Growing in your career is an important aspect in life and there are many contributing factors to it. Starting right from day one, every day is a good time to prove and grow yourself at your work. While you could always learn the steps to grow, there are a few things to avoid as well. Knowing what not to do is an intelligent way to increase your chances of success in your career.
There are different perspectives of looking at things while grooming yourself for growth. You could look at it from a team member’s perspective to get to the next level or from a team leader’s perspective, working to get promoted to the next level. In both cases, certain basic steps are vital in focusing & avoiding. It’s important to stay away from the don’ts that could pull you away from your path of growth.
Here are the 5 things that you need to avoid if you want to become the next Team-Lead:
1. Being Unempathetic
One foremost quality that you need, if you want to see yourself as a Team Lead is Empathy. You should be able to put yourself into the shoes of people to have a better understanding of thoughts, actions, and words. Your perspective towards people would grow wider if you see yourself in their situation.
If you’re unempathetic or not worried about what others have gone through physically & mentally, you naturally tend to miss a major attribute that could help you develop your interpersonal skills. Understanding humans is an eternal quest and it plays quite a critical role when it comes to becoming a leader. This is one of the main reasons why Human Resources has been such a big research topic for centuries.
Becoming a person with empathy is not difficult. It only requires a few actions from your side:
- Be ready to take feedback.
- Respect emotions.
- Understand yourself by observing.
- Do not be judgemental.
- Be vocally kind.
2. Always Being the Talker
When you interact with people, it so happens that you might easily keep talking without giving a chance for the others to explain their side of the story. Being vocal is good but you can connect with your listeners better if you observe more. A good leader is always a better listener at first. When you are always the talker, you lose the chance to better empathize with others.
People tend to like it when someone listens to them. This is simply because it gives a message that you care when you invest your time to listen. The more you observe & listen to people, the more you become knowledgeable about them. This is one of the most important qualities you need, in your pursuit to reach the next levels in your career as a better people manager or a team lead.
3. Not Thinking Out of the Box
Becoming a leader would be a challenge if you do not think from a different perspective. The main requisite to leadership is thinking out of the box. You need to avoid not thinking like a leader to become one. You must start developing the habit of having an analytical view of any situation. When you think from various angles, you then get ideas on how to approach a challenging circumstance.
Growing in your professional career demands a few important qualities to be built over time. One of those is, the necessity to be a critical thinker. At work, when you view a problem from different perspectives, you get the answers on how to address and solve these issues at various levels starting from its source. This happens time and again where you’ll have to analyze the root cause of a problem & kill it, so it doesn’t sprout again.
4. Not being a Better Communicator
Communication is the key to excel in both the professional world & in personal life. It’s a basic requirement when you want to reach your dream positions at work. The art of communicating could be learned with regular bits of effort. If you’re not able to communicate properly, it will be difficult for you to express your ideas & proposals effectively.
Working on your communication is important because it is a much-needed quality especially if you’re aiming to get to the leadership side of the professional world. It would help you get connected with your team, with your peers & leaders in various ways.
Here are a few activities you could do regularly, to develop your communication skills:
- Reading a self-development book every month.
- Attending workshops on communication.
- Observing the people around to use their best practices.
- Listening more to understand better.
These listed activities are just an idea. You could always come up with your plans and ideas to work on yourself to enrich your skill set.
5. Being Hesitant to Change
Change is an inherent step while growing. Whatever development you desire, requires & offers you some form of “Change”. There are few times in life when you tend to get settled and refuse to take the next step. This is due to the habitual comfort you had gained over practicing the same routine over and again. While this could make the task easier, it would do no good in the long run.
When trying to climb up the ladder of your professional career, change is inevitable. You’d want to make a few alterations to your daily routine, habits, work styles, etc. It could be initially tough but in due course you’d thank yourself for being brave enough to take the step to change.
Here are a few ideas if in case you’re pondering what changes to make:
- Identify & make note of your weaknesses in the different tasks & skills. Start focusing on acquiring more knowledge on your weak spots to strengthen those.
- Start working on those few tasks and decisions that you’ve been postponing while yet knowing that those would do good for your career.
- At work, if you’ve been stagnant in a particular position or a team, take the step to move on to the next level or another stream of work.
Conclusion
These small steps would push you to grow. Being hesitant to change or move on is not the best for you because it’s your precious time. You must make optimum use of your resources which are available within you, for your maximum gain. The professional world is competitive but yet is rewarding to those who strive to take the right steps to grow. So keep learning and never stop trying.
