Taking Career Control with Personal Effectiveness (How to be Effective at Work - Part 2)

The person that came up with the saying “Use what you have to get what you need”, probably meant something different. However, the principle applies to Personal Effectiveness.

Let me illustrate. If my goal was to increase my income by $ABC I have at least 3 options:

• Upskill: get additional qualifications and get a higher-paying job in my field.
• Reskill: get new or additional qualifications in an in-demand subject area to get a job in a "trending" sector.
• Mine my network. Those who know my value could take me closer to the decision-makers I have identified in the spaces where I could earn the kind of income I want. I can also be intentional about growing my network to achieve the same goal.
• Start a business: I can identify a need and see what I can do to start a small enterprise since my goal is to increase my income.

If I'm doing only one, then I'm not fully exploring my options. Am I even fully utilizing the one I chose? Do I need to combine two or more?

A lot of the time, we only explore one or a few ways of achieving a goal, when:

1.??????It may be about our approach to the strategies and not the strategies themselves that need to be adjusted.

2.??????Using the right strategy might mean we don’t need to use others available

It's doing something new with “old” resources. It's asking yourself "how can I do this better?"

Shalu Manan, HR Professional, and TEDx Speaker talks about four components of personal effectiveness:

Ownership

Ownership refers to knowing and owning everything happening on your job, both upstream and downstream, and understanding how doing or not doing something can impact the results. You understand the stated and unstated expectations and what your stakeholders tell you they want as well as what they don’t spell out for you but expect from you all the same. You are result-oriented – or totally focused on the outcomes you want to achieve by the work you take on yourself.

Execution

You are focused on why you are doing the job and how you are reaching your end goal. Speed is extremely important, but speed must be tempered with purpose. You need to balance speed, purpose, and perfection when it comes to execution, and you will be yet another step closer to achieving personal effectiveness.

Discipline

Not what you would typically expect, Shalu takes discipline a step further to include risk assessment and mitigation, preempting challenges or ‘failure modes’, and developing ideas to avoid or survive them. Also, establish consistent and proactive communication so that you seek out information rather than wait for it to come to you. Then multi-task by focusing on those tasks that affect the critical path of a commitment you made.

Learning Agility

You need to constantly challenge yourself, learn new things, and stay relevant to the world we live in by demonstrating a curious, open mind and asking questions. Learn to accept ambiguity and be change resilient. Understand why you are doing something and how it is going to benefit the job you are doing. Learn to say no to things that are holding you back wasting your time or distracting you.

Here are three tips to increase your personal effectiveness:

1.??????Practice Self-awareness:

a.??????Each personality type has its strengths and weaknesses. Dominants tend to manage risks well; Influencers are enthusiastic and high energy. Identifying yours means that you can appropriately direct your efforts to get the best results.

b.??????Some people work better in the morning; others work better at night. Understanding your productive hours helps you know when you can get the best out of yourself to accomplish your tasks.

c.??????Know your triggers. What gets you excited, stressed, or angry? What are the signs that your energy levels are decreasing? When you understand your triggers, you can take steps to manage your reactions and maximize your productivity.

?2.??????Prioritize tasks: The “Urgent-Important” Matrix, was popularized by Stephen Covey in his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You can organize your work by categorizing your tasks. That way, the urgent ones are handled first depending on the context. Watch out for tasks, which when handled quickly bring you a big return on time invested.

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3.??????Be accountable:

a.??????Asking for feedback is an important effectiveness tool. Getting input from your stakeholders on the impact of your work means you can course-correct it if necessary.

b.??????Development plan: another benefit of feedback is that once you note an area that needs improvement, you can outline the steps you need to take to accomplish that goal and follow them.

c.??????Measuring means you can compare your current state to your previous one and assess whether you’re progressing or not.

Personal effectiveness is particularly important when you experience a career slump. Because there is always something you can do better, you can always re-invent yourself and put the control of your career back where it belongs...IN YOUR HANDS!