Bring out your potential out

In any industry, as individuals, sometimes end up thinking that are we really working to our potential?

For many of us, can't answer the question; either because we don't know or we are not sure.

The objective of this blog is to provide a simple approach which can be used by anyone in any field to bring out ones potential at work.


Following are the 4-step approach, which, in my experience will help in working to our potential.

Step 1: Know your strength and weakness
To work for our potential, one need to understand what are the areas of strength and weakness. Once you have listed down your strengths and weakness, start harnessing your strength. This will avoid loosing your strength. And put continuous effort to improve your weakness.

Since you are harnessing strength every day, every where, the results will be always positive and there will be immense satisfaction from the outcome. And since, there is a continuous effort to improve your weakness, there will be less dis-satisfaction on your short comings.

Step 2: Self commitment
For continuous harness of your strength and continuous effort to improve on weaknesses, it require time, energy and there is chance to loose the focus along the way. To help you to keep going, make a self commitment, that no matter what is thrown at you, the focus is intact. Many great achievers, say commitment is one of the key to success. So, make a self commitment to make sure there is continuous harness of strength and continuous effort to improve on weakness.

Step 3: Effective Time management
Every day we have a fixed routine, starting from when we wake up, go to office or gym or meet friends or how many times we take coffee break. In this fixed routine, finding time to put continuous effort to improve your weakness will challenging. That is the reason effective time management is required. Start with basic time management like planning your day ahead by writing down what you will do when. Or use time management tools which help in plan your day or week or month. If you don't find time then irrespective of commitment and knowing your strength and weakness, the potential in you will not come out.

Step 4: Wear different hats!
If you have to harness your strength and to use your improved weak area, one need to find opportunities. Finding opportunities is a long process as you need to wait for the right time, right environment etc. Instead, in my experience creating opportunities is a great way to continuously harness your strength. For this, wear different hats - for example, as a developer you are writing a code for a module. While coding, wear a hat of an experience developer in your team; if you were in his position, how would you approach it? In similar way, if you have to present to executive in your organisation, wear a hat of your senior executive and answer questions like how does this add value, how does this help in improving the brand value etc.

In our day to day activities at work, if we start wearing multiple hats, we will find that there are areas where you need to improve and it may so happen you will find an opportunity to use your strength to the fullest. This creates a cycle - create opportunity or find a weak area by wearing different hats, your list gets continuously updated; with self commitment and effective time management, you will continuously work with strength and improve your weak areas.

Conclusion
The 4-step approach is a good start for anybody who wants to bring his / hers potential out at work. This will provide immense satisfaction and helps in quality results. The cycle of knowing your strength and weakness, making self commitment to continuously harness and improve your strength and weakness, with effective time management to execute your plan of action and creating opportunities to use your strength and identify weak areas by wearing different hats, will bring your potential out.