You have worked hard to get your promotion, now you have to set yourself up for success in your new role. Preparing to take on more responsibility will make the transition process run smoothly and will help set you up for future success.
So what are the next steps after you receive the promotion? What can you do to keep yourself on track?
1. Get clear expectations. The first thing you need to do is really understand your new role. What does the organisation expect of you? What does your manager expect of you? And what do you expect of yourself? Clarifying these expectations sets up a path to follow.
2. Set your goals. What do you want to accomplish and why? Set personal and career goals both short and long term so you can measure your progress on the path. Don’t be afraid to share your goals or vision with management and get their buy in as well,
3. Talk to your boss. Get to know your manager and determine how you will work together. How and when will you communicate and what will help you succeed beyond the job description. These things are critically important to your mutual success.
4. Focus on building relationships. You may have moved to a new department with new peers or report to and a new manager. The relationships with the people around you are part of that job! Invest time in building relationships with your new peers, people in other groups, your boss, your customers, and if you are a leader, your team. It makes your working environment more positive and productive if you have a level of rapport with your team.
5. Learn what you need to learn. Remember you are new to this position so you cannot know it all on the first day! It is part of our development to learn new skills. Take notes, ask questions, request feedback to make sure you are heading on the path towards success. The earlier you set yourself up to understand the requirements and expectations of the role, the easier it will be to settle into the position and start delivering.
6. Celebrate! Of course you deserve the time to celebrate your promotion and share the excitement with others. Take some time for yourself and those closest to you to celebrate your progress and accomplishments. Celebrating builds your confidence and awareness, and it sets you on the right path for even better performance.
Sometimes we tend to rush from one project to the next without fully understanding what we have achieved. Every accomplishment is a stepping stone on the path towards your future. Show appreciation towards those who helped get you get to that next stage.
If you have been through a promotion recently, what steps did you take to continue to perform at your best and show that you were the right one for the job?
We all want to be top performers at work. We want to work hard, achieve goals and be recognised for our efforts.
Here are four habits that will help you achieve more:
1. Make Yourself Accountable: While working independently is advantageous, it is also important to have someone that you report your progress to, whether it is members of your office team or a supervisor. This can often enforce more urgency and effort to complete the task when you know you need to report your progress to someone on a regular basis.
2. Discipline yourself to set priorities: It will make it easier to focus on the important tasks. Address the higher priorities in the morning when you are freshest and save the more repetitive ones for later in the day. If you receive assignments as the day is winding down, use the last five to ten minutes to prioritise for the next day. Lists are very helpful, and checking items off as you complete them will further encourage you to accomplish more.
3. Don’t let fear prevent you from completing challenging tasks: If fear takes control of our daily lives it can paralyse us from completing tasks. It results in achieving less and we may start avoiding commitment to tasks. The remedy for fear is planning. Start by making a list of things you have accomplished (even if it’s only two or three) and keep it in a visible place to use as self-encouragement. Then make a list of things you want to accomplish and the steps to complete each one. The best way to successfully complete a big project is to break it down into smaller pieces.
4. Avoid Procrastination.The longer you put off a task the more it will end up haunting you. You can save a lot of time and stress if you work on the difficult/important tasks first, then the rest of the day will seem less daunting.
What steps do you follow to keep yourself performing at your best? How do you keep track of your progression? What works best for you?
When you are trying to get ahead at work it is important that you are productive and show initiative. Sometimes that can be difficult when you are busy balancing multiple tasks and find yourself feeling physically or mentally drained. However, there are some simple steps that you can follow daily to help you to continue to perform at your best.
So what are the easiest ways you can stay productive daily? I have reviewed the article 5 Instant, Effective Productivity Boosters for Busy People and provided my own advice on each point below:
Sometimes it can be as simple as clearing the paperwork from your desk and removing unnecessary clutter. It is much easier to manage yourself if items are clearly set up on your desk or surrounding environment and are easily accessible when you need them. The great part is, it usually will only take you five to ten minutes to do so. Avoid letting mess build up as it only makes it harder to manage your workload. This includes, cleaning out your inbox and managing calendar appointments.
I used to have this problem and still do at times where I like to be a people pleaser and say yes to everything that is asked of me. The truth is, my manager and colleagues will not know how busy I am unless I advise them otherwise.
Often people think that by saying ‘no’ you will be letting the team down. On the contrary, if you take on something that you do not have the time for, you will be letting the team down if you when achieve the deadline.
