“Initiative is doing the right things without being told.” ― Elbert Hubbard
Initiative and creativity move the world. They both foster the realization of innovative ideas in various industries and contribute to constant development.
Initiative itself defined as the ability to see something that needs to be done and stepping up to do it is a game-changing habit that can help you to stand out at work. Taking initiative means you’re going the extra mile or going above and beyond your normal job responsibilities to make things happen.
Having initiative it’s important because it demonstrates a sense of self-drive, self-awareness, insight and personal motivation. The habit of taking initiative strengthens your personal brand. You can become a role model to others who would seek to emulate you.
Develop Your Initiative Muscles
There’s 3 main keys that you have to remember if you want to develop your initiative muscle. There are Observe, Decisiveness, and Start Small. Observe means learn from colleagues who are masters at taking initiative. Talk to them, learn from them, work with them, learn their thinking processes and most importantly study how they execute ideas and accomplish goals. The second key is decisive, it means become comfortable at making decisions rather than agonizing endlessly over decision making. And last but not least start small, it means you don’t have to dive into a big project immediately, start build your initiative through the simple task.
6 Ways To have Initiative at Work
1) Doing things and projects that others avoid
In any organization, department or team, there are usually some specific activities or tasks that most people shun from doing. These are typically low priority tasks that when left unattended can turn into major priorities over time.
Examples of these kind of activities can include filing, organizing hardcopy and electronic files, scanning, shredding, archiving old documents, cleaning up data including filling-in incomplete information and removing or merging duplicates, organizing departmental filing cabinets etc.
When you have some downtime at work, you can make an effort to quietly complete one of these kinds of projects.
2) Being innovative/improving systems, processes and procedures
Innovation at work can take the form of coming up with new ways of doing things or improving existing systems and processes.
Ways of developing your innovation skills include the following: questioning the way things are, asking how tasks can be done better, inventing unique solutions to problems, looking at unrelated industries and professions for inspiration, combining unrelated ideas to come up with new methods, asking colleagues for tips, suggestions and ideas and dreaming big and visualizing expected outcomes.
Other ways are looking for people to critique your ideas and offer suggestions for improvement, seeking feedback from customers, observing competitors, analyzing constant complaints to identify patterns, setting high goals that stretch your abilities, reading books and watching video tutorials for inspiration and collaborating with others on improving things.
3) Supporting your supervisor or manager efficiently
Align your priorities with your supervisor. Make it a habit to have regular check-in meetings with your boss where you update them on the activities that you are planning to work on as well as the ones you have completed.
Find out what your manager’s top priorities are and ask how you can help them.When you run into problems or challenges and need your manager’s help, come up with proposed solutions and run these by them.
This makes their work easier when they have to choose among alternatives rather than figuring things out from scratch.
4) Doing quality control for finished projects
When you finish major projects, make it a habit to set aside some time to review the final work output. A few questions to aid in evaluating completed tasks include: Does the final project or work output match the original specifications and requirements? Are there any errors? Is there any incomplete work? Are any corrections needed?
It helps to prepare work plans and checklists when starting a project and these can in turn be used to do the end of project evaluation.
Aspire to get good at not only creating checklists but also in using them for monitoring finished work and additionally training others on using your checklists and standards.
5) Volunteering to work with different teams and departments
Spread your tentacles across the organization by not only working with your immediate team but also looking for opportunities to work with teams from other departments.
This enables you to learn what other teams do, create new working relationships and raise your visibility in the workplace because others will in turn know who you are and what you do.
6) Offering to mentor others
Mentorship enables you to increase your network within a company and is likewise a good way of giving back to others.
You could be surprised by how much knowledge you have to offer especially if you have been in a company for a while.
As a mentor you can offer a support system for others, help in on-boarding, answer questions about the company, transfer skills, offer encouragement and help others to grow in their careers.
Additionally, you can motivate others to reach their goals and act as a sounding board to listen to and help refine mentees’ ideas.