How To Become Excellent At What You Do
Few things speak more loudly than excellence at one’s craft. If you become excellent at what you do, others notice, and they will seek you out. Expertise always has value.
Become an Expert at Your Craft
The first place you should strive to prove your value is in your craft. Most people don’t start out as leaders. They demonstrate skill or ability in a particular area, and they get recognized for it.
Learn your craft today. You may not be where you’re supposed to be. You may not be what you want to be. You don’t have to be what you used to be. And you won’t ever arrive at total mastery. You just need to learn to be the best you can be right now.
Talk about your craft today. Once you reach a degree of proficiency in your craft, then one of the best things you can do for yourself is talk your craft with others on the same and higher levels than you are currently achieving. Talking to peers is wonderful, but if you don’t also make an effort to strategically talk your craft with those ahead of you in experience and skill, then you’re really missing great learning opportunities.
Practice your craft today. The more you practice your craft, the more you know. Then, the more you practice, the more you recognize what you don’t know. Hopefully, this spurs you on to dig deeper and learn more. But as you do more and learn more, you will also discover more about what you ought to do differently. At that point you have a decision to make: Will you do what you have always done, or will you try new things, take risks, and seek new levels of ability? The only way you improve is to get out of your comfort zone and try new things.
Do Jobs Others Won’t
Becoming an expert at your craft takes time. What can you do to prove your worth right now?
Take the tough jobs. Take on jobs others won’t––even if they’re outside of your craft or comfort zone. The ability to accomplish difficult tasks earns others’ respect very quickly. It also helps you become a better leader.
Pay your dues. If you want to take on greater leadership roles in the future, you will have to give up other opportunities. You will have to sacrifice some personal goals for the sake of others. You will have to get out of your comfort zone and do things you’ve never done before. You will have to keep learning and growing when you don’t feel like it. You will have to repeatedly put others ahead of yourself
Put yourself on the line. You cannot play it safe and improve your value at the same time. You should never be casual about risking what’s not yours. If you’re going to take a risk, you need to put yourself on the line. Play it smart, but don’t play it safe.
Admit fault but never make excuses. It’s easier to move from failure to success than from excuses to success. And you will have greater credibility with your boss if you admit your shortcomings and refrain from making excuses.
Maintaining Your Balance as You Prove Your Worth
Doing these things to prove yourself is not easy. And they can produce a lot of stress, especially since you need to take the high road as you work with your boss. How do you accomplish all this with grace, tact, and calm?
Find a way to relieve stress. You will never completely eliminate the stress of trying to achieve success while working for a bad boss. So what do you do? Find healthy outlets for relieving the stress: Hit golf balls, jog, take up kickboxing, practice yoga, go for walks, get a massage. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it is a good, healthy outlet for when the stress gets to be too much for you.
Know what to own and what to let go. Nothing frees a person from tension like clear lines of responsibility, but you don’t always get that with a bad leader. So you need to ask what you need to own. You need to maintain an ongoing dialogue concerning your boss’s expectations, and do your best to own what you must and let go of what you can’t or shouldn’t do.
Never Stop Growing as a Leader
Indian reformer Mahatma Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” That is how great our potential is. All we have to do is keep fighting to learn more, grow more, become more. If you want to influence your team, your boss, and the people at the top of your organization––and keep influencing them––then you need to keep getting better.
When you learn to work with difficult people, be productive in a challenging situation, become a valuable contributor, and develop yourself as a leader, everything changes. Your potential goes off the charts. Your prospects improve. Your luck changes. People seek to recruit you for their team. Organizations want you.
