3 ways to excel at work…

Ever dream of being the top employee in your organisation, surpasses your colleagues and grab the best promotions or salary increments? Yes! I know many had pondered on this question and today I am going to show you 3 ways that will make you a better team member at work. No down & dirty tricks, or nasty politics, but some good habits and mindset that set you up into the good books of your colleagues and bosses.

1. Be generous and proactive. Sounds familiar? Proactive is certainly a key to all successes. You must be actively ahead of your work, instead of waiting for work to come to you or wait for customers to take the first step. Take the initiative and go after it, “create” work for yourself, design and propose new solutions to business processes or and tasks that you are having trouble with, reach out to your customers and build relationships, propose projects. See? There’s a lot that you can do. Don’t worry about creating more work for yourself, and don’t worry that you won’t get credit for it. In the long run, you will be creating a great impression in everyone. Creating work for yourself is not a bad thing at all! Because you make this work happen, you can literally control it, influence and direct your work to your desired results. With that in mind, be generous too! Always add value to your work, value-addedness is a critical factor at work, it determines your importance in your organization. If you don’t add value, you will be soon on the chopping board! Again, don’t worry about not gaining anything back from your bosses. If they don’t appreciate that you are giving back 3 times more than your boss pay you, other organizations will be more than willing to pay more for you!

2. Respect your work. From the first point of being generous, it doesn’t mean that you are generously doing a lot of things, and not claiming credit for it. Be sure that there are people out there to take advantage of your generosity and take things for granted. Take pride in your own work and be sure to take any credit you deserved. Do some publicity for your excellent work, remember to cc your own bosses in collaboration emails and always present your work. Respect your work and take ownership of it, otherwise, people will be leveraging on your “kindness” and propelling them away from you.

3. Ask better questions. This is the ULTIMATE way to differentiate yourself from others. Asking questions is important at work, it is a way people tell if you are engaged or not. But it is not enough to make any difference from others, because everyone else will be doing the same. Ask more constructive and thoughtful questions, coupled with great details. People will feel appreciated when they hear your question and able to feel the commitment and sincerity in your conversation. Some examples of better questions, “How long will it take for your team to complete on this project?” is a good question, it can be better in this way : “Will it take 2 weeks for your team to complete on the first phase of the project and probably take another week before we can see the final result?”. This is a better question as it is rich in content and you had put some thoughts into it. Another example, “How can I contact you?”, again, try including more details “Can I call you or email you so that we can work closely in this joint project? I think this way we are better informed of anything that happens on either side.” You are likely to be more appreciated in the latter question you asked right?

         

With this 3 habits, you are set to become one of the greatest asset your organization owned. With such “unfair advantage”, you can expect many opportunities coming to you. See yourself as a great leader at work, others will be influenced by your exemplary skills, and will want to collaborate and work for you! For more case studies, try getting this book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, great case studies and ways to approach work and making things happen in your favor.  Another legendary book that talks about effectiveness at work,The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness , you will be inspired to be more than just effective, but more effective than ever before!

 

You may be interested in these too :

• The Now Habit at Work: Perform Optimally, Maintain Focus, and Ignite Motivation in Yourself and Others
• Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization
• Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It

 

I am sure the 3 ways to excel at work will work for you… Be sure to start changing the way you work today!

Richmond

Founder – Dream Turners

Taking Control & Going with the Flow…

Successful people always have things under their control. You will always see that they are able to manipulate, or make things happen in their favor. Today, I will go share with you their secrets… Generally speaking, their actions can be categorized into two, Taking Control of Things around them, and Going with the Flow of Things happening around them. Such actions are driven by a millionaire habit, “Be proactive!”. We will talk about this in this post.

Taking Control of Things

You must of heard of “Winners make things happen…”. Yes, being in control means controlling things that will happen around them. They are 100% committed to themselves and their visions, and take every step to ensure that things happen in their favor. Once things start to drift away from their ideal state, these people will go all out to turn things around, like influencing others, micro-manage certain minor tasks, fix issues themselves. They are always proactive to look out for things that they can manipulate and drive things to work for them. That is why you will see them very good at spotting opportunities.

