increased confidence amongst those in and around you. They will look upon you in high esteem and place their trust in you. That is precisely the reason that you should not be put off by discouraging comments by others. To take off, you need not have external endorsements and hence should not unnecessarily attempt to seek them.

      It has been proven that the difference between a successful person and one who is not is not based on better abilities or ideas but the courage to bet and more importantly act on them. Remember that the beginning is the most important part of any work and the journey of a thousand miles begins with small steps. 

 

Dare yourself & increase your productivity

 

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.”

------ Margaret Thatcher 

Do you endeavour to ensure that your daily routine and to-do list does not thrust unnecessary load on you? Do you exert yourself to work harmony with pre-determined timetables? Do you work with the sole intended objective of boosting your output? In other words, do you accept challenges at work?

Challenges become impediments only when you accept them as such. And the more daunting they are, the glory in overcoming them will be of a high order. Life’s challenges are not supposed to numb you; on the contrary, they are supposed to help you discover who you are.

At work, if you are facing a new challenge or have been asked to do something that you have never done, you should not be scared; you will eventually realize that your capability far exceeds your estimate of yourself. Research has proved that if you do not have a hectic and demanding agenda, besides suffering from dejection and tension, you will have to your credit unfinished assignments. Needless to say, these, in no way facilitate improved efficiency. A highly out-stretched routine can result in great and extra accomplishments. Why? The reasons are:

·   Feeling of exigency:  If you have a hectic routine and a long to-do list, you will harbour an inclination to accord priority to them – both in terms of efforts to be put in and the need to meet deadlines. If you have additional assignments at hand, you will try to mange time to the optimum, rather than frittering it away. Resultantly, you keep regarding your work as your top and main concern; and maintain the desired spotlight on it. Your efficiency and productivity invariably registers a boost if you keep your work and intended end-results as the centre of your attention. And it is a known fact that if you pay greater attention to any issue, the chances of botching it up stand greatly reduced.

·   Heightened oomph: You would have experienced this if you have a tight schedule. Keenness, eagerness and hope are causative factors for increased get-up-and-go. It is no wonder why organizations give sabbaticals to their employees – breaks and time-offs help you unwind and come back with greater zeal to perform and execute. The reason is that if you have too much to do, your priorities are straight and efforts concentrated. A natural outcome is that interruptions and disturbances are of little consequence; and thus you obviously improve upon your usual output. When all is said and done, your recompense and incentive are being able to mull over your attainments. Needless to state, but important is the point that under such circumstances, they would be definitely superior. And most significantly, you will not harbour any feeling of remorse, had you been a lazy-bone.

·   Encouragement by advancement:  You will always have feelings of happiness and contentment if you attain anything, big or small. Such feelings impel you to keep working hard and have more laurels to your credit. If your inspiration is genuine and comes from within, the pleasures that follow after successful completion of a task or project are indeed great. Therefore, efficient functioning, implying more productivity is an automatic product if the impetus to perform originates from your inner self. It is a known fact that any work done under intimidation or enforced circumstances do not generate true enthusiasm and in the bargain, true satisfaction is not derived. There can be nothing more encouraging than being efficient and consequently a witness to achievements. Evidently, such developments boost self-assuredness and you are better poised to take up various work challenges.

It is an across-the-board relevance to all workplace environments that you will not be able to attain anything worthwhile if the going is not tough. Your schema of action and to-do list has to be demanding, though an easy routine may not be nerve-racking and exasperating. If you seek to be competent and proficient, then there is no short cut that you can take. You have to continually keep excelling, more so under challenging situations. The key to life is accepting challenges and if you do not, you will be more or less no more. So, dare yourself and increase your productivity.  

Making the best of training & development

 

 "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."       

- Mark Twain

All companies and organizations allocate make budgetary allocations for training and development of their employees. Whether or not the intended results are achieved is another question; or for that matter whether such programmes bring about a dispositional alteration amongst the employees.

            The vital issue, therefore, is to identify specific actions that should be taken to make certain that training objectives fructify and get adopted at work. A support mechanism needs to be in place to guarantee this. In other words, the training conducted has to be effectual and manifest itself in the performance of employees.

How do you ensure that training and development events are helpful and their objectives transportable to the workplace so that differences for the better are perceptible there?  Towards this, various procedures and actions need to be instituted as part of the training regimen so that employees understand things better and derive benefits. And as and when they apply their newly acquired knowledge at work, the company needs to extend all support to them.

Organizations make deliberate planning to conduct learning and development sessions. While the scope of training is a different matter, preparing the employees for it is another; needless to state, the latter is equally important. The following actions pay rich dividends:

·   Ensure organizational requirements necessitate training: A systematic and comprehensive evaluation of all prerequisites and desired proficiency levels amongst employees should be carried out. This will facilitate discerning and establishing actual training requirements; and making certain that the curriculum includes all concerns. Concurrently, answers to the following questions need to be also found:

ü Are time and various facilities made available to employees to facilitate performance of their duties professionally and competently?

ü Are the employees clear about their tasks and roles; and understand their job imperatives?

ü Are the employees qualified for various posts that they hold and the responsibilities they shoulder?

ü Are various job responsibilities assigned keeping in view employee expertise, capabilities and inclinations?

·   Engender a background for training and growth:  Employees should be sensitized on the need to improve upon current skills acquire additional qualifications; this is best done by disseminating information pertaining to new developments and techniques. It should be made certain that employees appreciate the connection between their work and training. The effects of training can be optimized further if they realize that such training will help them perform optimally towards the attainment of organizational objectives. All these aspects will prove to be positive if employees are acknowledged, rewarded or awarded certificates of merit. And more importantly, by creating a background for all training, the degree of enthusiasm amongst employees will increase and in the bargain, their motivation levels will also register an upward swing.

·   Conduct pragmatic training sessions: Talking of pragmatism in training, it implies that the training regimen has to be evolved based on what exactly the employee needs to be trained in. The end result should be kept in mind while formulating training programmes; it is essential that their range and scope actually bring about a positive boost in so much as the knowledge base of employees is concerned. It is quite likely that hired trainers may not be able to bring about the changes; therefore, in-house instructors could also be identified and utilized. It should be remembered that all training activities should be relevant and not be misconstrued as mere time-pass events.

·  Go for programmes that have quantifiable aims: This implies that all aims set out in the training are reckonable and can be applied at the jobs being performed. The training should be so structured that employees are able to expand their perspectives, as perhaps initially planned.  The

employees, on the other hand will know precisely what benefits can be anticipated and hence the possibility of any disillusionment subsequently stands greatly reduced. Thus he will be better geared to take on the challenges of his work by through application of newly acquired knowledge.   

More than what machines require, employees also need maintenance and upgrades. Retraining is maintenance, training an upgrade and development the next-generation model. The incontestable truth of the matter is that the only kind of learning which influences attitudes and disposition is the one that has been taken in by way of experience.