Our professional forward momentum is in our own hands. Not anyone else’s. Did you realize that?
Yet so many of us hold ourselves back from moving forward, and not only professionally. Personally, as well.
The cards of our self-fulfilling prophecies are front and center on the table when I work with small to mid-size manufacturers. All too often, everyone in the company is sitting around the table as we work through perplexing issues that keep companies stuck spinning their wheels.
First, that legacy scenario places the people on the plant floor around the table with their management and often the CEO. Then, that situation pits education against lack-of. In addition, employees from different countries are present – either virtually or physically.
What a colorful, grand, exquisitely diverse and professionally robust atmosphere. It represents the ideal combination of folks to put their professional forward momentum together to create synergy for their organization.
Yet this picture is exactly where self-doubt and professional short-comings surface, rather than innovation. And unless and until colleagues address this sticking point first and foremost, things remain just as they always have been. Stuck in the status quo.
In working through this situation with colleagues this weekend, we realized that somewhere along the line, people really buy into what other people think about them. Especially when it comes to those hourly workers in an organization. These are the folks who are responsible for manufacturing and assembling “things.” They are tremendously valuable.
However, during high school, people told them they weren’t “good enough” to go to college. Or even trade school. Perhaps their family background created a pedigree of low expectations from their teachers. So, they also bought into the same. They devalued themselves.
Either way, their professional forward momentum is halted. Abruptly.
Until now.
If you are reading this blog post, take a look around the workplace. How do you contribute to forward professional momentum: yours and everyone else’s?
The first step towards initiating professional forward momentum starts with your decision to stop holding yourself back from moving yourself forward. You can accomplish anything. Just give yourself permission first.
The next step is to challenge team members and colleagues to do the same. Liberating yourselves from your collective status quo is the first step towards defining yourselves as professionals of worth.
Then move that one millimeter beyond your comfort level. Constantly. That first millimeter step forward is the longest distance. The rest gets easier and far more enjoyable. Because you move beyond the impediment of your own self-doubt.
Something to ponder. Your own independence. Isn’t it time to liberate yourself to create extraordinary outcomes on behalf of your colleagues and customers? Think about it.
Babette Ten Haken is a STEM-trained catalyst, corporate strategist, storyteller and facilitator. Her focus? How collaboration revolutionizes and humanizes the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) value chain. The results? Increased customer loyalty, customer success and customer retention. Babette’s One Millimeter Mindset™ programs draw from her background as a scientist, sales professional, enterprise-level facilitator, Six Sigma Green Belt and certified DFSS Voice of the Customer practitioner. Babette’s playbook of IIoT team collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.
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