Monday, December 19, 2016

7 Steps To Awe-Inspiring Impact At Work

Have you decided to have a greater positive impact at work?  If so, you've already taken a step by being intentional and making a decision to improve your current situation.  In this post, I share 7 additional steps that you may follow to help you have a significant positive impact at your company.
Blog to Action - Positive Impact at Work
CC0 image courtesy G. Altmann on Pixabay

Your company may be a large corporation, a medium size business, or even a single person venture.  You may also be the member of a small team or the manager of a large group.  I believe that each of the 7 steps is still applicable to you.


How To Have Positive Impact At Work:


1. Know Your Company Vision And Mission


Your company should have a vision and a mission. You should know what your company strives to achieve in the future and understand the purpose of its existence. To have a positive impact your contributions should ultimately help fulfill your company's mission and vision.

You may discover that your company's vision and mission conflict with your own desires. If that is the case, consider making a change. Either try to change your company's direction or change your place of employment. You and your employer will likely be better off as a result.

Opportunity:

If you find that your company does not have a clear vision or mission, take the opportunity to have a huge positive impact! Work with (or become) the company leadership to capture clear vision and mission statements and help share them with all of the company employees.


2. Know Your Company Values


Your company should have core values that describe how it expects the employees to operate while trying to fulfill the company vision and mission. If you consistently work in a way that aligns with your company's values you are more likely to have what your company considers to be a positive impact on its business and culture.

While trying to understand your company's values you may need to better understand your own values. If you find that your values and the company values are in conflict, it would probably be in your best interest to make a change. Remaining in conflict is likely going to lead to either you or your employer being unhappy at some point.

Opportunity:

If you discover that your company does not have clearly understood values or you observe employee behavior conflicting with the values, take the opportunity to make a difference and have a big positive impact!  Work with (or become) the company leadership to identify, communicate, and enforce your company's values in the workplace.

3. Know Your Company Business


In order to better understand where you can have direct positive impact you should know the company business that you support.  This is often referred to as having business acumen.  For your contributions to make a difference they should connect to an aspect of the business otherwise they may be seen as wasted effort by your company.

Opportunity:

If you find that the business details are not easily understood or that the business does not support fulfillment of your company's mission or vision, take the opportunity to have a tremendous positive impact!  Work with (or become) the company leadership to define, adjust, or better communicate the business strategy and/or details.


4. Know Your Workgroup Goals


Depending upon your position and the size of your company, your workgroup may consist of a few people to many thousands of people.  In all cases, the workgroup should have goals clearly understood by the members.  This includes you.

Note that you may have individual goals that support completion of the workgroup goals.  Without an understanding of your goals, you may not be able to have a significant positive impact.  To be effective, you should know what you and your workgroup are trying to accomplish.

Opportunity:

If you read the opportunities covered earlier, you probably already know your potential here to have a positive impact.  If you find that your workgroup goals are unknown or don't support the business, work with (or become) the company leadership to define and/or communicate the workgroup goals.

 

5. Know Your Workgroup Skills


If you are the leader of your workgroup, you should know what skills are required to accomplish the workgroup goals and what skills the workgroup currently has.  If there are gaps, you may need to adjust the goals or find opportunities to expand the workgroup skillset.

If you are not the leader of your workgroup it is still beneficial for you to know the skillset of the team.  You may use the knowledge to make better decisions regarding collaboration opportunities to ultimately have a greater collective positive impact.

Opportunity:

If you have skills that your workgroup is lacking but requires, consider doing more than just applying your skills to achieve the workgroup goals.  Consider helping transfer your skills to other workgroup members through skills coaching.  This can have a tremendous long-term positive impact.

6. Execute Effectively


This is the foundation for your awe-inspiring impact at work.  Executing effectively is where it all comes together.  You should apply your skills to accomplish your goals to enable your workgroup to support your business in a way that aligns with company values to fulfill the company vision and mission.

As you execute effectively in this manner, you will also likely be seen as a role model for others in your workgroup.  As a role model, others may copy your behavior and also execute effectively.  If this happens, your awe-inspiring impact at work becomes even greater!

Opportunity:

If you discover roadblocks or impediments to your (or your workgroup's) ability to effectively execute, highlight them immediately and apply your (or your workgroup's) skills where possible to remove them.  Address conflict if it arises.  Mentor (or be mentored) to help improve your workgroup's ability to execute effectively.  Doing these things can result in extraordinary positive impact.
  

7. Learn and Improve


Keep learning and improving.  Learn from successes to understand what works well.  Learn from failures to better understand where to improve and to avoid making the same mistakes.  Learn to improve your current skills.  Learn about changes in the areas covered by steps 1 to 6 (as they are likely to occur over time).  Learn and add skills relevant to company changes and growth.  Continuing to learn allows you to continue to have and increase your level of positive impact.

Opportunity:

As you continue to learn, you may have an even greater positive impact at work if you help others in your workgroup, business, and company to learn, improve, and grow also.  Imagine the possibilities as you collectively increase the level of your positive impact!

Conclusion


Well there you have it: 7 steps to awe-inspiring impact at work.  I wish you the very best on your journey to having greater positive impact at your company.

Don't forget that time is precious.  Take positive action now and start with step number 1 today.

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