A More Competent Human Is A More Competent Employee
The title of this article might seem ridiculously obvious. Even an eight-year-old could understand it if you put it to them in more simple language. So why the need to title an article in this way? Is your intelligence being disrespected? Well, not entirely. It can be more than worthwhile to delve deeper into what this means given your current situation.
We all feel that we could improve. If you don’t, you simply haven’t thought your situation through honestly enough. People have near limitless potential, and if you’re already in the workforce it’s likely someone has already put their money on the line to bet you have. It’s not easy to hold a job and perform it well, no matter how or where you work. So, in order to retain that employment, you are expressing your skills each and every day.
So far, so good. But do you let your corporate or employed life define you, or do you let your normal life control how you work? This might seem a little cryptic and unnecessarily complex, so let’s elaborate. Could it be that with the right skill sets, and the right personal development outside of office hours, you could skyrocket your way up in the company of your choosing more than you might deem possible?
Time To Make Things Happen?
We’ve all been worried about our ascent in a business. A promotion not coming soon enough, dealing with a manager you feel could improve, or generally being bored with the ease and familiarity of your daily routine all play into this. So, let’s escape into self-development. Before long, your entire perspective could change on your job role. You are likely to be rewarded for this extra competence so long as you make it known. If not, you might have the confidence to leave for another firm or truly put yourself forward for that job role. It might just be that the familiar once again becomes engaging, because you have the intellectual freshness to enjoy what’s in front of you.
This guide will help you be a more competent person, through the following techniques and disciplines:
Fitness
In order to be fit, you have to be disciplined. There are a variety of reasons as to why this impresses employers before and after you are hired. To begin with the most obvious, it shows that you have drive. It shows that you are willing to strive towards a goal that makes you uncomfortable, but is worth attaining. After all, getting fit and healthy is not always the most comfortable of paths. It requires sacrifice, and it requires effort. An employer will see pretty clearly if you care about fitness in how you appear, and how much energy you have.
Secondly, fitness informs your entire life in a positive, beneficial way. If you’re hoping to look as good as you can in front of a prospective boss, then you need all of your mental faculties in order. This means working out your morning chaos in the gym, or running around your area. By morning chaos we mean the foggy feeling you may have upon waking. Soon, your efforts in fitness will give you a much more strengthened energy reserve, allowing you to sleep deeper and wake much more easily. It will mean you are ill and off work less. It will also help with focus at work, allowing you to cognitively apply your skill to the task with much less difficulty. You may even cut out coffee for this, but of course, one step at a time.
The third is that you will increase in confidence. This will help you stand taller, with your shoulders back. It will allow you to face the front and hold eye contact, and give you the courage to speak your mind when it really needs to be expressed. It shows that you have the capacity of being more forthright and assertive. When you’ve negotiated with yourself to run that extra mile in the morning, how hard is it to tell a boss you’re the best choice for the new client handler? Fitness will also make you more attractive.
This sounds superficial and juvenile to say, but it’s true. If you are put together, radiant with health and you look good, people are more likely to take you seriously. Call it unnecessary social judgement, but that doesn’t lessen how true this is. It also doesn’t mean you can then rely on looks alone. All companies have dominance hierarchies, and all tools at your disposal can help you raise that. This doesn’t mean flirting or lessening your worth. It simply shows through your appearance that you have self-respect, you care about the details, and you care about coming across well to another person. This is because fitness is much more than ‘being fit and attractive.’ It’s an entire social, psychological and self-expressive retooling, something that leads to You Version 2.0.
These are useful job skills. Someone who is obviously placing pride and effort in working out with the same experience, against someone without a good grooming schedule or care for health will always win the position. You might take offence to this, but if you owned the business you would hire the former too. It has nothing to do with unfair social profiling, and everything to do with the aura of competence you give off. So, work towards attaining it! Your personal and professional life will benefit for the effort.
Multi-Variant Skills
The skills you employ will dictate exactly how you are considered for a role. For example, if you enter a role with more than one language under your belt, it might be that an employer considers you for a different position he was thinking about creating, even if you do not get the first. When an employer hires for a position, they do not usually throw away all the resumes they find. They keep the ones that hold some practical value, and potentially contact them in the future.
Multi-variant skills could come from anywhere. They are the skills that can be applied to many different circumstances and scenarios, which is why employers value them. Better than employers valuing them however, is that you will value them. They make you a better person, able to tackle different challenges with a more refined skillset. Imagine someone who is charged with fixing a car’s engine. Would you choose the guy with one screwdriver and a spanner, or a guy with a full toolbox? You know fully well that the entire contents of the toolbox aren’t going to be used, but just in case they are there if the worst problems occur.
There are a huge array of skills like this. For example, gaining a BLS certification in First Aid is a basic but thoroughly useful skill to keep. Not to insult your years in accounting, but it’s one of the only skills on your CV that could truly and immediately save a life. That’s pretty valuable. You could also do small management projects, even if that’s developing your own short films as a side project for professional clients. You might self-qualify in many courses such as food hygiene and preparation, or learning a programming language. Or you might paint and compete in exhibition art shows. You might earn a side income teaching children how to play the guitar. While these last two suggestions might not be useful in a job format, don’t necessarily ignore their utility.
They show an employee you are interested in skill acquisition, and the willingness to improve upon them. Hobbies that show growth lead to ensuring growth in your professional field. Humans are active. If you have no hobbies that lead to a form of active improvement, then it shows you are happily passive when not fulfilling the bare minimum requirements of earning your keep. Of course, it’s more than your right to live this passive home life. But if you’re in the interest of benefiting your position, you will surely need growth hobbies as a personal prescription.
This also lends a purpose a little stronger than the usual practical considerations. A competent person who becomes more competent in a wide array of avenues sees that informing their work. For example, the ability to learn a programming language (or human language,) might help you decipher the cryptic wording a client has used in communication.
Expressing yourself with paints might lead to a creative, outside of the box solution. Teaching guitar to a student might help you slowly and assuredly teach a new recruit who doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to grapple with the in-house software. Universally, the act of being terrible at a new hobby and slowly getting better each day will teach you patience, which is the golden ingredient for achieving anything worthwhile.
With the right attitude, you can glean plenty of benefit from learning new skills. They are often fractal, in that one skill can inform another, and the blossoming of your competence spreads.
These two tips are basic and will help you open your perspective just a little more. They are simple, but simplicity is often the best solution. We wish you every success in your pursuits.