Even though most office environments around the world have a warm and friendly first impression, with many different prospects of new work colleagues, future friends and potentially even future partners, beneath the surface, whether shared by the whole team or not, there is definitely an atmosphere of competition.
Usually most offices will have a kind of social and professional ranking within a certain company and this is based on many different factors dependent on the type of business and the position. These can be things like the individuals level of experience performing this roe or one very similar too it or perhaps even things like how well the person is educated but what also makes you different from the person that got the promotion to senior management is that they probably had well suited skills that make them an asset to not only the role but the company itself.
However the term “skill” is a particularly loose one at best, after all does the ability to make really good paper airplanes count as a skill? Yes it does but that’s not what we are going to be talking about in this which will be focusing on more soft and universal skills that are pretty easy, cheap, readily available and in-demand across all office environments across many different sectors and industry’s.
Make it your business to know and be a good learner
There are so many different kinds of people that generally make up the office workforce, with different experience levels, ages, education levels and backgrounds to take into and every single one of them will not only be a potential friendly face and colleague but also a font of experience for you to draw on whether it be for a specific product or client or just to help you further your own career by learning about different aspects of the company and its work that all come together to provide its services and products.
Not only will it give you a chance to learn about their specific niche and how they fit into the grand scheme of things but they can also help you to see a problem or a plan with a slightly different prospective that has the same end goal as yours.
Another thing to keep in mind is that before you can be expected to lead and teach, you must first follow and learn and carry on this attitude as not only your company or industry grows but also as you yourself grow as a professional.
There a lot of ways that you can approach a person for their professional insight however the best is to turn them into a workplace friend that you can use to assist you with this and it’s important you come up with a strategy that links all the personalities into your team into one.
Office skills
While it is not the most exciting skill we could muster up, its absolutely shocking the amount of people who either don’t keep up to date with the various new products and features of various Microsoft office products that are absolutely essential to your work within these office environments, but some people even fail to enlighten themselves on how to even use it in the first place, albeit this is more of a problem with the older generation and is one we see less and less these days due to the prevalence of these programs in everyday and professional life.
However, its always good to get a semi regular refresher of what exactly these programs can be used for and how the new features that are being constantly released for these kind s of programs can ultimately assist you in your work, so always keep an eye out for well reputed excel training and workshops that will no doubt be happening in your local area regularly.
Give a hand get a hand
What you should really be looking to foster with your coworkers is the sense that you are to go to guy in the office if you need help with something (this can be in both physical man-hours or for your ability to formulate difficult strategy’s or solutions to client and consumer problems.
Know that Jake from Sales has a big pitch tomorrow? Pop your head in his cubicle and offer a coffee and a sympathetic hand. Know that the account managers are struggling to keep their clients? How a chat with them and your tech team to see how you can help each other through these problems.
