ProficiencyBench: Advancing Your Professional Skills

By Phillip Selleh

Produce your best work!

Even with basic proficiency skills, employees must overcome common obstacles such as demanding schedules, poor communication, or questionable ethics. To provide a greater value in the workplace, employees must consistently produce high-quality results. This book is designed to build upon your existing profi

• Language: English
• Publisher: CBA Press
• Release date: Jul 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733830935

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 Manage Your Valuable Time

How to Utilize Effective Writing Skills

How to Ensure Quality in Your Projects

How to Utilize Innovation in Your Workplace

How to Display Ethical Behaviors in Your Job Role

Conclusion

About the Author

Introduction

If you are working toward becoming a proficient employee, you already know that highlighting your value within the workplace means projecting a persona of integrity, identifying and progressing toward goals, meeting the demands of your workplace environment, demonstrating your decision-making abilities, and maintaining your composure through stressful situations. However, even with these skills, you may still encounter obstacles between you and your recognition as a truly valued employee. By now, your work routine might be similar to this:

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You arrive to work in the morning feeling confident in your abilities to complete all the day’s tasks. You also plan to attend a department meeting where you might demonstrate your problem-solving abilities and showcase your value as an employee, which you hope will move you closer to obtaining your ideal job role. However, emails, meetings, unscheduled visits from coworkers, and your own social media distract you from your work. At the end of your work day, you realize only half of the items on your to-do list have been marked complete, and you become stressed and frustrated.

Throughout your work day, you communicate via written text, ranging from simple emails to more complex project reports to be submitted to your boss. Despite your growing experience with written communication, you still make errors, as evidenced by your coworkers and managers frequently misinterpreting your messages.

You work hard to deliver results that will earn you the title of a proficient employee. However, you struggle to provide high-quality outputs, especially when you are given unclear standards. When you are under additional pressure of an upcoming deadline, you complete your work in the same way it has been done before, not bothering to rethink your project, and you accept lesser quality results.

You also find it difficult to establish open and honest relationships with your coworkers. Your colleague in the adjacent cubicle plays annoying music during the work day, but you are not sure how to ask him to turn the music volume down. You receive inappropriate emails from another coworker, but you are hesitant to report this colleague because you want to build strong workplace relationships.

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The above scenario exemplifies common obstacles and challenges that manifest throughout most workplaces. These situations also make it difficult for employees to highlight their valuable assets and skills in the workplace. Establishing yourself as a reliable, dependable, and proficient employee is difficult when you are saddled with time-crunched work days, poor communication, or questionable ethics. Although you set strong goals, meet the culture of your workplace, and solve problems effectively, you might not be producing your best work.

Drowning in Papers

In order to advance your career and achieve greater job satisfaction, you need more advanced professional skills. To better understand how these additional skills are necessary, consider the following example:

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Example: Judy

Judy is starting a new position at a startup company. As an assistant to the office manager, Judy is responsible for ensuring her employees have the tools and resources they need for completing their jobs. Judy considers herself a reliable worker, and she is motivated to handle new challenges and responsibilities. However, she becomes frustrated when she encounters the following difficulties, which prevent her from achieving greater leadership opportunities:

Judy has difficulty completing all her work on time. Although she occasionally checks her social media, browses the internet, or shops online a few minutes past her lunch break, she is frequently surprised at how little she accomplishes during each of her work days.

Judy often encounters misunderstandings. Her coworkers and managers typically ask questions about her emails and written reports, which detract from her productive time. When she is asked to write a business letter, she is unsure how to format it.

Judy has difficulty guaranteeing high-quality project results. While she has only positive intentions when beginning new projects, she finds herself working on some tasks longer than expected, and she rarely has ample time for evaluating her outputs.

Judy fails to contribute new and useful ideas or practices. Instead, she falls into the monotony of routine by continuing to perform her work the same way it has always been performed.

Judy is not sure how to maintain ethical boundaries. When she witnesses a coworker engaging in potentially unethical behavior, she is unsettled, as she does not know how to confront the issue.

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Basic employment skills are vital to any employee’s professional success, but they may not be enough to carry you to your final vision. If you aspire to provide greater value within your workplace and grow your career past its current limits, you will benefit from learning the following valuable skills:

Managing Valuable Time. In order to maximize your proficiency, you must use your time deliberately. This entails minimizing distractions and focusing on your most important tasks.

Using Effective Writing Skills to Communicate Clearly. A crucial component of proficiency in the workplace is the ability to effectively communicate with coworkers and company leaders in written format.

Ensuring High-Quality Standards in Projects.