9 Easy Steps to Solve the Biggest Challenges at Work

Giving an unimpressive presentation to a client or failing to meet a project deadline can leave you red-faced. There could be a wide range of excuses and rationales which we could justify the poor outcome, but deep down you know, it could have been better.

You might start to doubt your capabilities as a professional. However, just because you don’t feel confident enough at your current workplace should not force you to give up. Here are nine steps to help you solve even the biggest of challenges at work.

1. Build trust with co-workers

If you manage to strike up a strong bond with your workmates, you can gain their unconditional support in all your professional endeavors. Instead of ignoring your weaknesses, you can choose to discuss these with your team members, asking them for feedbacks and suggestions. When you get to know about their personal experiences with slip-ups, you find the mental strength to try again.

Being forthright with your coworkers is a good way to get their support. If you are leading a team in your workplace, building a foundation of trust among all team members is key to conflict resolution and effective teamwork. As a leader of a team, one can use a trust-building working environment, to her advantage to manage conflicts in the workspace.

2. Take baby steps towards the best solution at hand

Even if you’ve figured out the right plan to solve a specific bottleneck, you cannot expect to see results overnight. For instance, if you lack good communication skills today, you cannot hope to impress a crowd with your words tomorrow. You have to try to focus on small achievements. For example, you can begin by writing an impressive outline first and then attempt to speak on that. As you find yourself progressing, you can move onto delivering longer speeches. Recording every speech will help you gain more confidence as you continue to work on your shortcomings. You can even keep a journal to track this progress and celebrate every little victory.

3. Focus on clear and quantifiable goals

When you have made your own goals, you need to chalk out a definite plan to achieve them. If you have failed to put up an impressive presentation before the client, you need to work on your speech skills. The presentation skills of your superiors or colleagues in your office can serve as a benchmark for you. Once the goal has been clearly defined, you can start with your learning plan.

You will find many tools online to improve your communication skills like the Mind Tools “How Good Are Your Presentation Skills?” quiz which analyzes your presentation skills and teach you how you can improve your deficiencies. Vocaroo is a voice-recording app that lets you hear your speeches so that you may work on improving those.

4. Explore your talents

Even if you may not be a great orator, you may have good interpersonal skills. If you learn to work on your natural talents and further develop your soft skills, you will soon gain the confidence to speak in public too. That is why instead of focusing only on “weaknesses” per se, you can always draw strength from them.

5. Use mind tools

These tools help you to create a plan by starting to think differently. One such tool is Provocation, which helps you find better solutions to problems. It shows you how to move away from linear thinking and look for newer routes to arrive at the same destination. Spiral or non-linear thinkers believe that there are many starting points to apply solutions to a given problem.

Brainplots: A popular mind tool for brainstorming ideas is Brainplots that lets others view a problem and offer their feedbacks.

PaintNite: Studies on groups conducting art classes have found out that painting greatly improves psychological resilience. When you create art, you can enhance self-awareness. It is a huge stress buster and will have a calming and stabilizing effect on an individual’s neuroanatomy. PaintNite is a tool that can help you get started.

Doodlebuddy: Doodling is hugely popular because it lets you find solutions to problems even when you are listening to others. It is a form of creative expression which can offer you unforeseen results. This is an excellent tool for a visual learner because he can translate words into pictures seamlessly. During meetings on finding solutions to critical problems, the Doodlebuddy app may actually come to your rescue.

6. Recognize weaknesses

It is important to acknowledge the weaknesses you have. You may have been grappling with that weakness since childhood, like lack of organizational skills or shyness. When you identify those areas which been roadblocks for you from an early age, you can focus on rectifying them.

7. Take an assessment

Evaluating your strength, values and interests using personality and career assessments is always beneficial because they can help you determine if you are in the right career and if you are using your talents to the best of your ability in your professional life. There are some great assessments out there, which can be purchased online or administered by a career coach. One great options is StrengthsFinder 2.0, a strength assessment tool for highlighting your dominant strengths and showing how these can influence your life and work.

8. Get help

There is no harm in seeking assistance or guidance from others, who may be able to identify your faults better than you can. Everyone has blind spots and most often, you are not able to recognize it in a way others can. Instead of getting upset over their criticism, you need to trust their feedbacks and realize that you have to help yourself to overcome your professional shortcomings. Hiring a career coach may be the first step in this regard. They will offer you the support, help and direction that you need for attaining the targets you have in mind. Your coach will guide you depending on what your goals are. A good client-coach relationship will help focus on your drawbacks and take these small steps to overcome the challenges that you face daily at work.

9. Keep a journal

When you maintain a journal, you can record the progress that you have made. This is similar to scientific process of capturing all progress in the form of a journal. Documenting your own journal in the right manner will also help you in analyzing the methods used and the results obtained through the different initiatives undertaken by you over a period. This helps you stay focused and motivated at the same time. You will also be able to address other shortcomings and find out areas for self-improvement.

Thinking of hiring a career coach to help you gain more confidence, improve your presentation skills or find your dream job? Browse our directory of career coaches and get a FREE consultation or request a personalized coach recommendation!