Tag: Succeeding At Work

As a professional in any field, your day is probably busy and spending time attending workshops and seminars can be a waste, if you do not choose carefully. Let’s divide the workshops and seminars into categories and then decide which ones are worth the investment of time and money.

Workshops and seminars organized by your company

In general, do attend many of them. You might think that this 25-year old communication expert has nothing to teach your 50-year old experienced self, but your company obviously thinks otherwise. Think of it this way: companies do not waste their money. If they offer you workshops and seminars, it is an investment. They believe that their employers will become more efficient and deliver a better quality of work.

Seminars and workshops offered by your company might also give you the chance to work in different positions within the company or shoot for higher positions. If, for example, at some point you want to become a manager, attending management seminars can be of great help. The same goes for all seminars linked to skills that might be offered.

And of course, if your company provided seminars to train the employees to newest versions of software or hardware, do not miss them under any circumstances. Technology nowadays is fast and a specialist can teach you tips and tricks that would take you ages to find out by yourself. This is why your employer offers you such seminars: to save your time and his money.

Workshops and seminars not organized by your company

This can be a bit tricky, because you might need to take some days off work to attend a seminar or workshop that is weekly or takes place far away. In case the subject of the seminar will help you become a better employee for your company, you can let the human resources department and your boss know about it. They might give you a few days off and they might even encourage and fund more employees to join.

In the case, however, that you want to join a seminar that you will have to pay out of your pocket in order to enrich your CV or because you are looking for a career change, it’s obviously best to not be so open about it. If you know that you might meet people from your professional environment at the seminar, be honest with your boss about where you are going to be those two days that you will be off. Again, try to focus on how this seminar could make you a better employee. People do not like it when someone is about to leave their company.

In case you are working and need to attend seminars to prepare for a career change, try to find the ones that are organized during the weekend or even attend the ones offered online. These have the advantage that are often cheaper (both due to the lower admission fee and the fact that you do not have to travel there) and you can also attend them while wearing your pajamas. You can also take as many notes as you like, as organizers often send a video link of the seminar to the participants.

Seminars for freelancers

If you are a freelancer, you are your own boss. You are the one deciding where to invest your time and money. This is why you should make sure that a seminar is relevant to your goals and ambitions, before paying the admission fee. Searching on line for reviews about the organizer of the seminar and the background of the speaker always helps. Mailing the organizers and asking for details will also help you understand if they are really experts in the topic they are presenting. Keep in mind that a high quality workshop or seminar organizer should be able to provide the goals in clear bullets. If there is a lot of general information and no focus, save your time and money for something else.

You can tell your company recognizes your importance when you’re given training opportunities on a regular basis. True, training programs can seem like additional chores — especially if they don’t excuse you from regular workload. But consider this: management has seen it fit to invest company resources in your continuous development! This means that the powers-that-be know you (yes, you!) have the potential to be better, if not great.

Training satisfaction can help you achieve job satisfaction (Latif, Jan, & Shaheen, 2013; Schmidt, 2007), and in turn motivate you to stay in a job (Kolarova, 2010). It pays, therefore, to stop stressing about having to attend trainings, and start seeing how you can maximize their pay-offs. Great training experiences translate to greater enjoyment at work.

Consider the following ways you can get the most value from corporate trainings.

PRE-TRAINING

If your organization is doing training the right way, it’s not grabbing topics out of thin air. Instead, it invests in what is called a Training Needs Analysis or TNA.

TNA is a systematic way of identifying issues to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between present and ideal performance. Usually, it’s conducted through surveys, interviews, and focused group discussions. Seasoned managers can also identify training needs through keen observation and analysis.

It’s important to make your voice heard as early as the TNA phase. The simple act of careful reflection before answering surveys can go a long way in making sure you’re getting the training you deserve. The same goes with giving detailed, thoughtful answers. A sit down with your supervisor or training provider about your current and desired competencies is also a good idea.

Do also articulate to the training team not just gaps in your knowledge (what you know vs. what you need to know) and your skills (what you can do vs. what you need to be able to do), but also gaps in your engagement at work (how passionate you are vs. how passionate you can still be). Effective training providers address not just theoretical and practical know-how but also attitudes and feelings in the workplace. You may, for example, simply need Stress Management interventions to get the work done in time.

Just remember: you don’t have to avail of every training program offered. A well-known speaker and some well-placed buzz words can make you think you need a training program even if you don’t — so be discerning. Prioritize important and urgent needs. If you must, defer to an organizational development expert to root out underlying causes of performance issues.

TRAINING PROPER

How can you maximize learning during the training proper?

