Taking Initiative and Building Relationship

What Will I Find Here?

Objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to gain firm grasp of initiative and improve your ways in taking initiative by:

• Defining initiative
• Identifying the characteristics of an initiative person
• Outlining the importance of taking initiative
• Discovering the things to consider before taking initiative
• Recognizing the importance of understanding company culture and building good relationships in order to employ initiative
• Identifying the ways to take initiative

In this module, we will explore the following topics to help you improve your well-being:

1. Understanding Initiative and Why It Matters
2. Knowing Your Team and Building Rapport
3. Ways to Take Initiative

Understanding Initiative and Why it Matters

Remote Working gives you the autonomy to do your tasks without someone micromanaging you. And with the tips in the previous lessons, you are sure to have accountability on your daily assignments.

But to be a remote working pro is more than just finishing your tasks. You also need to have the initiative to add more value.

What is Initiative? How to Tell If a Person Has Initiative?

Initiative is the ability to be a self-starter and proactive in doing valuable work even without being told to — sometimes going beyond the assigned tasks.

People with initiative demonstrates that they:

• Take responsibility when something is put in front of them
• Think ahead for themselves and take right actions when necessary
• Solve problems that their teammates might not have noticed
• Go out their way to continue growing and learning to be able to help their clients more as well

It requires self-management and the discerning eye to find tasks or processes that can be improved further.

Why Does It Matter to Your Clients?

There are many workers that are just giving their minimum effort in work. This can be refined, especially if you want to be a valuable member of the team, you have to show that you can give value.

By having initiative, you possess the mindset to add value to your clients. It means that you are not only waiting for your shift to finish and that you care for the success of their business.

Balancing Autonomy and Initiative: When to Take Initiative, When Not To

Proactivity can go wrong sometimes, especially when not channeled or done the right way. So even if you have the autonomy and the initiative, you need to ensure that your proactivity is leading to success.

In taking initiative, it is important to balance your interests with that of other’s interests and of the wider community’s. These elements will ensure that your proactivity will succeed. Let us discuss these elements further:

Manage Yourself

Being proactive takes time and energy, so it is important to recognize if a problem is yours to solve or not. Taking on too much initiatives can lead to burnout.

So, before you take initiative, ask yourself:

• Is this initiative of my personal and professional interest?
• Is it within my field of expertise?
• Do I have the time and resources to implement it?

Make sure to plan ahead on how you will go about the initiative, including what you can do when setbacks arise and ensure that you have the support of those who can help you.

Consider Others

Sometimes, the initiatives a person takes lead to changes that compromises other’s work. Yet most people miss to consider how their proactivity might affect others. Take this scenario with Kim as an example:

Kim, a new Sales Manager, learns that the Sales team is still doing manual data entry for customer records. She finds it outdated and time-consuming. So, she expresses her interest to take the lead in developing a new system. But doing so means tapping the IT Team to allocate time to develop a system, and requiring her team to also allocate extra hours to manually transfer existing customer data to the new system. Only a few people are willing to do it, leaving Lucy to put a halt on the project.

Consider how your initiatives will impact others, and identify people you need onboard to help you succeed. You need to work well with them to find different perspectives. Without their support, they may find you as someone who wants to show off, overly nosy, or corrective with their work. Hence, it is important to communicate your ideas clearly to avoid any misunderstandings.

Align With Your Company’s Goal

Lastly, if your initiatives is not aligned with the company’s goal, then it is just a waste of time, energy and resources. For example:

Angelo, a General Services Supervisor, attends a seminar about open workspaces. He finds out that it is interestingly trending and in fact, a lot of company has applied it to their offices. He proposes the office layout changes to his manager and emphasizes on how this change will promote openness, transparency and collaboration among teams, despite its significant cost. Later on, he receives a lot of feedback that employees find the layout distracting.

Recognize when a change is necessary. Also, think thoroughly if an initiative will help your company achieve its goals.

The balance among these three elements makes your steps to taking initiative wise and effective.

