Hello Friends,
In this post, I’ll share with you three of my tried and tested techniques on how to navigate your way through sophisticated professional scenarios and achieve the success that you deserve. Here are your 3 tips for today:
Become Politically Savvy
If you are aware of the “Law of Polarity”, then you would know that everything in this universe has two “poles”; good and bad, white, and black, beneficial, and harmful and so on. The same applies to office politics, you will be the one deciding how to make it work to your advantage while ensuring not to immerse yourself so much into it to avoid being dragged into the mud.
Even though “Office Politics” term mostly have negative connotation, it’s something you cannot run away from if you are a working professional. It’s a hidden part of the corporate culture in many organizations and one of those things that everyone wish it were not there, still many gets involved in it to some degree during their working life. You cannot turn a blind eye to it, but you can definitely look at it as an exciting game and learn its rules that will enable you to play it smartly and ethically.
Develop your political acumen in a positive manner. Don’t get involved in any sort of negative office politics as it can do more harm than good to you and your professional credibility. Use it in a positive manner to leverage your ability to advance in your career.
Deliver Your Best Work Everyday
One of the golden rules for winning in your professional life in general and office politics in particular is to focus on delivering your best work, day in and day out. You need to become so good at what you do that your employer and colleagues start believing that you are indispensable. There must be some unique style, knowledge base or profound experience that you bring along which will enable you to tackle every challenge that comes your way with wisdom and grace.
Working on merit and constantly surprising your manager and colleagues with creative ideas and excellent outcomes is your best tool and ally to win against unpleasant work situations as well as to transform the workplace vibe from negativity to excitement about the endless possibilities that you and your team can create to achieve success then celebrate the team efforts.
How will you do that? Read the next tip.
Leverage Your Strengths and Talents
Building on the concept of working hard VS working smart in a previous article; career progression requires not only working on your tasks and projects and completing them on time, but it also involves you to equally work on yourself and personal development along the way to establish admirable reputation and compelling brand image in your field and industry. Unfortunately, many professionals don’t realize the wasted time and efforts they’ve put in the wrong tasks/places until it’s late in their careers.
You may have heard this advice several times during your appraisal, that you must focus on your “weaknesses” or “areas of development” to perform better, let me tell you this is a totally misguided suggestion and just a waste of your valuable time. A better advice is to identify your strengths and native talents then capitalize on them by refining and polishing them even more then ensuring everyone around you knows about them.
Focusing on your “areas of development” will make you mediocre, while leveraging on your strengths will highlight you and eventually makes you an expert in your field, so learn where to focus your time and efforts from the beginning. If you are interested in identifying your top strengths, you may undergo the Clifton Strength Finder Assessment which I took and benefited a lot from to learn about my top dominant themes.
As I always say; the only thing that you must not waste is “Time” and if you are on purpose, you will be able to utilize your time in the best possible way most of the time. Ready to start taking the right steps today?
- Start reading my book “Beat The Odds” to acquaint yourself with the most effective practices that I’ve personally applied throughout my work life and achieved incredible results.
- Connect with me here to book you complimentary coaching session to discuss how can I be of help in your career journey.
- Have a great and productive time ahead 😊
