As businesses change, industries transform and structures are revisited it helps to stay on top of your own learning and development because the future is unpredictable. Only you can craft your own destiny. If you let your personal and professional development slip, your credibility can erode.
1. Move ahead of the curve: No business stays the same and no team can exist doing things that are not aligned with how businesses evolve. Therefore, individuals in teams who can’t keep pace or are unable to grasp the essence of what the business is trying to achieve will soon be left by the wayside. Unless they have their ears to the ground and shape up.
2. Not learning from your mistakes: Everyone makes mistakes. What you do when you learn you have made one is what differentiates a so-so employee from an extraordinary one. Be it in a safe environment or in a harsh one, mistakes will happen and how you cope with the realization differentiates employees. Address it swiftly, made amends and make a commitment to stakeholders to ensure they don’t occur again.
3. Get better at your craft: No one can help you get better at what you do but yourself. Take active interest to learn from your work and what didn’t work. When you are the best in your field stakeholders will take you seriously. Would you trust a doctor without strong credentials? It is the case of craft. Sharpen your saw and then some more.
4. Stay curious: If you want to be abreast with what is happening around you – take an active interest. Often in interviews when I ask candidates ‘what do you do to develop yourself’ I hear responses like ‘I read Linkedin posts and books’. That can help to some extent but not knowing what are the trends in your industry or what is shaping the world of work is criminal. Without knowing, you can’t apply and without applying what you know you can’t develop. It is a cycle.
5. Pick up new challenges: It is often nice to play safe – do your work because the work environment allows that. However, if you aren’t getting out of your comfort zone you can soon begin to jade. Look around you and you will find many things that need fixing – be it a process or a program or an approach. Stepping up and taking ownership of initiatives that will develop you personally and professionally is expected.
What do you think?
Other posts in the ‘Credibility Degraders’ Series are on Linkedin:
Don’t Ignore Credibility Degraders. You Cannot ‘Not’ Communicate
Be Watchful Of Credibility ‘Degraders’. ‘Small’ Stuff Does Matter
