ProficiencyBench: Collaborating Successfully

By Phillip Selleh

Excel in both individual work and group settings!

Many opportunities to add value, gain recognition, and achieve exciting tasks may only be available through establishing mutually beneficial workplace relationships. To maximize accomplishments and impact, employees must successfully collaborate with other professionals. This book

• Language: English
• Publisher: CBA Press
• Release date: Jul 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733830959

Phillip Selleh

Phillip Selleh has led organizations on both national and international scales by providing management to companies including AT&T, Inc., META Group, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Ontempo eServices. He also founded About Giving, Inc., a 501(c)(3) Public Charity which provides professional career development training, educational opportunities, and high-quality resources to severely disabled Veterans.

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the many service members I met at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who wanted to pursue a career outside of military service. Through their desires, I found the inspiration to write this book and aid in their transitions into the business world. I thank the talented doctors and medical staff at Walter Reed for their compassionate care and motivation. Through their hard work, I discovered the value of self-management, communication, and collaboration in excelling in any professional career. Finally, I acknowledge my family and friends. Through their enduring love and support during my injuries, hospitalizations, and time away from home, I unearthed the passion to continue serving others in my civilian life.

May this book help anyone beginning their journey into a professional career.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

How to Communicate Effectively in Meetings

How to Work on Business Teams

How to Network with Employees and Business Leaders

How to Enhance Your Strategic Thinking

How to Create and Deliver Business Presentations

Conclusion

About the Author

Introduction

You are well on your way toward becoming a truly proficient employee. You have engrained basic professional habits which include demonstrating integrity, assigning personal goals, fitting into your workplace environment, solving problems, and coping with stress in healthy ways. You also understand how to increase your productivity by managing your time, writing effectively, ensuring high quality, utilizing innovation, and upholding moral standards. You now have a wide variety of skills which contribute to your effectiveness as an employee. However, if you do not have a great deal of experience collaborating in the professional world, your experiences in the workplace might be similar to this:

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You arrive to work each day honestly motivated to grow your company and your own career. You uphold a standard of ethics and integrity in everything you do. You also set appropriate milestones which help you manage your time, produce high-quality work, and track your personal achievements.

Due to your unyielding reliability and ability to develop positive relationships in your workplace environment, you are assigned to join a project team tasked with assessing customer reviews of your company’s most recently released product. When you are not sure what role you fill in your team, you commit to generating useful ideas which might aid you in this task. Unfortunately, you have difficulty communicating these ideas during team meetings. While your coworkers and team members seem receptive to your emails and written messages, they complain about feeling unheard while meeting in person with you.

Later in this project, your team is asked to present its findings to another department. You have little experience with presentations, so you decide to allow your teammates to complete most of this project. While you are typically able to manage your feelings of stress, you experience significant anxiety when meeting with this other department. You know some of your audience members have valuable information which might aid in your task, but you avoid speaking with them before and after the presentation, as you are inhibited by self-talk such as, I don’t feel comfortable in this situation, or I’m afraid I might say something stupid.

Your team’s project is concluded successfully. However, you are unfortunately given little recognition, as your fellow team members felt that you were unable to work well with them or present your ideas during meetings and presentations. You are disappointed, and your insecurity with collaboration only worsens. You are confident in your ability to accomplish quality work, but you dread the next situation where you will need to collaborate with other business professionals.

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Is there anything wrong with the work routine depicted above? You certainly demonstrate an array of excellent proficiency skills in your projects. However, in order to maximize your accomplishments and make your ideal impact in your workplace, you need to successfully collaborate with other professionals.

Alone

There is far more to becoming a proficient, highly-valued employee than simply meeting project deadlines. Much of this process involves becoming comfortable amongst fellow employees and business leaders. Establishing mutually beneficial relationships within the workplace will help you present yourself as a respected peer who understands the inherent value of working with others to enhance the quality of a project or company product.

With regard to networking, everyone has his or her own favored approach. Some employees take pleasure in attending events, conversing with new people, and collecting business cards. These individuals seem born for networking, as they can enter a room crowded with strangers, then leave an hour later with a stack of business cards, promises to meet over coffee, and a broad grin stretching from ear to ear. Other employees, however, dread the prospect of networking. These individuals view networking as akin to an appointment with the dentist. If you have similar fears of networking, the mere thought of meeting new people and engaging in casual conversation might make your heart pound and your palms shake with anxiety. You might find yourself scanning the room at a networking event, or staring wistfully at a small group of laughing and chatting individuals while thinking to yourself, I wish I knew how to do that. If you find yourself wishing for better networking experiences, realize that ability to expertly network is within your reach.

Successful employment includes both demonstrating your independence as a self-sufficient employee, and also promoting your ability to work well with others. When your managers and supervisors realize you excel in both individual work and group settings, they will provide you with challenging and exciting new opportunities, tasks, and responsibilities which could lead to greater recognition in your workplace. In order to better understand the importance of successful collaboration, consider the following example:

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Example: Adam

Adam has been recently promoted to an administrative position at a nationwide company that distributes electronic goods. His new position is associated with many increased responsibilities, which include collaborating with other professionals within his company, and with other companies within his industry. While Adam already possesses a range of proficiency skills which earned him his current position, he nonetheless encounters the following dilemmas:

Adam has difficulties communicating with others in person. Whether he meets with only one professional or a group of colleagues, Adam often receives feedback which reveals that his colleagues do not feel listened to. He also senses that his own listeners do not accurately capture the essence of his responses.

Adam is not familiar with business teams. When he is assigned to a team, Adam is unsure how to determine his role and provide a service to his team members.

Adam feels extremely uncomfortable at the prospect of networking with business leaders outside his company. When he is asked by his supervisor to attend an industry conference, he becomes anxious, as he does not know how to establish professional relationships at social events.

Adam does not know what goals to pursue next. Adam wants to progress his career by engaging in new projects, but he is not sure who he should meet with in order to obtain these new roles.

Adam has little experience with professional presentations. He is due to present a brief slideshow on his region’s quarterly profits, but he has no method for determining what information should be concluded and how he should present it.