Many times, in a job, we’re given tasks that are new to us. Professionals often find themselves doing things they never thought they would be doing when they accepted their position. Often the skills learned through these experiences can help define our careers and shape our professional image. They help us find our purpose.
Finding a Chameleon
Robin Lehnberg is an administrative assistant working for smaller companies, and doing a lot of tasks he didn’t think he would. He was originally hired to do accounting but has been assigned many different types of tasks over his career. Managing social media, writing official documents and translating documents between languages are all hats he has worn without trying them on before.
Finding a Habitat
Robin says he actually prefers the variety of tasks that he has at a smaller company, as opposed to a larger one where the work would be more focused on a single type of task. A more intimate work environment also allows employees to bounce ideas off each other and help each other out when they get stuck on a problem.
Having a general knowledge of a variety of tasks and freedom to collaborate in the workplace can increase productivity and also help employees discover skills they want to work to improve.
Learning New Skills
The hardest task Robin says he’s had was writing a quote to offer a service to another company. He hadn’t written anything like it before and he wasn’t familiar with the kind of language used in them. He looked up a template online to help him learn how to word it and found it very useful.
Overcoming the Writer Mindset
The world of professional writing is a widely varied field. Sometimes a person may mainly write for their career and other times they may have a different set of skills used for the focus of their job, but their writing skills still come in handy. There isn’t anything wrong with working off templates if you’re new to a task or a particular type of writing style.
What’s important isn’t really what you’re originally hired to do, or what your skill set mainly involves. What’s important is being open to learning new skills and gaining experience that helps you figure out what you like and are good at. The unexpected skills you discover and your changing interests might end up surprising you.
