5 Ways To Get What You Want At Work

Are you working flat out, but just not quite seeing the results that you want at work? Achieving a correlation between what you want to happen, and the actual results your input achieves can be tricky, especially if you’ve not got a great deal of experience yet.

Here are 5 top tips to help you get what you want out of your working environment and colleagues; following these should help you achieve these desired results.

Ask for it

Few people realize that, despite putting in sufficient work and demonstrating sufficient effort, a key factor in their lack of advancement is that they don’t ask for what they want.

Making your desires and intentions clear to those around you – and especially those with the power the put these things into action – can be a crucial part of achieving success.

For example, you may work particularly hard and excel in a certain field in the hope of transferring department.  But if you don’t tell your boss that this is your ambition it’s highly unlikely to happen.

The power of persuasiveness

Never underestimate the power of flattery, and of persuasive rhetoric. Whilst clearly sucking up to the boss will do you no favours – either with this boss or your contemporaries – a well-executed plan of attack on the persuasiveness front will almost certainly move you closer to getting what you want at work.

Within this, simply being interested and taking the time to hear about another’s work, rather than introspectively focusing on your own tasks, can earn the respect and friendship of those around you.

Do it yourself

You may well be acquainted with the old phrase ‘if you want something done, do it yourself’. In many situations, this is very true. If a task or project is particularly important to you, and every detail needs to be correct, spend your own time making sure that it’s done properly instead of delegating or sharing out the work.

This may, of course, be impractical or impossible at times.  But at the end of the day it’s the only way you can know that a project has been completed exactly to your standards.

Make friends not enemies

Rather than simply targeting those within the company who you feel can be of most immediate help and advancement to you at the present moment, aim to network throughout the company.  As a general rule make friends, not enemies.

Network with as many people as you can, and do favors without necessarily expecting anything back. A contact that you make now may very well come to fruition in several years’ time. Conversely, being too proud to make friends and network with those not as senior to you is likely to come back to haunt you at a later date.

Work smart

Rather than feeling you need to put in more hours than anyone else in your office, or work yourself into the ground by visibly producing more documents and reports than anyone else, tailor your working style so that your productivity is top notch, and the hours you do spend working produce the greatest amount of results of anyone in your office.

As well as honing your skills and allowing you to get through more work, increasing your productivity will give you more free time, enabling you to destress and do more of what you enjoy, which will in turn fuel your focus and enjoyment at work.

Now, go get what you want!

Alexandra Jane writes for Inspiring Interns, which specialises in finding candidates their perfect internship. For senior roles, see the Inspiring Search page.