Don't be a one trick pony

One tip to doing well in your career is demonstrating over and over than you are a safe pair of hands and can deliver time and time again. How do you get to that place where you are consistently reliable? Here are some ‘one off’s to overcome;

ONLY ONE SKILL YOU ARE GOOD AT: What would you say is your top skill? What’s your next best skill? The workplace these days requires several skill combinations from one individual; agility and versatility. These competencies could be regular technical skills as well as others like teamworking or less traditional ones like the ability to simplify the complex, to build trust or to work well in a diverse team.

ONLY ONE PERSON THINKS YOU ARE GREAT: This is a good starting point but it helps to have a few more think so too. The more people who can say good things about your performance the better. If someone spoke to a couple of people that you work with, how many would sing your praises, vouch for your competence or even want you on their team. Find opportunities to work outside of your team so that others can be exposed to what you can do.

ONLY IONE FLASH OF BRILLIANCE: This does indicate that you are capable of distinction, but if this happened once and has become the point of reference many years later of your excellence, it may be time to show that was not a flash in the pan. You need recent accomplishments to demonstrate you are still effective. Reflect on how you executed that one flash of brilliance. What were you working on? How supportive was the environment? What support was most helpful? What factors enabled you to do your best? And try and do it again.

ONLY WORKED IN ONE TYPE OF TEAM: Especially, when the team is of like-minded people. The point here is to have experience of a variety of teams and working with different types of people. Variety that will challenge your way of thinking, enable you to work in different roles and identify your forte. Teams don’t have to be only the ones where you work, but those outside are perfectly useful too.

Now take action: Identify one team who have a project you can participate in