For starters, attend a learning event with an open mind. Yes, this sounds common sense, but you’d be surprised at how it’s not common practice. You may feel that you know more than your facilitator as you’re a specialist in the field. Or you may be attached to an old way of doing things, and don’t fancy a different approach. The training games seem too cheesy and weird. But resisting learning can keep you from getting experiences that will make you a better rounded employee.

Second, it’s important to give your training provider context in order to ground the discussion on what’s really happening in your company. Ideally, trainers should already be aware of the context participants are working in even before a program starts. But grounding concepts to actual situations is tricky business, especially if participants are coming from diverse backgrounds. So share what you’re dealing with everyday; communicate your learning expectations. A generic course on Conflict Management Skills can easily be grounded to your daily flare-ups with customers if you just provide your trainer information on where you’re coming from.

Lastly, discover from fellow learners as much as from your speaker. The person you’re seated with may actually be a fountain of best practices. The odd guy in front may have access to the resources you need. If you can make training events an opportunity to get to know your co-employees more, or to expand your professional network, then you’re definitely hitting two birds with one stone.

POST TRAINING

What you do post-training may actually be the most critical when it comes to maximizing your training experience.

According to the American Society for Training and Development, employees retain but 10% of their learnings from training programs! This is especially so when you’ve been bombarded by a massive amount of concepts, or you don’t immediately practice the skills you acquired.

Here’s a tip: immediately after training, make a list of all your key learnings. These learnings can be new principles or new ways of handling things. Keep your list short — focus on just your top 5. Too long a list can be de-motivating.

Once your list is done, come up with concrete applications of your learnings in your daily work schedule. For instance, did you learn in Project Management training that you need to clearly delineated roles and accountabilities in your team? Okay then, in which project team would you apply this learning? When do you plan to start? What are the resources (e.g. charts, help from others, etc.) that you need? Identify as well the exact deliverables you want in your hands before you can say that you’ve achieved the goals you’ve set.

And if you can arrange it, ask for constant mentoring from seniors in the company or even from peers who attended the learning event with you. Don’t be afraid of making a mistake — learning is less about mastering things the first time, but more about being able to diagnose and improve on things that don’t go according to plan. Solicit feedback. Create accountability structures as well; for instance, you can allot a few minutes of every meeting agenda for evaluation of how well training learnings are being applied, or you can contract for a partner to report achievements to. Basically, put your learnings into action!

Few things are guaranteed to make employees feel more disheartened and demoralized than not getting a prized promotion, especially if it happens time and time again and/or if an employee feels that they have given years of faithful service with nothing in return.

However, many employees fail to make it up to that next step of the ladder either because they don’t understand that promotion isn’t a right which comes automatically with long service, or because they fall into the trap of thinking that doing an exceptional job in their current role is enough. Whichever is the case though, these people are doomed to remain where they are, simply because they are neither prepared to fill their boss’ shoes, nor to demonstrate their ability to do so.

Perhaps in years gone by there was a time when the most senior member of the workforce was the natural selection for promotion, but even if that was the case then, it certainly isn’t now. Irrespective of age or length of service, it is the person who can demonstrate his or her readiness for a higher level job who will be awarded it. That readiness, however, isn’t just dependent upon performing brilliantly at the current level. After all, that’s what employers expect from their workers anyway. If employees are intent on making the move to the next level up, they need to do much more than this.

Although most job seekers wouldn’t dream of applying for an external job without understanding what the role entailed, for some unknown reason, many of those who apply for internal promotions don’t actually have much of a clue as to what the job involves or what responsibilities the current incumbent holds, let alone what skills and qualifications are necessary to fulfill the role successfully. Consider though, the difference between the duties and responsibilities of an operational worker and his or her supervisor for example. While the former might require a range of technical skills, it might rely little on communications or “people” skills. The latter, on the other hand, not only requires at least some understanding of the technical side of things, but it might also call for management, leadership and reporting skills, not to mention excellent planning, organizational and communications skills, an understanding of health and safety, quality, risk management and customer issues and the ability to think strategically. Clearly then, no matter how well the operational worker does his current job, in no way will this make him prepared to fill his manager’s shoes.

So, what can employees do to ensure that they know what to expect from the next level up and what can they do to prepare for it?

The first thing to remember is that it’s never a good idea to just assume that you know what your manager does. Instead, either use your powers of observation to assess how their time is spent and the kinds of things that they are involved in or take an appropriate opportunity, such as during the course of one of your own regular appraisal meetings, to ask. When discussing your own performance, for instance, you could enquire as to how your own responsibilities link to those of your manager. If this still doesn’t give you a clear understanding of what they do, then another option might be to ask your HR department for a copy of the individual’s job description.

