Succeeding at Work: How I Stood Out from the Crowd

It's not always easy to truly succeed at a job. From learning your role to competition from co-workers, there can be a variety of obstacles that stand in the way of your climbing the corporate ladder.

When you're struggling just to adapt to your workplace environment and meet the daily requirements of your role, it can be difficult to envision the path to standing out from the crowd. But if you want to get ahead in the working world, it's important that you be able to showcase your individuality and achievements.

It's likely going to take a lot of hard work to push yourself to the top, but hard work isn't always the stand alone factor that catches the boss's eye. Plenty of people work hard but still get pigeon-holed in the same job for years -- even decades. The following are a few of the things that I did to help me achieve rapid success in the workplace, moving from a hotel entry-level supervisory to department director in less than five years.

Looking to Improve and Innovate

As an entry-level supervisor in hotel operations, I came to the industry with what my boss called 'fresh eyes'. After working in a particular business for a while, people often become accustomed to seeing and doing the same things on a regular basis. It becomes routine and they stop looking for ways to improve their techniques or performance.

Some of the opportunities I saw and ''¹..."jumped upon' if you will, were the implementation of a storeroom inventory tracking system, a scoring and incentive program for hotel room attendants, as well as working with the director of housekeeping to develop a 'green' laundry efficiency program. These programs helped illustrate my management and organizational prowess as well as keep me in the public eye when it came to reporting progress to, interacting with, and receiving valuable feedback from the higher-ups.

Listen to Your 'Owner'

It can be difficult to know where to begin or which projects to tackle when trying to make a favorable impression upon the powers-that-be. Some of the most valuable advice I ever received regarding this topic was from a former general manager of my first hotel. He explained "owner's expectations" to me.

In short, if you know your 'owner' or direct supervisor, it is easier to understand what is important to him or her and focus upon those expectations. For example, if my boss came to me regularly at the hotel and told me something in the lobby was out of place or dirty, I would know that the lobby area is one of his trigger points. I would therefore throw my focus toward ensuring that this area was spotless at all times.

Once I moved into finance, I found that areas such as receivables, payables, and Sarbanes-Oxley and internal control standards were my new owner's expectations. Such standards can often be determined just by paying attention to what your superiors are saying and where their hot points are. Continuing to pay attention to their direction is also important though, as such areas might change with regularity and you might have to be able to roll with the punches a bit.

Taking the Initiative

It wasn't always about just finding the problems and answers though, but rather about implementing the solutions. It's often easy to find problems within an organization, but it's the people who take the initiative to come up with and implement solutions to these problems that will likely catch the boss's eye.

But again, there's more to succeeding in the workplace than just solving the problems.

Self-promotion

Taking the initiative and solving problems is great, but it won't do you much good if those at the top don't know you're doing it. This was always a difficult aspect of succeeding for me, since I'm not usually that great at promoting my successes. However, I learned that rather than just strutting into the boss's office and telling him all that I did, I was able to make it a two-way street.

Most supervisors love to feel needed and love even more to give you their opinion; therefore, this is how I approached my self-promotion. Instead of just laying it all out for my superior, I would instead make regular progress reports to him. I would explain and often better than this, show him what we had been working on and the progress that had been made, but also explain issues that had been encountered and ask for his advice. Doing so let him know that he was still needed and necessary to the process (so he didn't feel insecure about my usurping his authority) but at the same time kept him informed as to what was happening, and most importantly what I was doing.

In this way, I was able to promote my hard work, skills and abilities, but in a way that was constructive to both sides.

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Disclaimer:

The author is not a licensed financial professional. The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For financial advice, readers should consult a licensed financial advisor. Any action taken by the reader due to the information provided in this article is solely at the reader's discretion.