Focus on the important tasks you already have in front of you, and only agree to commit to additional work if you believe you can realistically achieve the outcome.
You may be on the go and may not be at your desk to see your written to do list. So manage your calendar, set reminders, read from a tablet or smart phone while on the morning commute. With so many different methods of accessing data you don’t have an excuse not to be able to organise yourself!
Another tip is to be realistic about setting your appointment times, for example don’t set your appointments too close to one another if you know there could be transport delays or if you think the first meeting will run over time. You want to appear reliable to clients. If you are arranging the meeting, nothing is more embarrassing then arriving late!
This is one point that is very important but we tend to overlook it. We think that by putting off our breaks we will reach our deadlines faster. While it may allow more time, your body requires fuel to perform, otherwise you reach a slump and turn into a zombie.
If you want to minimise that amount of time you get up from your desk, keep a bottle of water and small snacks in the drawer of your desk so that you can continue to hydrate and provide energy bursts when you need it.
Sometimes though, it is important to get up and go for a walk for 5 minutes to allow time to clear your thoughts and come back to the task with a fresh set of eyes.
If you are not managing your health and well-being you not only feel bad, but you may miss important opportunities because you are not in the right mindset to do so.
Set your to-do list so that you are tackling the important assignments first and tick them off your list when you complete them. Some assignments will require more urgency than others and there is nothing worse than showing up with a half completed assignment because you were trying to accomplish five things at once.
If you organise yourself and stay focused you will achieve a whole lot more.
What do you find works and doesn’t work when you are trying to keep productive? Do you keep a daily list or routine? What can you recommend for others to try?
We have all been guilty of setting a goal and getting side tracked. But when it comes to your career progression it is important to break through the barriers that may be preventing you from achieving success.
So what are some of the main obstacles that could be holding you back from achieving your goals? Is there something that you can think of right now? More importantly, what can you do to overcome them?
While conducting research on the topic, I sourced an article on the top obstacles to your goals and added my personal perspective on ways you can overcome the obstacles:
1. Procrastination – Are there certain items that you have been avoiding and you notice the paperwork and emails are slowly piling up? Do you keep telling yourself – I’ll do it this afternoon, tomorrow or next week? Does it suddenly become urgent and you wish you had tackled it sooner?
Try this instead:
– Firstly, be aware of it, admit it to yourself, and take action to change it.
– If it is a tedious task that you don’t enjoy doing, get it out of the way first and don’t keep putting it off.
– Set up a list of tasks and put them in order of priority for the day.
– Set a timeframe in which to complete it, this will give it a sense of urgency and a deadline for you to achieve the task.
– Repeat this process for longer term goals as well
2. Lack of time – Whether it is work, family commitments, the daily commute etc. Different commitments will pull at your attention and dedicating time to your goals can be difficult. However, it is important to make sure that you are managing time to balance everything on your plate before you add more to your to-do list.
Try this instead: Firstly, establish what you currently have on your to-do list and narrow down your top three priorities of the day. By setting yourself three realistic priorities to accomplish you will feel a greater level of satisfaction completing those items as opposed to trying to tackle 54 items at once with no results.
3. Lack of organisation/motivation – Sometimes when we let projects and paperwork build it can appear overwhelming and you often don’t know where to begin.
Try this instead: Pick one project and work on a specific goal around it. Get clear on what you need to do to achieve this goal – do research, seek training, and then write out a time frame in which you need to achieve it by. And most importantly, hold yourself accountable for it so that you are continually driving yourself and not losing focus on the task at hand.
4. Distractions – Meetings, phone calls, emails, reminders, social media connections or a colleague or manager asks you to drop what you are doing to complete and urgent task. Does this sound familiar? Wish you could block out the world long enough to complete that project? But how?
Try this instead: Sometimes it can be as simple as advising your colleagues that you are working on an important assignment for the next hour or two and to approach you only if it is urgent. You may need to divert your calls to voicemail for a period of time or put an out of office reply on your emails until you are done. And if your phone or other devices are set to make noises to remind you of appointments or when you receive a message, it may be best to set them to silent. Allocating the amount you wish to shut out distractions is up to you, as long as you can make the most of that time to be productive and achieve your desired results.
What do you find are some of the major obstacles that you find come up with goal setting or pursuing a goal in your career? What steps have you taken previously to overcome them? What did you learn from the experience?