Once you have a clearer idea of what the job at the next level up entails, you then need to consider whether you currently have the necessary skills and qualifications to fill the role. If not, then before you even think about applying for the position, you need to put together a plan for acquiring them. If formal training is required, then your company may be able to support you in a course of study, both in a financial sense by subsidizing course costs and by granting study leave if required. If the skills that you are missing are ones which could be obtained on the job, then you have several options. First of all, you could ask your manager if you can provide assistance in carrying out certain of his or her tasks as a means of contributing to your personal development. Secondly, you could volunteer for any projects or assignments which come up in your department that would allow you to acquire the relevant skills. If opportunities within your own team or department are thin on the ground, however, another option is to ask for or volunteer to help out with projects or assignments in other teams or departments.

Another great way to get a feel for what happens higher up the organization, and particularly at the strategic level, is through meetings. If you want to secure yourself an invitation though, you will have to justify your attendance by demonstrating that you have something valuable to contribute. Start by finding out which meetings your manager is scheduled to attend and getting a copy of the agenda, and then offer to assist your manager in preparing for the meeting and in presenting your findings.

Doing a first-class job in your current role is, of course, important if you want to try for a promotion, because it helps to build your professional reputation and demonstrates your commitment and sound work ethic. On its own, however, it isn’t enough to demonstrate your readiness to take on a higher level role. If you want to do that, you need to think ahead and factor in the additional work required to show that you are capable of doing the job and could hit the ground running.

Job searching can be an undeniably stressful experience but if, having secured that new position, you feel inclined to just rest on your laurels and ease your way into the role slowly, then think again. The first 90 days in any new job are some of the most vital in terms of determining how far you go from here.

We’ve all heard the old adage about never having a second chance to make a good first impression, and when it comes to starting a new job, this is certainly one that holds true. Even before you have made it through your first day in your new role, your employer has already made what could be a considerable investment in you (remember, the recruitment process isn’t typically cheap), which means that you are going to come well and truly under the microscope to make sure that you live up to expectations. Whatever impressions your employer has of you during those first few vital months are going to stick, so it’s up to you and you alone to ensure that you give the best possible account of yourself. Fail to make yourself stand out as a top performer at this stage and you could very well seal a none-too-promising fate for yourself.

The traps that new hires fall into during their first 90 days are many and varied, but most are ones that don’t even cross their minds until after it’s too late. Often in a state of nervousness and keen to fit into a whole new environment, some make schoolboy errors which they are literally never able to recover from. Here are just a few examples of the fundamental mistakes which can leave employers wondering whether they made the right choice and new employees wishing they had played things differently. While some might not appear, at face value, to be of any great importance in the bigger scheme of things, believe me, they can kill careers stone dead!

1. Mixing with the wrong crowd. Make no mistake and like it or not, you will be judged by who you associate with. Take your time to get to know your colleagues and co-workers before forming any close bonds. Hanging out with office gossips, slackers or cliques of individuals who keep themselves separate from the rest of the organization will see you being tarred with the same brush. Your aim should be to be polite, friendly and respectful towards everyone that you come into contact with, but only to form alliances with the influencers who can help to further your career. These people don’t necessarily sit at the top of organizations, but they are people who have respect and credibility and whose opinions are listened to and acted upon.
2. Failing to introduce yourself to the head honchos. If the people at the top of your organization don’t even know that you exist, the chances of your career going anywhere are slim. If you want to make the very best impression from the start, schedule a short appointment with the company leaders and use the opportunity to discuss their vision for the organization, how your role fits into that vision and how you can maximize your input towards company objectives in the course of carrying out your role.
3. Doing no more than is required of you. Putting in the designated number of hours, sticking rigidly to your job description and learning as you go along might be enough to help you retain your new job, but if you are really going to stand out amongst your peers, you’re going to have to do better than that. Be the first to arrive and the last to leave during the early days, use every minute and every resource to expand and accelerate your learning and always be prepared to go that extra mile. Deliver more than is required of you and ahead of schedule if possible to demonstrate the added value that you bring to the organization, and volunteer to take on projects that no-one else wants to touch. Always aim to consistently exceed your manager’s expectations.
4. Getting involved in office politics. Breaching confidentiality, gossiping, talking about colleagues and co-workers behind their backs and at a personal level, becoming involved in office relationships and taking sides in disputes are all major minefields in the workplace. If you want to ensure a sound professional reputation and be seen as credible, avoid them at all costs.
5. Asking about promotion. It should go without saying that you have been hired to fulfill a particular need within your organization and so indicating that you are just using your new role as a stepping stone to something better isn’t likely to go down well.
6. Failing to engage your manager in weekly performance reviews. Especially during the first few months of your employment, it is absolutely essential that you find out from your manager how your performance is perceived and where you need to make adjustments in order to excel in your role, rather than merely guessing. Less regular performance reviews might be perfectly adequate further down the line, but during the initial 90 days you need to sit down and get a blow by blow account of how you are doing.