How are you performing in your role at work? How could you improve your personal performance at work?

Underperformance can lead to many issues in the workplace including not achieving your and the company’s goals and objectives.

Here are 11 areas to consider in improving your personal performance at work:

1. Improve communication and relationships at work

When you improve your communication and relationships with others at work, you will be more successful in your role.

There are many ways to improve your communication skills. They include being clear and concise, using the most appropriate form of communication, increasing your awareness of and the impact you have on others, giving people your time, really listening and asking open questions, and thinking before replying.

Don't forget about nonverbal communication, such as eye contact and tone-of-voice.

These tips will help you to be more open, honest, polite and respectful during conversations.

2. Creativity

How creative are you? You may not think that you are creative.

But creativity is essential in any role for problem-solving, generating ideas, looking at potential options, finding solutions, and identifying opportunities.

To be more creative, try thinking differently, not making assumptions or judgments, asking ‘what if’ questions, and changing perspectives. You may be surprised to find out how creative you really are!

3. Better Decision making

Decision-making is a critical part of any role at work.

Improve your decision-making by using relevant and accurate information, accessing your knowledge and experience, consulting others, good analysis, and being creative.

You should also try considering different options, outcomes, and risks, validating your assumptions, being decisive, and taking decisions in a timely manner.

4. Try keeping things in perspective

If you can keep things in perspective, you will perform better at work.

Try stepping back from the day to day and considering the bigger picture, thinking rationally, looking for the learning in each situation, and expecting the unexpected.

5. Manage your time and keep focused

Effective time management and keeping focused on your goals and objectives are key to performing well at work.

Consider how to improve your time management including stopping procrastinating, delegating and outsourcing, keeping focused, and prioritizing your plans and workload to achieve your goals and objectives.

6. Mind management

If you are in a good state of mind your performance at work is likely to be good as well.

Consider and notice your state of mind and how it impacts your performance and adopt strategies to change your state of mind, focus on what is in your control, think positively and take action and keep focused.

7. Build your resilience

Resilience can be defined as the ability to recover quickly and positively from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity.

Research has shown that a person's level of resilience is a key determining factor in their success at work. Work on building your resilience for better performance at work.

8. Build self-confidence

If you are low in self-confidence, you may be hesitant in your role and avoid taking risks and stretching yourself at work.

Build your self-confidence by considering what you have already achieved, learning from the past, preparing well, working with positive people, imagining success, and taking manageable risks.

9. Stress management

How you handle stress at work has a big impact on whether you achieve your work goals and objectives.

Good stress management includes noticing and acknowledging that you are stressed, understanding the causes of your stress, taking action to address the causes, and building stress management strategies into your life on an ongoing basis so that you can handle stress positively going forward.

10. Change your thinking

The way you think can cause you to make inaccurate assessments of your experiences, to get the wrong end of the stick, to jump to conclusions, to think the worst, to distort the facts and it can get in the way of your decision making and the achievement of your goals and objectives.

Where your thinking is unhelpful, consider changing the way you think to improve your personal performance at work.

11. Remember your values

Your values describe what is important to you. Where your values are aligned with your work you will find that they support and energize your work and enable you to achieve your goals and objectives.

High performers are usually very self-aware, they have a strong sense of and act from an explicit understanding of their values. Consider your own values and how they may be influencing you at work. Remember them could be the to improve your work performance.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these tips and ideas will help you to think about how to improve your performance at work.

If you want to explore personal performance further, you can take one of our personal development online courses on MMC which cover communication, resilience, stress management, and time management.