Heres Why You Shouldnt Just Focus On Your Own Goals at Work

Heres Why You Shouldnt Just Focus On Your Own Goals at Work If youre at work chipping away at your daily tasks, your mind is most likely focused on your own goals and responsibilities. That kind of tunnel vision is great since it can help you get a lot of work done rather efficiently. When youre working day to day, it makes sense just to focus on getting your own tasks completed. However, once you have a good handle on those responsibilities, it may benefit you to think bigger. Thinking beyond your own goals, responsibilities, and objectives can help you become a more valuable employee, and a better coworker. Well explain when you should take this approach, and what you should focus on. Broadening Your Focus To fully realize the value in recognizing the goals of others, you first have to understand how they interact with each other. Ultimately, goals and objectives are set at the top by executives, and potentially shareholders. From there, company goals are disseminated down to directors and managers, who then share those goals with their teams. Within each team, every individual has their own personal goals and responsibilities, and thats what they will typically focus on. Now you should have a pretty good mindset for how all of the goals interact. From there, you can start to see the crossover. Knowing how all of those objectives interact will help you realize the value in helping others. Its far too easy to get wrapped up in your own daily tasks and responsibilities, and lose sight of what you are all striving for. Being mindful of your teams goals and managers goals allows you to work in a way that helps both parties better accomplish them. If those goals arent clear to you, you should do something about it. Ask your manager if you can sit down to discuss their objectives and how you can contribute to them. It will help clarify things, and usually has the added bonus of impressing them. Taking that initiative will help you work in the best way to support your manager. This is also something you could ask to do with your team if you can find time. Company and Coworker Goals Alternatively, taking some time to understand the goals of your coworkers can help too. Understanding the function of each person in your team can help you work better collaboratively. If the functions of your coworkers were never made overtly clear to you when you were brought on board, it might be wise to take time to learn more. Knowing the strengths, tasks, and objectives of your coworkers helps you know when you can support them, and vice versa. This makes it easier to collaborate on projects and work as a team. Lastly, its also incredibly easy to lose sight of the function of the overall company. However, remembering the core function of the company you are working for will inform everything you do. This includes your work, your teams work, your managers work, and their managers work. All of that work contributes to the bottom line, if your company is for profit. Keeping that greater goal in mind also gives purpose to what you are doing. Sometimes taking a step back can help you push forward. Increase Your Value as an Employee Try to stay mindful of: Overall company objectives. The goals of your manager. Your teams objectives. Your individual goals. If you can keep all of those factors in mind, it will make your own work more rewarding, and more valuable. Understanding the scope of what you do in the context of the company makes you a more valuable employee to your manager. Making an effort to understand those factors will show in the quality of your work, and how you work with others. Its certainly okay to focus on your own tasks and goals, but every once in a while allow yourself to step back and realize what all of your work is going towards.