In the next lesson, we will discuss team dynamics and building rapport for a smooth communication of your initiatives.

Knowing Your Team and Building Rapport

Understanding your Company Culture

Every business has a different company culture, and multiple factors can affect it like their ethnicity, the industry, and even the setup (office vs. remote). For example, in a remote company, most remote workers can directly message a CEO regardless of their position. The hierarchy might not matter. In a Filipino company, you might not want to confront people directly because Filipinos might take it against you. The cultural dynamics are quite different for everyone. But regardless, one thing is constant across all companies. The company culture determines how the team can work together well. As a remote worker, you need to understand your company culture to properly practice initiative.

Getting to Know Your Team

The first step is to get to know the team. You are now part of the organization, and it is good to connect with your teammates along the way.

• What is their nationality?
• How does normal communication look like?
• Are they formal or relaxed when talking to teammates?
• How do they handle meetings?
• Are they open to suggestions?
• What starts misunderstandings in your team?
• Do they have a Watercooler chatroom?
• What do they do for fun?

Slowly build rapport with your teammates, and in time, you can understand how the culture works.

You can create a profile of each of your teammate, which will help you get to know them on a professional and personal.

Why not try the Profile Template in the Downloads section, edit it with your information, share it to your team, and ask them to do the same.

Participating in Team Discussions

With that in mind, listen and participate in your team discussions. Get to know them, and share your thoughts and ideas. In this way, everyone will know that you are a valuable team member.

Look for Things that Can be Improved

After understanding your company’s culture, your initiative and proactiveness start from here. Look for things that can be improved. Is there anything in the operations that can be done more efficiently? Are their tools or techniques that can be utilized for productivity? In our next lesson, we will give you tips on how to have more initiative.

Ways to Take Initiative

Now that you understand your virtual office culture and dynamics, it is time to put initiative in practice. Initiative can be learned; here are some ways you can build initiative.

Develop Your Long-term Career Plan

Our actions right now will dictate the long-term results in the future. So if you want a flourishing career or promotion, you must think of a long-term career plan. But you can only get these perks when you have the initiative to do your best. What do you want to get out of remote work right now? Do you want to learn the skills? Do you want to network for more opportunities? Do you want to get a promotion for a higher salary? By knowing what you want, you will never need to push yourself to have the initiative. Initiative will probably be automatic.

Be Self-Confident

Some people probably know what they want; they are just lack of conviction. Self-confidence takes time to build. It is created with small but consistent wins every day.

So if you have any ideas, just try to voice it out. If there are opportunities to volunteer, have the confidence to step up and take it. There may be mistakes along the way, take it as a learning and improve on it. Who knows, this initiative might be the starting point for your wins!

Think Like the Owner

Most employees just work to do the bare minimum. Imagine how the business owner compares to them. Business owners probably think of improving their business all the time they can get.

Thinking in the shoes of your client means becoming accountable. Know your role, be humble, own your mistakes, manage your time, underpromise but overdeliver, ask for feedback, and maximize available resources are just few things you can do to be accountable. How else can you help grow the business?

Answering this question is already taking initiative. What is left is to relay these ideas to your client.

Ask Questions

Having initiative doesn’t mean you can fail all the time. Yes, we must not be afraid to fail. But there’s a simple solution to avert most major failures. It’s by asking questions.

If you have something you do not know or not sure of, it is best to ask questions to your higher-ups so that they can guide you in your next action. Have the initiative and ask questions if you need guidance.

Hone Your Abilities

Luck is when opportunity meets preparation. There are times your client might need certain output that requires more skill. If you have been learning new skills or honing your craft, you can take the initiative to do the new tasks.

When you constantly show that you are valuable and competent, you will be a remote working pro that your client cannot live without.

Module Summary

Well done! You have completed this module.

You have learned to:

• assess when and how to take initiative at work
• understand and work based on cultures and values
• get to know your virtual team
• build rapport with your virtual team
• take initiative through different ways

Explore the other topics to learn how to become a remote working pro! For the meantime, please take time to complete a quick evaluation to help us improve our design and content.