Professional development is a never-ending process. Many employers implement strategies to track performance and offer opportunities for career advancement. But at some point, we have to exert effort to evaluate and enhance our skills. In Singapore, fresh graduates who want to pursue mastery of their chosen skill areas can take SkillsFuture Series. This allows them to develop a comprehensive understanding of their fields and take advantage of better career opportunities.
At work, you probably spend so much time and effort to be recognized by your boss for the sake of promotions, pay raises, or career progression opportunities. You become so conscious of what others think about your performance, which includes your leaders, partners, clients, and those who will work with you in the future.
Studies show that self-evaluation is more effective than the ones coming from people around us. That’s why it’s best to analyze your performance first before your superiors point out your weaknesses to you.
In a remote work environment, employees have no one but themselves to monitor their performance. This is where self-management becomes a critical part of professional development. Knowing how to manage your performance is an essential attribute most companies look for employees today. They prefer people who understand the value of their role and are constantly searching for opportunities to enhance their knowledge and skills, whether through training or research.
To ensure a successful career in the corporate world, here are ways to improve self-management skills.
Revisit your job role and performance evaluation
The first step to improving self-management skills is to take a step back and revisit your job description. Your job description includes all your employer’s expectations of your role. As the employee, it serves as your reference tool for measuring job performance and understanding the duties, responsibilities of your job.
Company success depends on teams and individual employees working together to achieve a common goal. To make this work, your job role helps you understand the bigger picture and align your goals with those of your organization. In turn, this will direct you on the right path and keep sight of your objectives.
For remote employees, working at home can sometimes compel us to lose hold of our job responsibilities. Having a sense of role clarity will help us know our specific responsibilities, how our leaders measure our performance, who to rely on to get the work done. In other words, knowing our roles helps us understand how we will fit in and how our role will serve the organization.
Develop accountability
If you’re keen to succeed in life and the workplace, you must develop essential self-management skills. One example is your ability to take ownership of yourself and your actions. Holding yourself accountable prevents you from treating yourself as a victim of circumstances.
Having a sense of accountability means going beyond your responsibility. You have to be responsible for your behaviors, actions, decisions, and performance. You need to have the motivation to do complex tasks and make sure they get accomplished before the deadline.
Workplace accountability has direct links to higher work commitment and employee morale. When you consistently demonstrate initiative and ownership at work, people will likely increase their trust in you regardless of how difficult a task is. They will trust you to do the right thing and have a commitment to any task assigned.
Learn to adapt to change
The only way to move forward is to know how to adapt to change. The modern workplace faces various challenges every day, from security concerns, lack of control and clarity, greater complexity, shortage of resources, and regulatory changes.
With all these concerns, self-managed employees should have the flexibility to reframe every situation. Basically, you have to view unique situations from another perspective. The situation may not work for you, but you can take advantage of it to reap its benefits. Learning to adjust and being flexible will serve as your driving force to move towards a goal.
Learning to adapt to change also enhances your coping skills and stress management. You understand that not everything will go according to your favor, and you won’t allow stress and pressure to hinder your performance.
In the workplace, we tend to be so obsessed with how our bosses view our performance and how it can affect possibilities of promotion and pay raises. But the concept of self-management tells us that performance evaluation should always start within us. Being able to manage our thoughts, emotions, and behavior consciously allows us to be more discerning about how we act in various situations. In other words, self-management gives a better purpose and understanding of how we will fulfill our responsibilities in life.