Going with the Flow

Although they are powerful super beings, there will be inevitable events that happen which spoil their plan and disrupt the progress to their ideal state. But you will never see them ranting or complaining that their great plans have failed. Inevitable events are like when stock market suddenly plunges to rock bottom, or a change in government law, or a natural disasters. No one can be powerful enough to make such events change, but successful individuals are dynamic and willing to change their strategy and plans to continue on their journey to success. They accept that things can change and so they have to change to stay in the flow with it.

Many people failed because they are not proactive enough, allowing things to drive their decisions and their plans and in some cases, resulting in big losses. They miss out a lot of good opportunities or decision to take real action to rectify the problem, and ending up waiting for “miracles” to happen. Instead, many will start giving excuses that things are not happening in their favor and they had not choice to give up.

Remember, you have the ability to change things and decide how things will happen! Be proactive in every thing you do, you will feel the difference. If you haven’t heard of this famous book,The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide , I strongly recommend you to get it for yourself. I had several editions of this book and I had benefitted a lot every time I read. Other related books are useful too, you might be interested in: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , which is one of the BEST self-help book everyone should get. Get this if you want to start making a difference in your life today!

    

Bigger Perspective = More Opportunities

I bet you have heard of others saying, “I am waiting for an opportunity, and I will make my move.” Many times, most of them end up “waiting” too long and gave up, or some make their move at the wrong opportunities. In fact, opportunities are everywhere. It is out there NOW and for you to discover. But the question is, how do we spot opportunities? Here is one Chinese ancient story that talk about this…

There was one farmer who was trying to explore new land and he stumbled upon a big Bottle Gourds Plant. Bottle gourd plants are famous for their fruits which can be hollowed out and used as water bottles. This particular plant grow amazingly BIG bottle gourds, what an opportunity the farmer thought! The farmer thought they can be used to make giant water bottles but only to realize that these giant fruits have skin that is just too thin to hold water. Water bottles made from these fruits leak and break very easily. Feeling very disappointed with his so-called “opportunity” and returned home.

He shared his findings to an amateur farmer and the amateur decided to see the “useless find” himself. The amateur finally saw the giant gourds and said “Wow! I can make good use of these big fruits!”. He dug out the entire plant and transported it back to his backyard and harvested all the giant fruits, tying them together. A few weeks later he had crafted out an extremely strong river raft, making use of the hollowed giant gourds as floats and the rafts soon become a profitable product! A useless material for a bottle turned out to be an useful and profitable material for a river raft! Certainly, the farmer missed out a very lucrative opportunity!

So what’s the secret? The answer lies in what the amateur see! The amateur had a bigger perspective, not by just looking at the conventional use of bottle gourds but looked far beyond that, and he saw a lot more uses of these giant gourds. Opportunities are everywhere, its the matter of whether you can actually see it or not…

Here’s a question for you to try out…

What will you do if you managed to buy a big piece of land at a ridiculously low price?

Think about it and have an answer before you read on.

It’s an opportunity right? So what will you do?

• Some people see it as a sure way for quick profit, buy low and sell high! Instant profit!
• And some others try to reap more out of it by turning it into a big farmland where you can harvest a lot all year round and making profit every year. Good perspective! Better than a one-off profit just by selling the land off.
• Others with bigger perspective see the opportunity to create more passive income, by investing money to build apartments and buildings on it and renting them out for more money!
• And you know what? Someone actually did a quick check on the soil and rocks and found out that there is a gold vein under it! Its a gold mine!

Sure enough, the bigger perspective you have, the more things you will see and the more opportunities you will discover. It also determines the level of success, or the amount of output you will gain from the opportunity. You can definitely gain something out of it, but is that the best you can gain from it? Do you see a small local business that can sustain your lifestyle or do you see a regional chain of outlets that can bring you heaps of money? Your talent of painting allows you to earn a name in your country or do you see your master pieces on a world tour that will make you a world famous artist? Your perspective of things determine your results!

Here are some books on broadening perspectives and see more opportunities. Spotting Business Opportunities and The Business You Can Start: Spotting The Greatest Opportunities In The Economic Downturn (Pathway to Business Success Series) gives you quick, proven methods to improve your ability to see more opportunities. Easy to follow methodologies provide you certain rules or guides that can lead you to see what others may not see. Not only to see, but how to act on them to make gains out from it!

 

  

 

Don’t wait! Opportunities are all out there now! Discover and act on it before others will!

 

Richmond